Macchu Picchu

Aguas Calientes

The road to Machu Picchu began with a much looked forward to stay at a previous hostel in Ollantaytambo, due to the hot and fast gas shower! After two showers that day and a long shower the following morning we left in the darkness and rode the shaky narrow gauge train through the Urubamba valley. Following the river to Aguas Calientais, we arrived in the strange town, sunk in the middle of jungle covered mountains rising steeply on each side. There was only one reason for this over priced shabby town, and we were it… tourists.

      

View from the balcony

We found a cheap(ish) room overlooking the wide and rapid Urubamba river, then spent the rest of the day wandering around before bed at 7pm, ready to get up at 3am. Originally planning on walking the 1,400 or so feet up to the ridge where the ruins sit, we were told the gates at the bottom didn’t open until 5am and it was an hour walk, and as only the first 400 visitors get an extra permit to climb another part of the ruins, we decided to take the bus! So at 3:10am, we sat in line for the buses, and by my counting we’d be on the first. 5 o’clock came round both slowly and quickly, and at 5:30am we snaked our way in the darkness up the 15 or so switchback hairpin bends until finally joining the 100 or so walkers who were already making their way in. After getting the necessary permits to climb Huayna Picchu we entered (unsearcherd and keeping our lunch) into the ruins!

The first view was indescribable, it was nothing like I’d imagined or seen in all those pictures. The location where this city has been built is unbelievable and it is what really makes this place so special and impressive. It perched  2,430 meters on a ledge which must have seemed uninhabitable before the terraces were carved and the top of the ridge flattened enough for the citadel.

 

The sun rose as we entered Huayna Picchu, the mountain which rises above the city and the backdrop to most pictures of Maccu Picchu. This is where the priest and chosen women lived. We climbed the steep path 1,180 feet above the city where more buildings and sacred areas were built on an even more impossible looking place than below. 

We sat on a small terrace, legs dangling, for a Ritz cracker and pate breakfast looking over the site and on down to the river which circles and rushes on past. Walking back, I wondered when the last Quechua Incan had walked the same steps, which hadn’t changed since they did.  

We spent the whole day exploring everything we could possible fit in, walking to the SunGate which offered another incredible aspect, the Inca Bridge which is very isolated and easy to imagine 500 years ago, and flicking the pages of our borrowed self-guide at every building, monument and feature we came across. It was soon 5 and the guards were trying to usher the remaining tourists back down. The site was nearly empty by now as we sat again on a terrace, legs dangling, watching the sun set behind the snowy mountains opposite from the ones it rose from 10 hours ago.



Sunset




  

Pizza and wine!

We walked back down, crossed the river we’d heard all day, and looked back up to the few buildings you can see from the bottom. Now getting dark, we headed back to the hostal for a box of wine and a pizza on the balcony, before getting the train back to our temporary home of Cusco.