Machu Picchu!!!!!!

Aahhhhhh! I am nervous about this post because nothing I write or post pictures of will do it justice. This was an absolutely incredible experience and so breathtaking.

We planned to be on one of the first buses up to the entrance, so our hotel recommended that we be there one hour before the bus actually left the station, or 4:30 am. We arrived at about 4:40 and there were already about 200 people in line ahead of us.


Clearly we all had the same plan. Good thing the bus company has done this before. There were about 15 buses lined up ready to take us up.

The ride was pretty windy, but not near as bad as it looks from google earth.


(those switchbacks are the road!)

Once you get off the bus, everyone rushes to a booth to get their tickets stamped to climb HuayanaPicchu, which is the huge mountain at Machu Picchu.


Only 400 people are allowed up each day (200 at 7am and 200 at 10am) and we were some of the last ones to get a stamp.


Upon entering the ruins, we thought it was really cool,



but then we walked about 500 more feet in and BAM!


It opens up into the full site. It is so much larger than I had thought it would be,


and the walls/huts are much bigger than I had expected.


Every two minutes we were turning to each other and saying "how did they do this??". There were so many perfect right angles on the walls, windows, even an aqueduct system.





And THEN we saw the Alpacas!


They were just wandering through the ruins, eating grass and bugging tourists. I loved it!


Watching the sunrise was an experience in itself. I am soo glad we went in right when it opened!











We explored around,



took a zillion more pictures,





and walked out to see the Incan Bridge.


How in the world did they get that thing there?









We then stopped for a picnic. Not a bad place to rest, eh?


At 10, we began climbing



See that? That's the tip we climbed to!



It took us about an hour to get to the top; a climb full of crazy steep steps and inclines.


Thanks for the railing, Incans! One wrong step and you were dead meat.

Rumor on the path was that the record for ascent was about 15 minutes, by one of the Incan trail porters. I was so terrified of falling off the sides, I don't know how anyone could be so brave! My knees were so shaky, and I'm not even that afraid of heights! There were a few of those obnoxious, impatient climbers whom rush past you, but for the most part, everyone was super encouraging and friendly along the path.

Oh yeah, and there are two tiny caves you have to squeeze through.






At the top there are more ruins!


I thought the climb was impressive on it's own, but clearly people were doing this thousands of years ago with granite on their backs! I blame it on the office job. If I was an Incan, I TOTALLY could have done that ;)

Beautiful views of the entire valley.





Aww, cute!

I feel so lucky that we were able, and determined enough to climb to the top. Absolutely worth waking up so early and pushing ourselves to do it.


We left Mach Picchu around 1 and spent the rest of the afternoon catching our breath, eating a late lunch, and then it was back on the train and back to Cuzco!

When we got in, thoroughly exhausted from such a long day, we just wanted to grab something to eat and go to bed. . There are two fast food options in Cuzco, McDonalds and Bembo's, which is a Peruvian (South American?) chain. We decided to try Bembo's even though it looked kinda scary. When in Rome, right? We took one bite of the hamburger and...headed to McDonalds. So much for expanding our palates!

Our final night at the net house was hilarious. Let's just say someone finally understands my neuroticism about icky hotel beds and jumped out of bed screaming because he thought he felt a bug crawling on him. Luckily, he was wrong. Also, we downloaded a white noise app for the iPad which was GENIUS. No more barking dogs! I finally got a good night's sleep.

We are headed back to Lima today, and then we are off to the Amazon! Iquitos here we come!!! Not sure if there is Internet there (somehow I doubt it, but thanks to this awesome iPad app, I can keep writing posts and save them until we do have Internet!)