“You’re at Machu Picchu and you’re cryiiing!” announced Valentine when we arrived to a very foggy, desolate looking Machu Picchu. 
The man had a good sense of humor and he’d said exactly what I was feeling on the inside. It’s foggy… and it’s raining… and I can’t see anything. NOOooooooo. Don’t cry, don’t be disappointed, don’t cry!
We flew 10,000km and hiked 60km over four days up to 4600m to see the crown jewel looking like the scene from an ancient horror film.
Maybe it will get better, I thought… and it would for a bit, but it also got worse and it did rain quite a bit. That’s life.
Valentine took us on a tour around the grounds and explained more about Inca culture and traditions and how they think people lived in the compound.
It’s an incredibly amazing place. You can only wonder how the Incas really lived here.
Kay was pretty much unperturbed by the rain and cover. He was just really amazed by how monumental this place is.
We took a few more photos with the group before it was time to hike our special package of the trip up to Huayna Picchu.
Below was part of the “condor” in the compound with the beak at the bottom center and the rock “wings” flying up to the side. Trying to figure out how they did what they did with the stone was mind boggling.
Even though it was a little dreary, it actually added to the mystic surrounding the mystery of the Incas and what really happened to them and how they really lived. Nobody really knows.
The sure knew how to pick a location for their holy site though!
Group photo time and then Valentine and Filio bid us goodbye.
From there, we actually didn’t have unlimited time to hike to Huayna Picchu, come back and take the classic tourist picture in Machu Picchu and then catch the bus down to Aguas Calientes so we could get the right train home. And we couldn’t miss any of it because we had a plane to catch the next day!
The trail up and down from Huayna Picchu is listed as “dangerous” and they actually make you sign in and out of a guide book to let the park know if you made it back alive, no shit.
I thought it was a little over the top because the trail is not worse than a Swiss alpine pass next to steep drops and basically everything was stairs… so it really wasn’t that bad.
After hiking up to 4600m, hiking up 2720m at Huayna Picchu was a piece of cake. While people beside us huffed and puffed and talked about going into cardiac arrest, we kept a brisk pace upwards.
From above, you really do get to see an incredible view of Machu Picchu and you can appreciate the shape of the condor much better.
After waiting for the clouds to clear a little, it started raining on the way down. They actually do trick you a little, because the nice, big steps are on the way up, and the tiny narrow, your-foot-barely-fits-on-them steps were what we had with the rain on the way down.
To be fair, even without hiking sticks, which are banned, you can go down pretty fast with some sturdy hiking boots… but we were passing people obviously terrified of heights who could barely take a step downward.
After trying to wait for the rain to pass for 20-30 minutes, we just gave up and headed to the classic postcard location.
The rain and clouds were pretty badass.
It wasn’t how I pictured seeing Machu Picchu and these photos have been edited quite a bit, but it was still impossible to deny the wonder and awe of such a sacred site even in the rain and fog.
I got the “dark, moody Machu Picchu”, which I guess I deserve. 😛
Kay and I didn’t want to go, but we had to get in line for the buses to take us back to town to catch the train, which would be an experience in itself.
We snapped a few more photos, including some mandatory selfies, before heading back down.
That’s it, Machu Picchu was in the books!
With our biggest ticket crossed off our bucket list, it was time to start the journey home, if only so I could get on a plane to Hong Kong for work. 🙂
Alpaca Expeditions was founded by a retired porter and Inca tour guide. Their fantastic, professional tours specialize in sustainable tourism both by supporting local farmers and by paying fair wages to local porters, employee health/life insurance, and respecting local labor laws. The company also has social projects for children’s needs and they even work to help porters and their families to visit Machu Picchu, something that many locals in the area are never able to do on their own. By supporting Alpaca Expeditions, you can help them give back to the community and support the local Andeans.
More from our trip to Peru:
After a couple hours’ hike, with a little more rain, we landed at a “real Starbucks” as they said, where we learned about how coffee beans are harvested, shelled, and roasted over a hot fire in local kitchens.
