Aguas Calientes, Peru

Today we were up at 5AM and ate a really small breakfast. Out the door to catch the train from Ollantaytambo to KM 104. At that point, we left the train and met Israel for the 5 hour hike up to Machu Picchu. Quite literally, the train stopped in the "middle of nowhere" and we jumped out and crossed a bridge to jump on the Inca Trail. No train station or anything!

We entered the trail at Chacabamba, a small Incan ruin site that is behind the checkpoint. After 30min or so, we started the hardest part of the trek. For about 2hr, we hiked up stone steps (taking short breaks) to Winaywayna, another large Incan ruin site believed to be a checkpoint on the royal road. Along the hike there were other small ruins, scary bridges (basically just wood against a rock face with 1000 foot drops into the forest below). The trail started is along a mountainside, covered by waterfalls and descended into jungle. The jungle path revealed some terraces covered by flora. Winaywayna was a large site that was a built at the top of the mountains, untouched by the Spanish, and is in decent shape. Large farming terraces lined the bottom and led to an urban and religious sector. We had lunch and rested for 45 minutes. After visiting the site and lunch, we hiked along fairly level terrain to the monkey steps in 1 hr. Up the monkey steps and another 15min later, we got our first look at Machu Picchu. We hiked down in 45min to the postcard shot and the official end of the Inca Trail. Not much time to tour around the site today, so we just took some photos and left the site.

20min bus ride down the mountain, shower and dinner. We were very tired and in bed by 9PM.Read more