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Aguas Caliente:
There is only one place for travelers to stay in this six-house village--an unsightly one-room concrete-block pension.
I rent one of the several empty cots. This will be my base camp for exploring the famous lost city, but first I want to sample the nearby natural hot spring baths I have been told of by other backpack travelers.
Up a faint footpath into a narrow defile behind the village I find the springs: clean concrete tubs with sandy bottoms filled with clear steaming water. No one is around. Off with the clothes and into the crystal pool! Oh, good! I float like a lemon slice in a bowl of hot punch feeling better and better and then dash over to the nearby tumbling mountain stream for a startling splash in the cool water, then back to the hot tubs! The only company I have during the entire lovely afternoon is a cloud of pretty butterflies.
Back in the village I buy and eat fried river fish, bananas and fresh baked bread. After nightfall a few little children come out to play in the little town square. There is no electricity in this tiny community so candles glow and fireflies wink in the darkness.
At sunrise I hike back up the tracks through the tunnels to the foot of the needlelike peak that is crowned by the "lost" city. Where the footpath up the mountain begins, I discover a bamboo shack which shelters seven or eight international backpackers, some of which have been living here for weeks or even months.
You can buy a meal here too, so I order coffee and a thick pancake from the native woman who runs the establishment, then set out on the strenuous two-hour climb to the ruins.
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