Cusco & Machu Picchu

Cusco

Cusco is the closest city to Machu Picchu ( the biggest draw for me to come to South America ) and was the capital of the Inca empire. After enduring the longest 12 hours on a bus so far, we arrived to find that as usual, the digs which we had booked were at the top of a hill, and only accessible by stairs ( Arlene hates stairs apparently...who knew ) but the digs were worth the effort.

Cusco was stunning, and somewhere that i could have seen me staying, the area where we stayed ( San Blas ) and the center of the town are colonial Spanish in the way that the buildings and streets look ( small cobbled streets, white buildings, terracotta roofs ) and the whole pace just oozed charm.

By luck we found an Irish bar and were amazed to see food from home, sausage, blackpudding, shepherds pie, chicken and veg soup etc. So every day we seemed to arrive here when we were hungry. After catching up on some football, also in Paddy Flannigans ( champions league at midday with a cold beer, as the sun shines in through an open window on to your back is hard to beat...lol.) we booked our trip to Machu Picchu going for 2 days to allow us to get up and see the sun rising over the ruins on the second morning.


Machu Picchu

As part of the 2 day trip to Machu Picchu we first stopped in Ollantambo to look at the small ruins, before climbing ( in the people carrier ) up the highest mountain in Peru ( 5400 m ). Half way down the far side of the mountain the road on which we were traveling suddenly turned to a dirt track and stayed that way for the rest of the day. It was a little daunting to have a sheer drop at one side of us as we weaved along the dirt track, winding our way through different mountains, being bounced from one side to the other, but in the end we made it safe and sound to the train station to catch our train to the base of Machu Picchu. That night we stayed in Agua Celentes, the small town closest to the ruins, and had an early night to ensure that we would be ok for our early start the following morning. The tickets for the bus start to go on sale at 5 in the morning and by 5.45 we were on a bus heading up to the ruins.

At the ruins the first thing that we had to do was quickly get to the entrance to Huayna Picchu ( the mountain in the background of the ruins ) to book our time to climb up it. There are only 400 people a day allowed to climb it due to it being dangerous ( according to our guide ) and we were lucky enough to make it in to that 400. Yey!!!

We were then taken on a guided tour for 2 hours around the site visiting all of the significant temples, and sights, and was an amazing experience. After that we were free to go around the site and take more photos, before going to climb Huayna Picchu. The climb was incredible, and it was easy to see why the numbers had to be limited, as the "steps" were simply boulders in the hill side and without the ropes to help pull you up in places, there is no way that you would have been able to reach the top. Just to make things a little harder the rain decided to wait until we had started to climb before coming on, making the boulders slippy now. Almost at the top just to make things fun (in Arlene's opinion) there was a small wet dark cave which you had to climb through, and after banging my head, standing in a puddle, and ending up soaking we made it through. So after a lot of effort we reached the top where Arlene collapsed...lol but soon found her energy again once i started taking photos. The view from the top was just spectacular...

The way back down was closed for safety due to the rain, so we had to go back the way that we had came up, and back through the wee wet dark cave AGAIN..., but we safely made it back down in one piece. All in all we took 1 hour 50 mins (the record is 25 mins each way) to complete the climb so we thought that we did not too bad considering the number of photos we stopped to take at the top.