Peru Day 8 – Machu Picchu (and a nightmare!)

So I wake up at 6am because I´m so excited to go to Machu Picchu and its pouring, I mean rain rain, the whole city is in a fog.  So I grab my stuff and head out anyways.  I buy a rain poncho and head to the bus station and find out you have to buy a ticket to Machu Picchu somewhere else.  I figure I should look into getting out of town and go to the train station and purchase tickets to Olyantatambo on the only train I can Tuesday at 9:15 PM (backpackers again). I also buy the tickets to Machu Picchu cause I don´t want Tim to get up and find that they are sold out (only a certain number of people per day).

I come back to the hotel about 8am wake up Tim, hand him his tickets and brief him on the situation and head out.  The situation is: no food, no drink, no bottles, no walking sticks unless elderly.  I emptied most of my bag but did take but 2 liter water backpack.  Tim was going to bring food in his bag later for the two of us.

The moment I get to the bus it stops raining (I’m told it rains every morning) and I head off.  Its way up through the mist and mountains and I´m very excited.  I get off and head into Machu Picchu and follow throngs of tourists (its already busy!) and I walked to the complete other end and I find that the big mountain over Machu Picchu is open still (they only allow 400 people a day) and I figure what they hell and at 10:15 signed in the log book and started my ascent.   It was a crazy trek up and up and up and I didn’t reach the summit till 1pm!

But they are closing this Internet cafe so you all have to wait to hear what happened tomorrow!

Boo hoo

Jared

[Re-posted from my University Blog & Edited 07/01/2011]