Machu Picchu... is Up

After hiking up to Machu Picchu.

After walking through what seemed plenty like a real-life Disney World, we arrived at a bridge which looked like something out of Jurassic Park. No dinosaurs though, only men asking to see your ticket and passport. This is when I'd usually realize that I forgot my ticket, except on this occasion I had checked maybe 20 times to make sure I had that ticket over the past 2 days. I pulled out the ticket, the passport, and then walked across the bridge.

By this time it was about 5:15 or so and there was very little light. Everything looked blue and black. Thank goodness I had my headlamp—and I'm serious about that; it's a really good headlamp and I really needed it.

We began our ascent. And it was, to my knowledge at the time, quite an ascent. There's a reason that the actual road up to Machu Picchu is home to so many switch-backs—it's a steep climb up. We had steps on our climb, but not the steps you're used to. It's stone steps, ragged stone steps, all the way up. The altitude isn't quite as bad at Machu Picchu, but it still gets to you a bit. And I'm not going to pretend like I didn't get winded.

So after about 25 minutes of climbing I was wishing we were at the top, and about this time the sun was coming up as well. I got through it and at about 35 minutes in the sun was really making its way into the picture. No rays yet, but I didn't need my headlamp anymore.

I took this picture at about 35 minutes in as well. I tried a few tricks but without a tripod I couldn't really capture how sweet the coming sunrise was. Everything was purple and blue as the sun started climbing behind those mountains and it was pretty awe-inspiring to be at the same level as the tops of other mountains.

Just 15 more minutes and we arrived up at the top of our climb by about 6:05 am. The hike up is supposed to take an hour and a half. We did it in an hour. Boom.

After catching our breath and admiring the view we'd achieved through our own labors we waited just a few minutes until our guide, Cosme, arrived. He took us to the line (the back of the line) that leads to the actual gates into Machu Picchu.