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Machu Picchu
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We woke up at 4:30am, this morning, to catch the 5:30am bus up to the Machu Picchu site. Harsh, considering there was a huge/loud party going on all night in town, last night (celebrating the virgin Carmelo, if I gathered correctly?). It was too early to eat breakfast. Too early for anything, really... yet there were already people lined up waiting for the 5:30 bus, when we got to the pickup point. We could´ve caught the first one, if not for the fact that one of our group couldn´t find his digital camera, and went rushing back to our hotel (it later turned out to be in his backpack, after all). We waited for him, and waited, and waited, and finally, on the last 5:30 bus (there are several), our group leader told us to just get on, and she would catch up with us at the site (luckily, they had ONE MORE bus come a few minutes later, which she caught).
The ride up was only about 25 minutes. It was still dark when we got there, with just enough light available to make out the ruins. We had a guided tour, starting at 6am, with a local guide (all pre-arranged, so we didn´t have to pay). He talked sooooooo slowly that I thought I might fall asleep at any given moment, and mostly about things that I had already read. The one thing he WAS good for, was that he led us around the ruins strategically, to places where there weren´t yet tourists, and places with good views when the sun rose over the mountains at 7:22am (it was pretty beautiful). All in all, his tour lasted about 2 hours. Any longer and I would have probably been fast asleep, I think.
Anyway, what to say about Machu Picchu? Anyone who has seen the pictures knows that it looks nice, and can probably imagine what it is like to explore the ruins. It was pretty, picturesque, and enjoyable, but after visiting it, I wouldn´t say it was the absolute "highlight" of my time in Peru. I mean yes, it´s very, very cool and interesting, but at the same time, there are hundreds of other people there seeing the same thing... so it doesn´t feel very unique (like the artisan villages we visited in Huancayo), or challenging (like the Lares trek). If you know what I mean. So yeah, Í´m glad I saw it, but no, it wasn´t the absolute highlight of my trip!
After the guided tour, I think I spent an hour, maybe two at most, exploring on my own. We had the option to hike up Huayna Picchu (the tall mountain seen in the background of all the postcard photos), but my legs were (and still are) just killing from the trek, and I guess that hike is ALL STAIRS, with like a 70 degree angle of incline, so I just said, forget it, and wandered. They have some llamas there to keep the grass short, and I swear, they are so tame, it´s as if they purposefully pose for photos (maybe they´ve been trained?). Anyway, llamas are pretty cute. There were also hummingbirds, and TONS of them, at this one particular tree. I believe it was a type of tobbaco tree? I tried so hard to get a good photo of one, but they are so fast. I did get one picture, although it´s not exactly of superb quality. Oh, well. The neat thing about hummingbirds in South America is that they have so many different types, and some of them are quite big (comparably). But yeah, all of them are super fast. Still, it was very neat.
About 10 or so, the place got absolutely flooded with tourists, everywhere you looked. It also got quite hot out. I decided I´d catch the bus back down, at that point, as it´s no longer fun when people are bumping into you, in a frenzy to get their postcard-perfect photos, and constantly pushing you out of the way so they can take pictures of each other in the ruins. So yeah... bussed it back down, where I now have a few hours to kill until we meet for lunch, train it back to Ollantaytambo, and then bus it back to Cusco late this evening. So that´s that, for now. More thumbnails ...
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