Trip to Machu Picchu

Ollantaytambo

Finally, our trip to Machu Picchu started today. We were thinking a lot in advance, how we want to get there, and we had a lot of possibilities to do so. Many people on Couchsurfing and other travellers gave us ideas and recommendations how to reach the top of the Machu Picchu ruins. From Cusco there are many Inca trails and possibilities by bus, car and train. We finally decided to take the train from Ollantaytambo. Because we knew this region is full of Inca-ruins everywhere (Machu Picchu are far not the only ones!!!), we decided to make a stop in Ollantaytambo before. By minibus we got there, where we stayed at a nice cute hostel for one night. We met Manuel (another CS friend) in the afternoon and made a nice stroll through this amazing Sacred Valley with him. We saw many ruins, small ones (for free) and also big ones, where we would have to pay to go get inside. The next morning, we visited the Pinkuylluna ruins (for free) before we took the Inca Rail train to Aguas Caliente. The train took around 1.5h and we drove through this very green valley along the famous Rio Urubamba. In the train we met Jose from Sao Paulo. We had nice talks and at the end, we promised to meet him again in Brazil, as we’re planning to travel in Brazil after Peru. 😊

Aguas Calientes (Pueblo Machu Picchu)

When we arrived in Aguas Calientes, the first thing we wanted to find, was a place, where we could watch our football game Switzerland against Costa Rica (2:2). Of course, they were showing the Brazilian football game everywhere. But lucky as we usually are, we found a restaurant with other swiss people inside and we could ask if they change the game in the tv. 😊 In this restaurant we also had our dinner tonight and Claudia was the brave girl and tried the famous Inca dish: Guinea Pig! The dinner was truly delicious with Alpaca meat and Pisco sour again!

28.06.2018 Hiking up to Machu Picchu Finally, one of our highlights during our trip through South America is in the offing this day. We got up very early in the morning and had breakfast at 5am. Then we started walking to the lover entrance of Machu Picchu. The queue in front of the bus station to reach the top was huge (probably 1km). Anyway, we decided already in advance to walk up all the stairs to the upper entrance which is on an altitude of 2’400m above sea level. We reached the top after 1 hour just in time for enjoying the sunrise over the amazing Machu Picchu ruins. The hike up was exhausting, but because we expected this to be much worse, it was not so bad at all. In the beginning we could walk around the ruins without problems, but then more and more tourists came and there were many guardians with a whistle who disciplined us when we took the wrong way (what we did in fact a few times). We enjoyed the whole morning walking around through the ruins, took pictures, chilled in the sun and Claudia tried to recover from her bad stomach cramps she unfortunately had this day. The ruins are very impressive in fact. We heard many stories in advance and saw many pictures before, but when you are there in real, everything looks different and the place looks wonderful hidden up in the Machu Picchu mountains above the Sacred Valley. It’s impossible for us to imagine, how people could live there, so far away from any water resources. No one knows exactly when the last Incas were actually living in this place. They just know, that these Inca citadels must have been built during the 15^th century. After lunch we walked all the stairs down. For recovering our legs, we spend some time in the healthy thermal bath of Aguas Calientes before we had dinner and a typical drink from here: Chicha Morado.

The next day we already took the train back to Cusco. In Cusco we met Jose the Brazilian guy from Sao Paulo again and we decided to have a coffee and a cake and after one or two beers with him. Again, we had nice talks and shared funny stories. This night was supposed to be a party night, so we went to the club “Mama Africa” for the free Salsa lesson again. Also, we went there with our host Jorge. It was another great and funny party evening. 😉