March 22 – Word of the Day: Fenomenal (Phenomenal)
Fenomenal — the only word to describe the amazingness that is Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu is another bucket list item so I´m proud to say I´m off to a pretty good start fo 2014 (I try to accomplish 5 bucket list items each year on a list I started when I was 13… I really didn´t start making a dent in it until college since my ambitions tended to be beyond the means of a teenager.)
I woke up with a terrible headache again due to the altitude so I grabbed a cup of coca tea and J and I headed to the train station. Normally you take a train and then a bus to get to Machu Picchu from Cusco, but they were doing renovations on the railway so we had to take a bus, then a train, and then another bus to get there. The coca tea plus a nap on the first bus ride relieved my headache and I was good to go by the time we hit the time to board our train.
A picture of the train we´d be boarding
Excited to take a train!
I took about a bazillion pictures on the train ride but I won´t bore you with them because they honestly don´t look much different from those that I took in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador. So…. Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca site located 2,430 metres (7,970 ft) above sea level and situated on a mountain ridge above the Sacred Valley which is about 50 miles northwest of where we were staying in Cusco. Any pictures of river that I post are the Urumbama river. Most archaelogists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472) and it is often mistakenly referred to as the “Lost City of the Incas.”
The Incas built this amazing city around 1450, but abandoned it a century later during the Spanish conquest. The locals all knew about it, but it wasn´t brought to international attention until 1911 when the American historian Hiram Bingham made it popular. Nowadays, most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like. By the 70´s about a third of the city had been restored but the restoration work continues today and they were even working on it when we were visting!
climbing to the top of the mountain for a view
It was a little cloudy but its a picture of Huayana Picchu (which we did not climb)
We lucked out and had about 3.5 hours of sunshine and heat before it started to get cloudy and rain on us.
J and I spent time hiking up the mountain so that we could get a good view of Huayana Picchu. After hiking for over an hour we still hadn´t reached the top but we needed to turn back since we only had a few hours there before we needed to catch our train back. As we hiked we got some good pictures of Machu Picchu. Then we decided to explore the ruins a little more in depth. You can see us taking a little break among the ruins above.
the three windows or “las tres ventanas”
We also took a photo near the Inca´s sacred rock:
Just as we were wrapping up exploring the ruins, it was starting to drizzle. Our tickets included a lunch buffet at the Sanctuary lodge so we decided to head in and have a quick lunch before our bus departed to take us back to Aguas Calientes to catch our train.
The train ride to and from Machu Picchu not only had great views but they had light meals and beverages too. Though for our afternoon ride I couldn´t have been less hungry after our lunch at Machu Picchu!
When we got back to the Cusco, we had a late dinner and then crashed into bed for the evening. The next two days will be all about exploring the city of Cusco and relaxing.
andyoumaysayimadreamer 