Machu Picchu (Peru)

The final day of our Inca trail involved getting up at 3.45am in order to get to the Sun Gate in time to see sunrise over Machu Picchu. We packed up our stuff and made our way for one final hour's hiking by torchlight. This part of the hike was one of the worst, those Incas certainly had a sense of humour by leaving the steepest part of the trail right at the end!

After four days of hiking, those final steps as you reach the Sun Gate are quite momentous, and we appeared at the gate for a view that was was completely and totally........... misty! Sunrise over Machu Picchu wasn't happening today, we hung around with the other slightly pissed off looking tourists until Sol told us we should continue our descent to Machu Picchu and the mist would clear. Anyway, for those of you who don't believe we got up and trekked there before sunrise here's a photo of the Sun Gate to prove it!

And another with us at the top with Machu Picchu behind us shrouded in mist (note how I'm not looking like a tourist at all with my fake Peru football shirt)!











Happily, Sol was right and as we made our way down, the mist lifted slowly to reveal some spectacular scenery, the holy city of the Incas surrounded by beautiful mountains. Suddenly the exertion of the past days seemed well worth it.

Machu Picchu was not discovered during the Spanish conquest and was found in 1911 largely intact. It is split into religious, agricultural and living sectors and contains some impressive archaeology showing how advanced the Inca civilisation was. We spent a couple of hours walking round before the daytrippers arrived.








Having heard for several days about all the bad things the Spanish did, this all got too much for Nacho. Suddenly his colonialist side appeared when he mistook me for a native and tried to knock me off the mountain!









As we made our way down to Aguas Calientes to get a train (we didn't fancy the four day hike back), Sol informed us that we were getting the tourist train back. A very smart train arrived (owned by the company that operates the Orient Express) and we got on. Just as I was settling down for some sleep, some loud music started, and the ticket inspector emerged from the toilet dressed in traditional costume and ran up and down the aisle like a lunatic. After a brief respite, he re-emerged from the toilet, only this time to prance up and down the carriage sporting a number of alpaca wool jumpers. This was apparently a fashion show, and most of the tourists (the ones who hadn't been trekking for four days) seemed to love it. The trouble was the ticket man was clearly very uncomfortable with his new role, and wasn't at home modelling alpaca jumpers. His unease probably wasn't helped by me handing my ticket to him as he passed, but I couldn't resist and he deserved it for waking me up!

Having spent four days up in the mountains this was all a bit of a shock, but happily it wasn't long before our comedy train pulled into Ollantaytambo. Then all of our journey that remained was to beat off a few more taxi amigos and find the one with the "Mr Duster" sign. One scary taxi ride later we were back at our hostel and managed to drag ourselves out for a goodbye dinner with Sol before retiring to a nice comfortable bed.......

Tom