Today was the day.
For me the most highly anticipated day of the trip. Today we went to Machu Picchu, the sacred
Incan city in the sky outside of the capital of the Incan empire, Cusco. We woke up at 4 AM to leave the hotel at 4:30
AM. It was a two hour bus ride to the
train station and then a hour and a half train ride to the base of Machu
Picchu. The train ride was
beautiful! So many snowcapped mountains
and all I could think about was how pumped I am for Chile. We got on a bus at the base and it was about
a half hour ride of bumpy, snaky roads up the mountain. The views out of the bus windows were
incredible – mountains like I had never seen before.
We got to the top and it was about a 5-minute walk to where
you could finally see the sacred city in the sky. It was incredible. How could they have built such an elaborate,
beautiful, stone city 600 years ago… ON THE TOP OF A MOUNTAIN!! We started the tour and split into English
and Spanish groups. While normally I do
the Spanish tour, I did the English one today because I didn’t want to miss
anything on the tour. We saw el temple del sol (the temple of the
sun), altars the Incans used for animal sacrifices, various plazas, the living
quarters of the city, and a bunch of llamas (or alpacas… I can never tell the
difference). While we were there, one of
the llamas (or alpacas) gave birth to a baby llama (or alpaca) and we got to
see mama llama (or alpaca) teach baby llama (or alpaca) how to walk, which was
pretty cool.
After the tour, we had three hours of free time to explore so
a bunch of us went on the hike up above the city of Machu Picchu to La Puerta del Sol (the Sun Gate), which
was located in a pass in between two mountain peaks. We brought up with us, lunch and snacks, and
we sat up there enjoying the view for about two hours, which was awesome. We then hiked back down to Machu Picchu, took
the bus back down to the base, and had a second lunch. Then we took the train back to our bus, took
the bus back to our hotel… and slept… very soundly.
Machu Picchu was even more amazing than I thought it was
going to be and its beauty is something that you can only truly understand if
you see it with your own eyes. So to
anybody who’s reading this that hasn’t been to Machu Picchu, you absolutely
have to go (I’m pretty sure the only two people that are reading this are Monica
and my mom… so basically, mom, you should go to Machu Picchu).
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