The 7th wonder: MACHU PICCHU!!!

Today was the main highlight of our trip. Machu Picchu. We took a train straight to Aguas Calientes. We might have had to take a bus to Ollantaytambo, but we got lucky and the landslide had been cleared from the tracks so we could take the train. My mom was taking pictures before we even got there! The train provided food and drinks lots of views of livestock!

As we drove past the landslide area we saw tons of engineers standing beside the tracks and watching the train go by. The train went VERY slowly through here, and as the train moved little bits of sand, dirt and rocks fell from the cliffside onto to the train. Very exciting!

As we got closer we started to see huge mountains and then bits of Inca terracing and ruins. When we got to Aguas Calientes we had to walk through a giant market to get to the bus that would take us up to Machu Picchu. We saw the starting point of the Inca Trail and sometimes saw hikers at different places close to the ruins. We wanted to do that, but it takes 4 days and we would have had to miss either Nazca or Chan Chan and Sipan.

The bus had to twist up the mountains on a road that made me think of New Zealand. It was only big enough for one bus at a time, which was crazy becauses buses are going UP and DOWN that road all day long and a bus is a big thing to edge over to the side of the road, especially if the road is on a mountain!

Finally, we arrived! First we decided to take the long trail all the way through the ruins. It takes you up to the perfect postcard view and there my mother forced us into our fuzzy alpaca wool hats on a scorching, hot day to take the picture you will all see on our Christmas card this year! She insisted that I was not allowed to whine about any picture taking today - no matter how many she took. In the end it turns out she took 389 pictures, at the time it seemed like she took 389,000 pictures.

Machu Picchu was AMAZING! What is so incredible about it is that so much of it is still intact after so many years. Machu Picchu is a huge complex and the location is beaautiful - surrounded by stunning green mountains.

Adding to the wonderfulness of the site is the fact that there are camelids (llamas) grazing freely all over the place. The tourists (me included) all are pestering them for pictures. Unfortunately, the brown llama that looked like it was getting angry and going to spit, did not spit. I really wanted to see that.

While we were wandering around looking through the rooms we found the mysterious and elusive Machu Picchu chinchilla. We had seen piles of chinchilla poo all day, but up until then, no chinchillas. Apparently, the chinchillas have no respect for ancient Incan temples!

We noticed that some of the buildings had masonry that was less precise and exact than others. This was different than at Sacsaywaman where every block was perfectly fit to its place. Maybe these buildings were less important or were built at a different time.

We spent several hours looking at the ruins and terracing. After walking through the site tripping over lizards, llamas and ancient rocks we went to the cafe at the entrance. There we had ice cream and watched the end of the first half of the Germany/Spain nightmare. We watched the second half at a stand in the marketplace by the train station. Stupid octopus! If only Mueller hadn't been suspended! He and Hobbit (that is what I call #8 - Ozil, he looks like a hobbit, don't you think? And he is really short. I don't know if he has hairy feet.) are such a perfect team. They would have crushed Spain.

It was sad, but still a perfect day. We caught the train back to Poroy and there we paid our taxi driver/ extortionist 40 soles to drive us back to Cuzco (it was only 30 soles to get there - it was supposed to be 20 soles, but we were too afraid to miss the train and afraid to go look for another taxi at 5:30 am!). We were starving and exhausted, but it was great. You should all go to Machu Picchu, one of the 7 wonders of the world!

Also, go to the previous post and see the pictures that we finally got to load. You can go to my parents' blog for more pictures.