Machu Picchu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who? What? I don´t even know where to start! Amazed, tired, excited, dirty, sunburned, sweaty, relaxed, sore, bruised, challenged, and completely awed. These are just some of the feelings that come to mind in the whilrwind of the last week, 4 days especially. But I suppose I should start from the beginning...

After arriving in Lima late Saturday night, our friend Ximena picked us up and took us to dinner, a Peruvian meal of beef heart skewers and potatoes, just don´t think about it, it tasted good! We stayed with her family for the night before heading out on a flight to Cusco Sunday morning. Cusco is nothing like I thought it´d be. I always imagined a small, cute, highland town surrounded by big green mountains, or something like that; it´s hard to recall what you imagined something to be like after you´ve seen it in person. Instead it´s a big brown city, surrounded by brown mountains. The center is typical- a plaza surrounded by tour operators and restaurants, it´s the only pretty part of town, and it´s about a 10 minute walk from our hostel. We spent the first few days exploring Cusco´s center, drinking coca tea, adjusting to the altitude, and making plans for Machu Picchu of course, which was in itself exhausting having to deal with all the tour companies hounding us all over the plaza.

Halloween was surprisingly fun! We had all but forgotten about it, but the kids didn´t let us. After the first couple groups of children swarmed us in the square with little plastic pumpkin buckets saying "Halloween!" and holding up their bucket with such hope to be rewarded, we decided we needed to buy some candy! The swarms of children and people in general in the main plaza that night was really amazing, it was shoulder to shoulder, kids in costumes running everywhere screaming "Halloween!" and candy literally flying through the air only to be chased by mobs with squeals and no concern for passing cars. Needless to say as soon as the children discovered we had candy, our stash was quickly depleted. Even after we left the plaza and went to dinner, the kids would come running into the restaurant hopeful to find someone with candy. Crazy. Entertaining.

We settled on a tour company that would take us on the Inka Jungle Trail- 4 days, 3 nights. First day consisted of mountain biking down one of the steepest, windiest, highest, most dangerous roads we could have probably biked down (don´t worry, Mom, obviously we´re fine!). We spent hours climbing up and up in the van, the picture of this road will amaze you, it was scary! Plus it was raining and oh, foggy to the point of ZERO visibility, but these guys were pros, and we kept on. Our company was 3 Frenchies, 2 Italians, and 2 Argentinians, so many languages to practice! Anyway we screamed down the other side of this mountain in the rain and mud, we were immediately soaked and covered in mud, but this really added to the experience and I don´t think it would have been as exhilarating without it. We fondly called it the Tour de Peru! Success. We stayed in Santa Maria that night, in a hostel, this was not a camping trek, and after the mud we were happy for that! Not that we could count on hot showers anywhere... but at least it meant warmth. We literally hosed each other off (fully clothed mind you) when we got down, and we were all smiles! There was no real common language between us since the Italians didn´t speak English, although they spoke some Spanish, so we had fun with that. Daryl and Nate and I sat with them for a couple hours that evening speaking ONLY Spanish, it was so fun! At least for me it was, I think their heads were about to explode by the time we finished, but it was a great lesson. Rules were if we spoke English we had to buy the next beer. Mealtime in Peru means soup and a main dish, usually some form of meat, rice, and papas fritas. Yummy.

The Argentinians were on a different tour so they left us there and we continued just the 8 of us with our guide, this time on foot. We hiked from Santa Maria all the way to Machu Picchu. That´s a long way. The second day we just hiked to Santa Teresa, and I understood why it was called the Inka Jungle Trail, we literally took an Inca Trail through the jungle. Why it didn´t occur to me that it would be hot in the jungle, I´m not sure, but we were basically soaked with sweat the whole time. There was a section of the trail that was so high up, on the edge of the mountain skirting the river, it dropped off on our left side, millions of feet straight down the the river. I was nearly petrified, had to rely heavily on the guys to get me through that part, I´m sure they took lots of photos that I´ll be embarrassed by later, but man, that wasn´t that funny to me. Yikes. Crazy Incas. The Chaski, messengers, used to cover the ground on these trails to deliver news between Cusco and Machu Picchu in just 5 hours. FIVE HOURS. Took us 2 days. In the jungle we saw monkeys, captive on leashes, but monkeys no less, cute little ones. We played with on named Jairo on one of our rest stops. We had our faces painted with an orange color from seeds of a plant that the Incas used to use to paint their faces. The indigenous used it to color textiles, and man that stuff was hard to get off. We all seemed to glow orange for the rest of that day. It rained a bit on us in the jungle but not too bad, and we crossed a small crazy bridge over a raging river, I just love that stuff. NOT. We rode a little cable car trolley hanging thingy over the river at one point too, and then finally got to the hot springs in Santa Teresa, nice! Only an hour more hike to our hostal that night.

