Day 60 - MachuPicchu

I didn´t get to hike the Inca Trail as I had originally planned. I cannot blame it all on my knee, though. I had decided to do the two-day hike despite my knee. Before getting to Cusco I checked to make sure that there were permits available for the day I needed to start the hike. There were plenty, but what I didn´t know is that there is a ridiculous three-day waiting period to obtain the permit. This was time that I didn´t have. This was the second major disappointment of my trip.

That being said, Machupicchu was absolutely amazing. From Ollanta, I took the backpacker´s train to Agua Calientes and stayed the night there. I got up at 4:30 to hike to the park and watch the sun rise. It was an incredible, steep hike, almost straight up the mountains. Although it was still dark outside when I started and there was only a crescent moon, it was still light enough to see my way up the stairs and to see the mist rising off the mountains.

When I finally got to the park, I was rewarded with spectacular, clear views of the ruins and a relatively people-free park. I wandered around the ruins for another couple of hours before begining the climb to WaynaPicchu, the tall mountain behind the ruins. It took about an hour-and-a-half to climb because I was helping a seventy-year-old Peruvian who was visiting the park for the first time. The views were well worth the steep ascent and gave us a bird´s eye view of the park. From here we could see that the park was now overrun with other tourists.

Kirsi, a german girl I met on the hike, and I decided to take a different trail down. Little did we know that the trail didn´t just take us to where we started, but also included a very steep descent to the Great Cave. After this two-hour detour, we were exhausted. We passed out on the lawn in front of the Sacred Rock. We shared my last mango.

That night I recovered by soaking my muscles in the hot, albeit commercialized, waters of the hotsprings that the town is named after.