I am truely blessed!! I don´t deserve it, ok maybe a little bit but this was probably the single best experience in my life. So to start off i had to rest my ankle because i hurt it in isla del sol, bolivia. So thank god that i was able to rest in a city that is absolutely stunningly beautiful, cusco. It was captured by the spanish and even they said that this city could match the wonders in asia. Beautiful plazas, public squares, cathedrals, monuments, the whole bit.
I eventually because eager to do get up to machu picchu and start trekkin, even though my ankle wasnt close to 100%, but i made the decision to book a trek and now there would be no turning back.
So i was picked up at my hostel with another girl and we would be driven in a taxi to a van and we got in and drove about 2 hours and got on some bikes. We were dropped off at the top of this mountain road, paved, around 18000 feet. And we would descend for hours until we came to the village of santa teresa. Right when i got onto my bike the chain broke, ooops. Soo the tour guide switched bikes with me adn it was all good, for now. The ride was beautiful, thur mountain streams that were spilling over the road, and down magnificent mountain valleys. Then we had gravel roads. And apparently me and this swiss girl were in the wrong tour group. Not sure how that happened but we got new bikes and started on riding thru this bumpy gravel road in a downpour of rain thru the jungle. It was enjoyable for an hour or 2 then it became challenging, but we all just had to keep on going and so we did.
The next day we would beging the trekking part of our ¨trek¨. We started walking thru the Old city of santa teresa, which got washed out in the early 90s by the floods of el nino. The trek was hard but absolutely stunning scenery. Coca plantions, small mountain families, and picturesque mountain valley scenery were all around us. On this day we followed a newly discovered inka trail that was only found 5 years ago. We crossed a raging river, class 6, only possible to kayak or raft down if you are a licensed CRAZY professional. In fact 6 canadians tried to kayak down this river last year and only 2 survived. But we crossed this river with a primitive rope and cart system. 2 people and bags in the cart, it was real fun. Then we finished this hard trek with the beautiful natural hot springs. The 2nd night i slept amazing, all the hard work of trekking in the mountains with my backpack made it easy for me to sleep that night.
The 3rd day we followed a maintence road, jumped into a waterfall, even though it was raining. Saw a huge man made raging waterfall, followed traintracks, dodged trains, not really but tried to get a real close photo of the train, which i did. And then we saw the backside of machu picchu and it amazed me how actually high it was. We were down in the valley and you could hardly see it in the mountains, no wonder why the spainish never found it. We were all really tired but myself and two other guys, an amazing german guy and a candian, already made up our minds that we would climb the last bit. We would have to get up at 330am, get dressed, wear our ponchos bc it would surely be raining, and climb all the way up. It felt like we would be climibing the path that frodo from lord of the rings climbed up into mordor. All of us were anxious to start the ascent.
