After 3 days of biking, hiking, and trekking through rainy jungle we decided to finish off the trek the proper way, by climbing machu picchu in the night.
We woke up at 330, hazily double checked everything: our packs, our food, water, and flashlights. We put on our pack covers and put our ponchos on and put them over our packs as well for double protection. We walked 20 mins on the road to the mountain and finally we would meet our challenge. You could faintly see a small light emitting from the top of the mountain. It seemed like it was incredibly high up there.
So we started the path. It was very steep and high steps at first. Of course it was pitch dark and raining, which made the experience even more memorable.
Some other climbers were following the 3 of us, because we had torches (flashlights). We wanted to do this by ourselves so we pushed ourselves to distance ourselves from these straggelers. I mean who climbs a steep mountain trail in the rain, in pitch dark without a flashlight.
The path was like a ascended the mountain in one neverending Z pattern. Crisscrossing constantly. With the ponchos i quickly became very warm. Constantly climbing and pushing myself to go faster, lead the others, not to slow down eventually couldnt distinguish sweat from rain water. There were moments were we would slow down for a second, look down on the valley and became astonished on the progress we already achieved. Then we would look up and see that we had still a LONG way to go.
I didnt go numb from exhaustion or the heat or the sweat eventually it just became normal. Always looking at the next step carefully planting my sore and weak left ankle in the right place, always keeping the light on trail ahead and all of a sudden..WE¨RE HERE!!
The entrance of machu picchu! While we couldn´t see the complex itself the entrance was here. I was the 5th person to enter machu picchu that day. Average time to climb the mountain is like 1.5 hours and we did it in under 50 mins.
When you enter machu picchu, especially from a long, vigourous trek, the feeling of completion, of accomplishment, all culminates right then and there into an absolutely beautiful feeling. The instant that you see step onto the complex grounds and see the complex, the mountains, the hazy mist that envelops around the mountains, i don´t think that anyone could ever forget that memory. Of course we still had more climbing to do, we climbed fast so that we could climb wanna picchu (aka old man), the tall mountain in the background of macchu picchu.
We had our tour of the grounds, learned alot of amazing things about machu picchu, that there is a rock that is lined up with the 4 surrounding mountains and also coincides with the magnetic directions.
Then we climbed wanna picchu, very very steep climbing, you had to use your hands most of the time, more like a slippery ladder at times. We got another amazing view of machu picchu. Descended before the rain came. And then we left around 4pm. Most tourists take the train from cusco, enter machu picchu at 10am..take a tour...and leave at 2 or 3pm.
I think you couldn´t possibly experience machu picchu properly unless you do some sort of trek or at least climb last leg up to macchu picchu. Nevertheless i urge everyone to someday experience this world wonder.