It was hard not to notice the kitchen was full of guinea pigs, which our guide explained that many families keep guinea pigs in the kitchen where it is warm and then they eat them from time to time.
They were sooo cute and made this adorable, very odd squeaking noise for food when we fed them. There’s a video further down in case you want to hear. 🙂
I only felt moderately guilty for having eaten one of these little guys in Puno.
Our coffee was roasted and then it was time to taste it, and boy was it good!
We liked the coffee so much we bought two bags to bring back home. This is another reason why having a big bag was useful. We of course put it in Kay’s pack. 😉
Afterward we started climbing UP again, which I wasn’t really ready for. The longest Kay and I ever hike is two days back and forth, so my legs were definitely protesting and didn’t understand why I kept forcing them to do hard work in this altitude.
Finally we reached the top of Llactapata, where we had just a little way to go. I was pretty pooped out.
From here we only had a couple porters carrying our things on their backs, as well as our chef who was with us for the whole journey.
This campsite is rarely used by others because it’s a bit out of the way, it’s not really “on the way” to Machu Picchu, but it offers undisturbed views of Machu Picchu from a distance, so we arrived early to watch the sun set and to get up early to see the sun rise the next morning.
Along the way on this trail were also some Inca ruins of what could have been prayer sites pointed towards Machu Picchu.
We set up for our last night of camping and enjoyed our usual popcorn and tea snack before watching the sun set.
Dinner was in a room right on the ledge, with views over Machu Picchu. Pretty amazing backdrop. 🙂
Below in the center, you can start to see the light hit Machu Picchu. I needed to zoom in to see it better, but it was magnificent from faraway and a totally different view of Machu Picchu that many people don’t get to see.
Seeing the preview for the last day just made us even more excited. We were all praying the rain would hold off by then.
I mean, look at it!
It was pretty cold in the morning while we packed up and headed to breakfast. Kay was in his element as you can see. 🙂
The hike on the second day from Huayracmachay to Rayampata was downhill and pretty easy going. I was even at the lead of most of the hike since downward hiking is my thing. 🙂
Below is a video showing how you toss the gold coins and try and get them in the holes or the frog’s mouth for points. Valentine was amazing and he beat all of us! I don’t think I even managed to score a point.For lunch we enjoyed some more delicacies by the hand of our chef. Working with local food and food portered along the route, he was very creative for camp food!
Also more soup, which we really appreciated because it was mostly raining this day. It was actually pouring all during lunch.
And the main course, which was again fantastic. I get hungry just looking at the photos again. Lots of potatoes and cassava.
From our lunch spot at Colpapampa, we hiked a bit further than planned to around Lucmabamba.
Here we hiked through a little village and camped at the outskirts. Below is the sign for the local school zone.
We arrived at campsite number two a little earlier than the day before. The grounds even had two showers, one lukewarm and one cold. I passed on showering, but ended up putting a lot of bug spray on that night to ward off the mosquitoes.
From there we enjoyed a nice sunset with some very pretty colors in the sky.
While people were showing before dinner, many also decided to dry out some of their clothes that had gotten wet during the day either from rain, sweat, or both.
Here Valentine told us another funny story about the river rising during one of his camping trips. During the night, the river rose swiftly and was making a fast, rushing sound. The locals started getting alarmed that a dam would break and flood the area within minutes, so they started to pack up and head to safety.
I went to bed later that night so nervous about the river that I had nightmares about it rushing up and carrying our tents away. I had even prepared my things so that if I needed to rush out in the night, it would have been possible. I did not sleep very well that night. 😛
Dinner was tasty as usual. This time it was chicken legs and some kind of potato wedges. 
We ate until we stuffed ourselves silly and then Valentine told us lots of stories about the history of Peru, political leaders, local traditions… also crazy things like 
I braced myself that this was going to be awesome somehow, or that I would survive at the very least. I was pretty low mentally, that this was how I was experiencing my way to Machu Picchu: period from Hell, freezing rain, stomach issues.
Inside the basic shelter where the cook was set up, the guides set up a funny burning (kerosin?) lamp above Kay’s head. We told the guys to be careful getting up so they wouldn’t light their heads on fire. 🙂
