Inca Trail, Day 4: Machu Picchu
Apparently the moon in Peru phases horizontally, as in top to bottom, rather than left to right… I had no clue… amazing the things you learn… you’ll definitely need to enlarge to see it. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a clear shot of one at night, so you’ll have to take my word that it looks sweet.
The group….
After exploring Machu Picchu, the four of us, Tim, and Michael took the trek to the top of Huayna Picchu (the big mountain behind Macchu Picchu in the pictures.) Yes… more hiking and climbing… but since we didn’t have packs, it seemed like we flew up there. We couldn’t come this far and not do it, right? It still wasn’t easy, though, as this is what it looked like the whole way up…
But it was well worth it, as this is the view down to Machu Picchu from the top
Blu Meditating on an outcropping overlooking Machu Picchu
But this still wasn’t the very top… there was still more steps on the ruins up there to climb to get to the very top, including going through an extremely small and narrow cave. 
This is the way out….
And here’s Tim crawling his way out… 
Joe on another outcropping on the very top of Huayna Picchu with the mountains that surround Machu Picchu behind him…
And on the Ruins on Huayna Picchu… 
And let us not forget about one of the most important aspects of Machu Picchu…. LLAMAS!
They were obviously quite used to people and walked right up to us, but were a bit camera shy. There’s apparently a common joke I haeard several people saying about asking a llama what it’s name is… In Spanish, “What is your name?” is literally translated as “What do you call yourself?”, or “¿Como se llama?”… in case you haven’t figure out, the joke is in the homonymn… “¿Se llama, llama?”
Once we were done exploring Machu Picchu, we took the bus back down to the town, where we found everyone else at the restaurant we left our gear at, and grabbed a beer and some pizza. I have never been so glad to drink a pale Pilsner before… After 4 days on the trail, the heat, the exhaustion, the pain in our legs and backs…. I put down that liter like water. And now, the 4 hour train ride back to Cusco. How could it possibly take so long? We wondered the same thing ourselves… but realized why once we were on the train… it is quite possibly the slowest train in the world. We probably could have outran it, not that we were in any condition to do so. I was expecting to get some sleep on it, but it was also one of the worst riding trains in the world, too… so we were being pitched about the whole time. Ugh. And not to mention, train conductors are also apparently crazy… several times we had to stop, back up, and try forward again when the track wasn’t switched for the direction we had to go. You’d think they’d have all that figured out by now… apparently not. And, to make matters worse, the conductor was killing the gears of the train each time he changed direction, making the whole thing jump about. I don’t know anything about train tranny’s… but I can guarantee whatever he was doing was not good for it. But finally, we arrived back at Cusco. Many people in the group were going to be meeting at the pub Rose O’Grady’s in a couple hours for dinner and drinks, so we headed back to Loki to shower and rest a bit, and then meet back up.
Now the real question… did we really have a reservation when we returned like the desk guy said? Of course not… I had a feeling… and they were nearly full, yet somehow we managed to find beds. Thank God. I was ready to pay them to let me unroll my sleeping pad and crash on the floor, just as long as I could get a shower and put on some clean clothes.
Once ready, we headed back out to Rosie’s for some good ol greasy pub food and cold beer. The four of us, Tim, Michael, Phil, Rachel, Keith, Erin and her friend Yasmin that met up with us at Machu Picchu were there, as well as Barney, one of the personal porters. From there, most of us headed to a disco in the Plaza for some more drinking. Lindsey and Blu were beat, so they headed back to Loki. I was definitely feeling it, too, and wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to make it… but I think I’ve conditioned myself to this sort of abuse by now. My second wind (or is it 3rd? or 4th?? or 5th?!? by now) kicked in right when it was needed. I don’t remember which disco we were in, but I do know I kept getting handed drinks I wasn’t paying for… if it was on behalf of the bar, ¡Muchas Gracias! If it was on behalf of my fellow trekkers, ¡Muchisimas Gracias! I’m buying next we meet, wherever that may be.
Eventually some of us found ourselves at Mama Africa again. Ahh… the good memories from before 😉 I, uh, don’t remember much about being here this time… I was pretty tanked… except that some possibly incriminating photos of Barney and one particular trekker do exist! Go Barney!! I do know that eventually Joe and I stumbled our way back to Loki… and something about telling some guy on the street that we were from Russia… I think Joe became Sergio, and I perhaps Vladimir… I really can’t remember anything more than that… Finally time to sleep in a real bed.
Tags: Aguas Calientes, Cusco, Inca Trail, llamas, Machu Picchu, Peru, South America, Travel
nerokerr1
Good job on the blog. Sounds like ypu had quite the adventure. Thanks for taking the time to share it.