Peru - Cusco & Machu Picchu

The journey from Nasca to Cusco was a long one, about 16 hours in total and up and down across the Andes. It was my first night bus adventure and went without dramas. I stayed at Pariwana Hostel in Cusco which gets a special plug because it was one of the best hostels i have stayed in during my south american adventure. It had everything a traveller like me would want as well as little extras like power sockets in each locker so you can charge your camera or phone securely!

Cusco is the base for trips to Machu Picchu. The floods earlier in the year had closed the area for 3 months and because of that the actual 'Inca Trail' was booked up for months. I therefore booked myself on one of the alternatives called the Salkantay Trek, along with a few other travelling pals i'd made in the hostel. The Salkantay Trek is longer and harder than the actual inca trail, significantly cheaper and far less touristy (although you don't get to walk the actual inca trail obviously). Salkantay is a quechua word (quechua being the language used by the incas) meaning "Savage Mountain" - a 6271m peak capped with a glacier which you hike near the base of during the trek.

The trek was amazing and varied. It was 5 day trek with the final day spent at Machu Picchu. Each day there was different scenery as the trek took us up into the mountains to the base of Salkantay, and then down into the valleys to be surrounded cloudforest. It was freezing at night so I got used to wearing the same clothes during the day and then at night too in my sleeping bag. On the 4th night we stayed in a hostel in Agua Calientes where we had the luxury of a hot shower.

The next day and the ascent to the Machu Picchu entrance was to be very surreal. Only the first 400 people at the entrance get a stamp allowing the bearer to climb Waynu Pichu, one of the peaks looking down onto the ruins. There are buses that shuttle people up to the entrance but they normally arrive after the first people who have made the journey by foot... so we opted to do the latter. We left the hostel at 4am and got to the bridge at the bottom of the valley about 10 minutes later....only to find a large queue of people already ahead of us. The bridge was opened at 4:45am by which time a huge number of people were behind us. The race had begun!! It was pitched black still but the area was illuminated by a hundred or so head torches. To begin with people were running, dashing to make overtaking maneuvers, pushing others etc. Soon after everyone settled into more of an orderly procession as it became an exhausting climb (especially after a tough 4 day trek!!). The climb was about a 45min non-stop ascent on steep stone steps. All the time in the back of my head I had the images of buses starting their ascent on the road and it spurred me on. Eventually I made the top to find i was in the first 100. I was tired, covered in sweat but very happy to have my Waynu Pichu stamp !!

Machu Picchu was very magical... made even more so by the four days of trekking to get there. I felt we'd earnt it! We watched the sun rise over the ruins and then spent the rest of the day wandering around seeing the site and also just relaxing while taking the view in. The Waynu Picchu peak was an adventure in itself with narrow inca steps stuck to the side of cliff faces and a long climb to the top. At the top we were rewarded with spectacular views of the ruins and the surrounding valleys.