The Road to Pisaq

I went to Pisaq today with the family, so this will be the second time I have gone.  There are three major differences: the fact that it is Sunday, which means market day; the fact that we are staying overnight in Pisaq; and the fact that there were horrible horrible floods recently and the roads are in horrible condition.

I called ahead to make reservations at a nice little hotel called Pisaq Inn, and the owner, who spoke English, told me that I should take the back road to Pisaq, since the main road is in horrible condition.  She told me I should go by San Sebastian, along the bottom right of the map (road A), since the direct road to Pisaq (road B) is impassable.  I spoke with Marita, the homestay mom I am staying with, and she said that it was better to go through Urubamba (road C), which, although it would take 3 hours, would be the best.

Marita called a taxi company and asked if we could go on road A, and apparently the answer was no, they didn’t offer that service, so we agreed to go by road C, which would apparently only take an hour and a half.

We got into the taxi and by the time I realized that we were actually on road B we were halfway there and couldn’t really do anything but hang on.  The problem was, this road ran alongside one of the rivers that had flooded, and in parts there were huge landslides that covered part of the road or had recently been cleared away, and some parts the road itself had been damaged and half the road was all ripped up.

This is a highway.

The most random part actually was about halfway there, we encountered a tree that had fallen across the road.  We thought it was possiblybecause of a storm the night before, but when we were able to pass it, it looked like it had cut down by some people.  And yes, people were working on cutting it into logs while a line of cars waited for them to get the tree out of the way.

Sunday morning logging

Finally we got to Pisaq and there is one final bridge that you have to cross and it was completely closed.  Marita had told us that the driver would take us straight to our hotel, but that was clearly a lie, because he pulled up in front of this closed bridge and told us to get out.

Bridge to Pisac (note the lack of a left side)

The bridge was fairly damaged and only open to foot traffic, it’s on of the bridges I saw on youtube when there was all the flooding.  So we walked across and found our hotel and then when we checked in, the lady said I told you so!