Kepfram & Ellie's Travel Journal

Machu Picchu!!
I had really wanted to hike the Inca Trail - I´m not sure Kepfram was so keen on it, but it was not to be anyway.... We scheduled our trip loosely from the start with only beginning an ending dates and a list of countries to explore (we did this to avoid feeling rushed along the way, and so far it has served us well). So we didn´t know exactly when we´d get to Cusco and therefore didn´t make advance reservations for the Trail. As it turns out we arrived right at the beginning of Holy Week - a week of vacation for many Peruvians in addition to a spike in foreign tourists although it´s technically still the "low season" - so there was no chance of getting a space. Even the 2 day 1 night "mini Trail" was out because of a recent landslide cutting of the typical entrance trough Intipunka, the Sun Gate (don´t worry this should be fixed soon).
So, after spending a few days adjusting to the altitude in Cuzco we took the train up to Aguas Calientes (I decided to take the $ I´d budgeted for the Inca Trail and splurge on luxury PeruRail trips both to Aguas Calientes and later to Puno) and we took the (also expensive) tourist bus from there up to the ruins. We decided on spending 2 days exploring the park (it is HUGE), and really I would have liked more (but again, the ticket price to get in is quite high at about $40 pp/day).....
The first day we only had a few hours in the afternoon to explore, so we hiked out to Puente del Inca - an ancient drawbridge now replaced by wooden planks, but built along a COMPLETELY sheer cliff face (I have no idea how they did these things), and then we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the extensive ruins and marveling at the extent of it all.
The next day we got up before 5AM to catch the first bus up in order to at Machu Picchu to see the sunrise. The bus was delayed by a procession of catholics carrying a giant cross up the road to a nearby church (it was Good Friday), it had started getting light by the time we arrived at the top of the hill, but we were still first in when the park opened at 6AM. We hiked up to our planned look out point, but the ruins below were completely socked in with fog, and the view towards the mountains to the east was not much better. After a little while waiting we realized that the clouds were not about to clear for us to see the sun, we decided to move on and hike up the adjacent sacred peak of Huayna Picchu. The trail to this attraction opens at 7AM, and closes by 1PM or after 400 hikers have entered, whichever comes first (it´s usually closed before noon). This is a HARD 45 minute to 1 hour hike up an impossibly steep mountain (at least we weren´t at much of an altitude here), with steps carved into the stone trail by the builders of the temples at the top. We got to the peak before 8AM - but again we were surrounded by clouds.... We were not about to climb all that way and not get a view, so we explored the summit and waited until about 10AM when the clouds finally burned off below and we could look down on the Incan masterpiece.
The runis consist of several temples and other sacred structures and the houses and terraced fields of the workers. The ruins are currently home to large squirrel-rabbit things called vizcachas, a number of birds, and grazing llamas - which are only there to please the shutter happy tourists - apparently llamas are much happier at higher altitudes.... The really impressive buildings are the temples (constructed solely of precisely cut stone like the temples we saw near Cuzco), sacred stones carved to match the profiles of the neighboring sacred mountains, and channels for water into the temples as well as to the terraced fields.
Kepfram was distinctly underwhelmed by the architecture of the residential buildings, but the temples were still quite remarkable (although apparently the top of the mountain where they are built is slowly settling and there has been at least one large earthquake, so some the of the buildings are damaged). But overall the scope of the city is really striking and the views are incredible.
We ended up not taking an organized tour of the ruins (mostly because of timing - it started to rain right at the time we´d been thinking to go look for a guide), but we did hear quite a few explanations by guides of various other tours as we walked around, so we didn´t feel too deprived at the end. However, it anyone wants to hike the Inca Trail with me some time in the future, I´d definitely go back for more!!

Ellie