Machu Picchu

MACHU PICCHU!! We finally made it! It was everything I hoped for. We started the journey off by taking a taxi to Ollantaytambo, which is a small Incan town located in the Sacred Valley about an hour or two from Machu Picchu. The town was tiny, but really beautiful and adorable. We spent the night there in a hostel...it was a friday night, but the town was so small it was hard to find anything to do after dinner. We went to a cafe for dessert, and they served us rotten cheese cake! At least we didn´t have to pay for it!


The next morning we wanted to hike to the top of the Inca ruins nearby town, but didn´t want to pay the extra money, so we went on our own walk down a beautiful road along the Urubamba River. At noon we took the train to Aguas Calientes, the small touristy town at the base of Machu Picchu. It was really fun taking the train, the scenery on the way there was gorgeous. It was really interesting watching how the terrain was changing, as Machu Picchu is lower than the Cusco and the Sacred Valley, we literally watched as the surroundings turned into jungle! The town was beautiful, our hostel was located directly on the river that ran through the town.
The biggest tourist attraction in Aguas Calientes are the hotsprings. The springs aren´t what I expeted, only because I am used to Oregon hotsprings! Although they were real hot springs from the river, the area was closed off, and the springs were made into individual concrete pools. The water was perfect temperature and relaxing, but there were too many people crowded into them! We were able to wave our hands and get drinks delivered right to us though, which was a big plus:)

Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu is a Pre-Columbian Inca site (The lost city of the Incas). The site was built in the mid-1400s, and was abandoned when the Spanish conquered the Inca Empire only 100 years later. Machu Picchu is the most known and important Inca Site, largely because it is one of the only remaining sites of the Incas, as there is no record of the Spanish Conquistadores having even known that it existed. The site was abandoned until a foreigner came across the ruins in the early 1900s. It is still unclear as to what the ruins were used for, although there are some more accurate assumptions....

Sunday morning we woke up at 4:30 to catch the first bus from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu (it was about a half hour very windy bus ride up the steep mountain). We wanted to leave early because we wanted to hike Wainu Picchu, which is the towering mountain that you see behind the ruins in all of the famous photos. They only allow 400 people to hike Wainu Picchu per day, so we wanted to make sure we made it.
We started the trek up the mountain at seven. It was strange entering Machu Picchu, but having to hurry as fast as we could past all of the ruins to the other side where the hike started because we didn´t even get a chance to look at the ruins up close until after the hike. The hike was the highlight of our trip. I can´t even explain in words the extraordinary scenery that we were surrounded by. The hike was extremely steep, and took about an hour to get to the top (although we stopped a bunch on the way to take pictures and talk about how amazing the views were.. the views would get more amazing the higher we climbed). We were lucky to have great weather too. It didn´t rain the whole day that we were there, which is very unusual for February. The sun didn´t really make it out either, but the misty fog surrounding the mountains made the experience seem more surreal, and made for perfect hiking weather. We were able to see Machu Picchu clearly from above....way above! It was amazing being that high, all we could see were mountain ranges, and the Urubamba River (Which runs along three of the four sides of the ruins!). We took our time once we reached the top, as it was hard to make ourselves leave that beautiful mountain..but we had to get back down to tour the ruins! The walk back down was a little longer because we decided to go off trail and find some caves that we heard were pretty cool. We walkd up and down and up and down steep winding stairs for about twenty or more minutes and still no caves! Oh well, just walking through the jungle is enough to keep me satisfied.
Once back on the site, we met up with a tour guide. The tour took about two hours, and led us through most of the ruins, giving us history about the Inca ruins. The ruins were really interesting, the site was much larger than I had imagined...it seemed to keep going and going, and we didn´t even have enough time to explore the whole site, even though we were there for about nine or ten hours (half of the time we spent on the hike).
We took some amazing photos, so make sure to check them out on the Costco site. Although, the photos do not even compare to what we experienced that day, I will remember it forever.