Machu Picchu

We figured we couldn't actually be those people who went to Cusco and didn't go to Machu Picchu, so we got in line, set our credit cards on fire and headed out of Cusco on the most expensive train per km either of us have ever taken, to Machu Picchu.

What was particularly entertaining about it is that, aside from half of it being a bus, it was also the most uncomfortable train ever, and bounced most of the way up to Agua Calientes. But you can only get there by train or on foot, so suck it up, and then we had a very weird evening in Agua Calientes which is a sort of mountainside jungly disneyland that you really wouldn't want to spend any extended time in but is mildly fascinating.

We had got ourselves 6am tickets to go up to Machu Picchu including access to Machu Picchu mountain, which we thought would be an interesting hike and a good way to see it from way up high, so we got up at 5am for the first bus and when we got there... everything was totally engulfed in thick fog. It is the rainy season, but for the first three hours we saw absolutely nothing. We wandered around for a bit, and decided to wait up on climbing the mountain until it was a bit clearer, and got chatting to some friendly Americans and Canadians who were entertaining company and meant we could all collectively question our life choices while it poured with rain on us.

Amazingly at about 9am the clouds parted for just a moment and we got a sudden and complete view of Machu Picchu which apparently had been just below us the whole time. Buoyed by this we all started climbing the mountain, which took us about 1.5 hours and was accompanied by a lot of complaining from our new American friends but we made it to the top, to find... more fog.

Ate some breakfast and had a sort of bizarre waiting game of watching the clouds roll down the valley, and jumping up every time they started to clear. We got various snippets of quite fabulous views of various parts of the valley but none of the still lost Incan City. Eventually we gave up and went back down and lo and behold - further down the clouds cleared and we could actually see what everyone bangs on about.

It turns out Machu Picchu isn't famous because it was a particularly important Incan city (it was more likely a kind of estate city for one of the emperors, Cusco was the important city) but because it was so well preserved (the Spanish couldn't find it so they didn't destroy it) and because its a bloody impressive place to build a city, propped on the saddle on top of a mountain. And it really does stack up as being very impressive, because it's an incredible location and then you wonder at the commitment of someone building that many agricultural terraces so high. It's also far better preserved than we'd expected so most of the buildings are at least partially intact.

They restrict movement very strictly but luckily the system is so complicated that we completely by accident ended up in the wrong place and were able to explore inside Machu Piccuu too, along the lower terraces, and only got shouted at a little bit, so having not seen anything at all from up the mountain it was excellent to be able to walk through the middle. Top tip to future visitors is look confused and ignore everyone.

Anyway, even though we arrived at 6am after all that we only JUST caught our 3pm train back to Cusco, were damp and soggy the whole way home and nearly crying from hunger, which is surely a sign of a good expeditionBaca selengkapnya