Machu Picchu

We left Puno on a night bus, and headed back to Cusco for the beginning of our journey to Machu Picchu. We arrived in Cusco at 5:00 am, bought bread, banana, avocados, and smoothies. Our main staple. Earlier we had decided that we didn’t want to pay the huge amount of money to take a train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu town), and instead we were going to take various forms public transportation to get there.

First we got on a combie (minivan filled with seats)  towards the town of Urubamba, and then got onto another combie toward Santa Maria. This was the part of the journey that all the books said was suicide during the rainy season and had 100 dangerous curves. It was not that bad.

We made it to Santa Maria, just as a van was leaving for Hydroelectrico. This van was filled; there were people sitting on each other’s laps, kids standing, and a man in the truck of the van. Also the driver was insane and we had to take a back mountain road because a landslide had closed the main road.

We were dropped off in the pouring rain at the hydroelectric station, where we started our two hour walk along the train tracks to Aguas Calientes. This walk was actually really nice, flat, and later I found out that we were walking right under Machu Picchu and other Incan ruins the whole time.

We stayed in a hostel, and then got up at 4:30 to start hiking to Machu Picchu. We should have gotten up earlier when we realized how many people had started before us. We hiked pretty hard to try and pass as many people as we could, but when we got to Machu Picchu, we still had been beaten in line by many of the people who took busses to the entrance instead of walking.

Our goal was to make it first to the entrance of Hauyna Picchu (Hauyna Picchu is a mountain above Machu Picchu that is very small and fills up with up with people really fast) We made it to the top first and were able to enjoy a slightly cloudy view of the mountains, river, and jungle surrounding Machu Picchu. It was a short lived victory as we were soon being asked to take other hiker’s photos, and it got really loud very quickly.

We made our way down, and spent the day wandering around the wonderful rocks of Machu Picchu.