While I overall thought Machu Picchu unforgettable and an amazing experience, I think much less fondly of the town of Aguas Calientes. While it absolutely does have its charms and areas of genuine beauty. I found the main strip to be a painfully overstimulating tourist hellscape, a la Niagara Falls, Las Vegas etc. I found the main strip to be so over the top in this sense that it almost seemed like a parody of itself, I was half expecting to see a Machu Picchu-themed Hooters at some point. I was grateful to find some bastions of peace where I felt like I was, in fact in Peru, like the little indoor food market where I could get a reasonably priced meal that doesn’t taste like car exhaust (IF YOU ATE THE PASTA AT THAT RESTAURANT ON THE FIRST DAY YOU KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT, BLEGHHH!!). I feel like even though Machu Picchu itself and Aguascalientes are fundamentally different places with different feels, insane over-commercialization of such heritage sites so often leads to a feeling for the dilution of the cultural value of the site the town exists for in the first place….like I felt like that the tackiness and artificiality of much of Aguas Calientes negatively affected my perception of Machu Picchu while I was there, because the two places are inextricably linked. I guess it’s kind of a feeling of lament for how humans feel the need to exploit such a beautiful place at the expense of the places natural beauty.  Souvenir shops, shitty novelty restaurants, club promoters yelling at me for a “VERYSPECIALPARTYLATERSHROOMSWEEDCOKECOMEMYFRIEND” can absoloutely overshadow the historical context of a place like that, transforming a place of jaw dropping cultural importance into a borderline theme park. Of course it should not be disregarded that the injection of tourist dollars has funded infrastructure projects, improved living standards, and provided educational opportunities for many, but this also puts people who live here in a very precarious position. The prosperity of Aguas Calientes is at the mercy of the number of visitors and therefore external factors beyond the community’s control, like political instability, global pandemics etc, whcih affect tourism disproportionately. On top of this, we have seen countless instances of economic disparities also arising as a result of this, as those involved in the tourism industry benefit more than those who are not, creating social tension and widen the wealth gap/exacerbate inequalities. In a perfect world Agua Calientes would be a lovely and peaceful Andean town nestled below Machu Picchu, but unfortunately that isn’t the world we live in, c’est la vie I suppose.