We travelled from Cusco to Aqua Caliente by bus and walked the last bit by foot. For everybody with fears of hight and falling down steep slopes probably should take the train... The first part of the journey was great and the roads in pretty good shape. A lot of roadwork on the way showed us that Peru was busy with bringing the roads in top shape. The last part of the trip however was on dirt roads, sometimes only a little wider then the bus with up to 1000m drops down to the river... Our driver was fearless, but his music fantastic.
After purchasing our tickets for the lost city, we camped at the foot of Machu Pichu. Early in the morning we packed all our stuff and made our way up the steep mountain. After an exhausting hour and 1643 steps we reached at the gate of the park. As I had the big backpack I had to wait for the storage to open at 6am. It was already bright and the first view of the city was absolutely breathtaking. As not too many people were on the site as of now, we were able to enjoy this spectacular place and take some nice pictures.
It is absolutely amazing how this city is build on top of this steep slopes. The size of the town is also incredible big. I wasn't aware about the buildings on top of the other mountain, called wainupicchu... After. Climbing this even steeper mountain trek, I call the city now "the city of the million steps"!
We climbed to the very top and enjoyed the deserved view for a while before we took a different way around the mountain. Many more steps build the way and it didn't want to stop.
It was a beautiful and exhausting experience. We were not alone when we suffered in the heat... Ask Lukas! :)
After coming back to the main area we explored more of the ruins and had a little rest in the shade of the stone walls on one of the terraces. The late afternoon brought a little silence over the ancient place. This was before the school groups arrived...
Another lifetime dream came true and it was a beautiful moment we could experience together. At the end of the day we walked the 1641 (2less then up, because of a special construction of a wall...) back down (the bus from Aqua Caliente to the park entrance would have cost US$8 for one way), build our tend up, paid for the day and went to town to buy a big bottle of beer (1ltr) and some spaghetti for dinner. This we prepared at the foot of Machu Picchu with our night security team... A guard of 4 dogs surrounded our tent the entire night.
It was nice and warm even though it rained a little bit during the night. As the morning was nice and sunny, everything was dry after breakfast and ready at the time we had to pack for our departure. 2 of the dogs went with us on our 2 hour walk along the rail tracks back to the Hydrostation (a ticket for the train return to Aqua Caliente would have been US$40 per person). We enjoyed the walk and had plenty of time before we got our lift back to Cusco.
Our drive back is a different story... We had this young kid driving us. He had the tendency to drive on the left hand side and honk the horn before every corner, sometimes also on the straight. I couldn't watch him driving... The next bad thing was, that two lesbian girls were sitting next to him in the front. He was very interested in them, especially when they started kissing. (I told you before that the roads were small and the slopes steep and deep, right?!) but I guess what was the worst was his music. He had this cd with over 300 songs on it. It was produced in a garage on a 15$ synthesizer and then sung by drunk people on a karaoke machine. Every 20 songs sounded the same and were all miserable bad! In between he put a cd in which was a Peruvian traditional band with pan flute and chore singers. I liked it the first time we heard it. The singing was more or the less very similar from song to song. So when the cd played the second time it wasn't as easy to listen to than the first time. When it played the 4th time (it's a long ride...) I started to hate pan flutes! I was very close to strangle this kid and shuffle his music up his ears... We were so relived when we finally arrived in Cusco and could leave this evil place and head to our Hostal for a peaceful night.
We had a little time to explore more of Cusco.
For more pictures see below links:
Pictures to Cusco
Pictures to Machu Picchu
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