Machu Picchu

​Since we couldn’t do the Inca trail, we started our trip to Machu Picchu with a three day hike called the Salkantay Trail. It leads through the mountains over a pass with an altitude of 4628m. The trek is mostly alongside a river and you go through a few small villages along the way. The inhabitants are already used to the hikers and there are shelters in which you can build up your tent.

After you hike up the pass, the path just goes down and the weather changes from very cold to kind of tropical. Paula got a bad sunburn on her nose. The best thing was that there is a kilometer or so where a lot of wild strawberries grow. We had to stop eating them or otherwise we wouldn’t have reached the next village.

Our destination was Santa Teresa a small city which has hotsprings. The problem? No street signs so after 3 days of hiking where two consisted of going down we gave up and decided to go directly to Machu Picchu.

To go to machu Picchu we first had to go to Hidroelectrica (yes it’s a water power plant). Since our feet hurt a lot we just took a taxi. From there we had to walk 2,5  hours alongside train tracks to reach the small city Aguas Calientes. Which has hotsprings too … the catch? They are so dirty that they shouldn’t be used by tourist’s. Along the train tracks there are some small restaurants that offer food and drinks, since most of the people walk to Aguas Calientes instead of taking the very expensive train.

Finally in Aguas Calientes we found a very cheap hostel, bought our tickets for Machu Picchu and had the most expensive bad food in Peru. It was probably pretty funny to look at us walking, since our legs hurt so much from the trek. We nearly couldn’t go up the stairs to the hostel.

The next day we had our alarm clock set for 4:30 am to go up to Machu Picchu, but since it was raining we took our time. After hiking up the 1400m to the ruins we had breakfast and then went looking for a guide. The next tour was a Spanish speaking tour, and because after 2 months in Peru we are pretty confident in our language skills we joined them. It was very interesting and the guide spoke very good English so he could fill in the blanks of what we didn’t understand. In the morning the ruins were a very mystical sight with the clouds going through the old stones, and at nine o’clock the clouds cleared up and we could look at the whole city. Our entrance ticket to Machu Picchu Mountain was only valid between 9 and 10, so right after the tour we hiked up the mountain. We were about to give up a few times, since our legs hurt so much but the sight from the top was reward enough.

We decided against going back to Cusco the same day, stayed in the hostel for one day more, walked down to Hidroelectrica and took collectivos back to Cusco.
A big thank you to Paula’s mum, who gave the trip to us as a birthday/Christmas present. Without her, we wouldn’t have gone.