Macchu Picchu

Train last night was not fun, I was completely sleep deprived and hoping to sleep on it, but after taking forever to come and for them to let us board, it ended up being a long sleepless ride full of lots of bumps, chugga chugga choo choo, and loud German people, who don’t speak a very headache-friendly language. Eventually stumbled up the hill to a hostal and crashed into bed… until we left at 4 am.
We sat in line at the bus station at the bottom of the hill (yes, the whole town is pretty much one big hill covered in hostals and restaurants, tourist land but surrounded by gorgeous hills), waited until 5:30 when the buses came. There were a ton of people in line and they sent about 20 buses supposedly, and we got onto the third one. Turns out that to climb the mountain, they allow 200 people at 7am and another 200 at 10am. I was worried we wouldn’t be in the top 200 but waiting in line to get in, they gave me number 53, so we were easily in. Luckily we did the early one, because it was really hot by 10 or 11 and that hike would have been awful in the heat.
Getting up so early was definitely worth it. Hiked through Macchu Picchu to the back end of it to the base on Wayna Picchu, meaning Young Peak in Quechua. It’s the peak that you see in all the pictures of Macchu Picchu, the giant one sticking up behind the ruins. From the bottom, it looked enormous, and it definitely felt like it when we were climbing. Really intense hike, not helped by the fact that the stone stairs were either huge and far apart or for the most part, tiny, smaller than my feet. I felt so bad for people with bigger feet than me. The first chunk of it was the hardest, really steep uphill, having no idea how much longer it would be, just more and more stairs, really exhausting. There were a couple lookout points along the way with views of Macchu Picchu that were really pretty, and it kept getting smaller and smaller. At some points during the hike, we could see the clouds moving around in the valleys below us…that’s something about the Andes I had definitely remembered and liked from Ecuador. After what felt like forever but was really only a little more than an hour, we crawled through a tunnel, up some more stairs, and up a ladder, and finally, we were at the top of the mountain. Sat up there for quite a while enjoying the view of Macchu Picchu way down below and the valleys and mountains surrounding us, taking tons of pictures. After a while, hiked back down, through some sets of ruins up on the mountain, down, down, down all the stairs we had hiked up. Poor ankles and knees!
Spent the next four hours exploring Macchu Picchu ruins, snacking on granola bars and saltines we had brought along, and needing to pee, but there was no bathroom in the ruins. Didn’t have a guide so didn’t get all of the interesting information about each of the rooms and areas, but it was still really interesting and amazing. Attempted to follow along with the map and figure out what was what, the temple of the condor, the temple of the sun, the three doors, the three windows, the royal palace, the guard’s house, the tower, on and on. There were friendly llamas wandering around everywhere, it was random. The ruins were both smaller and bigger than I thought we would be. When we were actually walking within them, they somehow seemed kind of small, but when we were above them looking down, it was obvious how massive they are. Overheard a little bit from one of the guides about there being sixteen fountains, arranged in a zigzag manner, maybe to slow down the flow of water and maybe to appear like a snake, which symbolizes the connection between earth and the underworld. Tried to listen in on a French guide, but couldn’t understand enough of it to get what was going on. Lost all my French when I was learning Spanish, unfortunately.
The best parts of Macchu Picchu were probably when we were on lookout points and hills above it, looking down and seeing the whole picture, which cannot actually be captured in a picture, it was very surreal. Walked around a lot, up and down different paths, just wandering around, and saw it from different angles, took millions more pictures. Eventually left a bit past one, having been there for seven hours. We thought it would take us a lot longer, but we probably covered every inch of the place, minus the Incan bridge that we started walking to but decided not to when we saw a huge uphill leg of narrow stairs and our legs refused to do it.
Getting in was cheaper than I would think it to be for how famous it is, the student price was about 14 dollars with our international ID card. But it was getting there that was the ridiculous part. Before coming here, I thought of Macchu Picchu as being in/near Cusco, but no way. We did the cheap route, taking the train from Ollataytambo instead of all the way from Cusco, and this cost 62 dollars roundtrip for a total of four hours. And then, to take the bus from Aguas Calientes to Macchu Picchu, it cost another 14 roundtrip for 25 minutes each way. Stupid government, taking advantage of tourists! So it cost a ridiculous amount of money for seven hours of touristing. Was it worth it? Definitely, but I don’t think I would go back, or if I did, it’ll be a long time from now and I’ll spend the extra money for a guide.