Our French friends were funny, they were disgusted at the sight of my eating eggs and toast together, sandwhich style. They said "In France this is not possible!" But somehow my dipping buttered bread in my coffee was "very French" and they approved of that. They also wanted to know why all Americans have such white teeth. We said it´s because we eat eggs and bread together:) Unfortunately the Italians both ended up getting really sick and by the time we arrived in Aguas Calientes the next day after a long day of hiking, we didn´t see them again. We checked out the hot springs in AC as well, not so great, but relaxing at least, and our hotel had hot water! But what was the point of showering after hot springs, so I didn´t get to feel it. Aguas Calientes was such a cool town, built in the deep of a canyon between tall green mountains (imagine Machu Picchu) there were crazy tall green mountains everywhere. The river ran right through town and there were several pedestrian bridges. I don´t know why nobody ever mentioned to me how cool that town was, in all the stories I´d heard nobody said so, but I really liked it, it felt almost Italian, small narrow pedestrian streets all built on a hill. Anyway it was early to bed that night, because our next day started at 4AM!

I think the entire hotel was awake to hike Machu Picchu that morning, with all the noise you´d never guess it was 4am. We started off with the Frenchies at about 4:20, just with what we needed for the day. We were there when the bridge opened at 4:50 to start the ascent up to Machu Picchu. The reason for waking up early and hiking is to beat the buses, so you can be one of the first people inside when they open the gates at 6:00. They say it takes an hour to hike up to the gate. Somehow the 3 of us did it in 30 minutes! We were literally the first people to arrive at the gate, so we waited and dried off- once again, SO HOT and humib climbing 1800 steps straight up. The road the buses take has like 900 switch backs, the stairs we took cut straight up the middle. So 1800 steps, I don´t know, maybe 2000 ft in 30 minutes? Yes we did. And our reward??? I WAS THE VERY FIRST PERSON INSIDE AT 6AM!!!!!!!!!!!!!  As the first person to get up to the spot with the famous view, I couldn´t help but geek out, like an excited skier hooting and hollering through an awesome podwer run, I was hollering at Machu Picchu!!!! What a feeling!!!! I wish we would´ve thought to take video of that, ha. It was a little bit foggy but it just made it look mystical, and every minute was getting clearer and clearer and eventually we had sunny skies all day, literally the best day of weather we have had yet in Peru! What a day for it, as they had told us it rained the entire day before and that it´s the same every day. NOPE! Not for us!!!!!! We had a two hour tour after taking some initial photos, and then parted with the group. Daryl sketched, we explored everything, I have never been so interested in ruins. I just couldn´t believe we were actually there! I still can´t. It was really everything I hope for and more. So cool. We left at about 1:30pm, we had been there since 6 so it was plenty of time. We got to explore more of Aguas Calientes before catching our train out at 7pm with the Frenchies, and then we didn´t see them again either.

Come full circle, we are back in Cusco now, and I don´t know how I managed to squeeze in a blog this long when we really need to be trying to make plans to get to Arequipa tonight. We decided to change our plans, Puno (Lake Titicaca) has horrible reviews from other travelers, and I´d much rather go from the Bolivian side, which is another trip in itself, so we are going to head to Colca Canyon for the next few days to see some condors, hike some more, and probably hit up some more hot springs. Not sure when I´ll get to update next, sorry it´s so much at once, we have like a million photos already too, I think between the 3 of us we took 5 or 600 just yesterday. Yeah. So hasta luego, off to enjoy one last day in Cusco!
J