We awoke early in the night to the drizzle of rain outside our tents. Our luck was the best such that the only day it rained was the day we wanted it clear. Luckily we had put up the rainflys otherwise we would have been soaked. Around the time we woke up for breakfast it was pouring. We put on ponchos (so glad we bought them) packed up our gear and headed out. It was misty with terrible visibility when we got to the sun gate. It had stopped pouring and a lot of us ditched our ponchos and we stopped long enough to talk briefly about it and then headed on towards Machu Picchu.
Our first view of Macchu Picchu was covered in mist and we were all pretty bummed. I remember considering coming back the next day in the hopes the weather was better. Cesar took us through Machu Picchu and luckily the fog started lifting in patches so that we got some glimpses of how far it stretched in all directions.
We skirted around the side over to the king's residence and one of the temples. It was amazing to see how tight these huge rocks fit together and were still standing after all these years. A lot of Machu Picchu is not made with the really good stone work and Cesar told us that they reserved the high quality stones for religious or very important sites (such as the king's residence).
What was ridiculous is that the king would only come to Machu Picchu once a year and normally lived in Cusco. The rain picked back up and fog rolled in and we all donned our ponchos and continued around to finish our tour of the ruins. We walked up to the top to overlook everything, but it was still foggy and there still wasn't great visibility. Cesar took us down to an open field area where we concluded the tour and we had 4 hours to ourselves before we met up with the tour guides again for lunch. Everyone was pretty exhausted but finally we motivated to go exploring a little more. Megan and Mark wanted to climb Huayna Picchu, the mountain overlooking Machu Picchu, but Tom, Jake and Julie wanted to go look at a rock bridge the Incan's had cut. They only let 400 people onto the mountain a day so they wanted to wait in line to see if they could get in. I figured the mountain would be more impressive, but I didn't want to leave Tom and I was still feeling exhausted. Megan and Mark were in line and Megan was the last number allowed. She then finagled her way to get one more in and I half heartedly followed them up the mountain. It turned out to be way easier than I thought.
Even though it was basically straight up, there are cables in most places. We actually could have made better time but there were a lot people descending and we had to wait to take the cables up. We got to the top and right on cue, all the fog left the valley for the first time all day. Megan was scared to climb onto the rocks at the absolute top so she hung out right below the ladder until we coaxed her out. It was definitely worth it to have climbed to the top. After taking some time to snap photos, we all headed back down to Machu Picchu. It was much faster descending since they cut off the people on the trail and we had been the last ones so no one was ascending. We got back, met up with everyone and jumped on the bus back to town. I think everyone passed out on the 30 minute ride. We got back into town, dropped off our gear at the restaurant and split up to change our train back, get on the internet, or as Megan and I did, get more beer.
We hung out and drank with the tour guides until our group reassembled and we ate a late lunch with everyone. They congratulated us and passe
d out certificates for finishing the trail:
We then hung out a bit more and finally headed over to the train. Unfortunately, our guides missed their train (they weren't going first class like us) and we would be meeting random people after our ride back. We said our goodbyes to them and got on the train. It was pretty nice and they included a small airline style meal for us. I started to doze off when suddenly a bunch of techno music started playing. I woke up to see the train attendants strutting up the aisles. Since they have a captive audience, they give a fashion show to show off a bunch of alpaca clothing. It was ridiculous. It kept us interested until we finally got to our destination. We grabbed all our gear, found our bus and got on board. We immediately passed out and we all woke up when we finally got into Cusco to our hotel. Megan, Tom, Julie and I had to move to a different hotel that night, so we got our gear and called a cab to adjust housing. We got there, turned on Olympics and took turns showering. We were all exhausted.
No comments:
Post a Comment