Machu Picchu. We knew that this would be an important milestone for our trip and we were not disappointed. We were originally going to do a longer 5 day 4 night trek called the Salkantay trek but due to our various illnesses we decided to do a shorter 2 day 1 night trek. We went with our travel bud Tal who you all have heard of by now. In Cusco you will find that people are hocking one of two things: different types of treks to or near Machu Picchu, and "Massajes miss? Senorita massage?" They realized that after a long trek there is nothing better than a massage so an entire industry has sprung up.
After a lot of trek company hopping to find the best price we decided on the agency "Friends of Nature" because our friend recommended it and it was mostly an awesome name. We were supposed to meet at their agency location at 7:30 AM but because it's Peru and you never know what to expect we left about an hour late. There were 5 of us from our hostel, two Brazilians, four Chileans (who we'll get to more later), one Rasta type guy from Argentinean Patagonia and two other Canadians.
The bus was slightly larger then a typical white van and we were a bit squished and unaware that the coming ride would last 8 hours. The way to Hidroelectrico was incredible. We drove on paved and unpaved roads. At one point we were literally driving through the clouds. It seemed we were in this quiet place with tumbling mountains of various shades of green and clouds rolling by. Despite the twists and turns luckily the motion sickness didn't affect us and we enjoyed the scenery mostly at times you could catch Sarah playing Tetris.
We finally arrived at Hidroelectico (which is really just a train station) and we walked along the train tracks towards Aguas Calientes which is the town near the foot of Macchu Picchu. We were surrounded by nature or Pachamama (Quechua for Mother Earth who was the Incan God) and we were loving it. The mountains soar above you and you walk along the river that has shaped some rocks to look so smooth they look like polished marble. We even found a stray dog (that Tal named Baxter) that helped us find the way to Aguas Caliente. We arrived just at dusk and ate dinner and went to our hostel.
The woman would not give us three towels at the hostel (something about the rain making her towels wet), so Sarah went into another room, pretended she was in that room and scored a towel. We enjoyed some strange Peruvian tv and went to bed as we were going to wake up at 4 AM the next day.
We were out the door by 4:30 and there were already people ahead of us when we began the hike at 5:00 AM. We started to climb the 1,200 or so steps and it was amazing. It was also very difficult we stopped to take a break a few timed to catch our breaths and also to take in the scenery. It took us about an hour and fifteen minutes to climb to the top but we weren't done climbing. You still have tons of steps once you arrive. We had a two hour tour and then began exploring on our own. There was also this incredible Incan draw bridge that we got to see,
We had brought some food and had a wonderful (if semi illegal because you are not supposed to have food at Machu Picchu) picnic in the corner of a ruin with Tal and our other new friend Peter who was from New Zealand. We explored and climbed to the way top of the ruins where we had an unbelievable view of the ruins and the surrounding valley. It was a wonderful day and we took the train back to Hidroelectico once we walked (jogged) down the mountain which only took us 30 minutes! And had another 8 hour drive back to Cusco.
We are now doing volunteer work at this place called Suyai Wari that we found on the website HelpX.net. It is kind of like living in a Hippie Commune and we love it! We will write more on that in our next post. Sorry for no pics this time we don't have time to upload them.
Also about the Chileans we became really good friends with them and hopefully we will be spending New Years with them in Santiago.
Love to everyone,
A & S
P. S. Our prayers are with everyone in Israel keep safe. Also we wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving full of gratitude and love we wish we could be with our families but know we will be thinking of you on Thursday.
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