3 Days of Machu Picchu (Part 3)

Brit and I woke up at 7am for the day of hiking. We ate a bread roll for breakfast and on we went.

Our guide Oscar in the yellow, is giving us the run down on where we are going.

Here is where we encountered a waterfall that was absolutely freezing cold.

Our group stopping for lunch.Another random cute Dog.

After lunch we walked along these railroad tracks for hours...

Until we finally got to Aguas Calientes, the final stop before Machu Picchu.

I throughly enjoyed the touristy town of Aguas Calientes. The river runs right through the center of the town, in which they built little bridges to go across. They had plenty of resturants, and shopping, as well as a not so clean hot springs.

After a shower, Brit and I did some shopping and worried about the whereabouts of our friends. They were supposedly supposed to be picked up from the tour agency that morning, but no one seemed to have any answers.

Thankfully, they turned up as a lucky chance because the bus dropped them off but failed to let them know what hotel we were staying at. By chance, our tour guide saw them wandering around the town.

After another meal of chicken milanase, papas fritas, and rice, the four of us decided upon waking up at 3am to start the climb to Machu Picchu. Apparently in order to make the really big hike up to the top of Waynu Picchu, you had to be at the front entrance at opening because they only let 400 visitors up a day.

Well good night.

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3 Days of Machu Picchu (Part 2)

Brit and I rode on this cramped van for a hour and a half, although I was half asleep the whole time. I finally became coherent when we reached Ollantaytambo.

We drove and drove up to a ascent of 4000 meters in the mountains untill finally the driver stoped off on the side of the road in a turn off. The driver and guide named Oscar unloaded and gave us all helmets, gloves, and a bike. The only instructions we recieved was "stay on your right side of the road".

Brit and I before we started.

Our whole group ready to take off...

Here are some pictures of the ride down. It was actually a lot of fun. The air was fresh and the views were amazing.

We were actually riding all the way down to where you can see the river in this picture.

Aren't we sexy in our helmets?

Our ride ended at the bottom of the mountain where we had lunch and stuffed ourselves back into the van. They drove us along a one lane, extremely narrow, dirt road on the edge of a cliff over looking the river untill we reached Saint Theresa. Definately not much to say about Saint Theresa, a shit hole basically.

The street outside our hospaje.

Random cute dog.

A couple people from the tour and Brit (on the right) eating our fabulous sack lunches consisting of two sandwiches, one with cheese, one with a single slice of ham, a bannana, juice, a nasty granola bar, and a piece of chocolate.

Our hospaje was a simple room with a bed. No hot water. Our dinner consisted of milanesa chicken, papas fritas, and rice.

Brit and I fell asleep to the noisey sounds of the other tour groupers drinking the night away.

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3 Days of Machu Picchu (Part 1)

So to recount what has taken place over the last few days is going to be a long story. As I left off, Candice and I had booked a 3 day adventure at the Loki hostel where we were staying.

A picture of Candice walking up the stairs to the Loki hostel on arrival in Cusco.

The next morning we were to be getting up at 630 am in order to be picked up from the operating company at 8am. Turns out that Candice got sick during the night. Her stomach was uneasy and she was puking throughout the night. We were sharing a dorm room with two girls named Brit and Cathrine who were absolutely wonderful in helping us to find a doctor and who later turned out to be our spanish translators. Cathrine is an English girl our age who has been in Peru for a couple months doing volunteer work in a hospital. She knew someone to call and quickly had an English speaking doctor on their way over to the hostel to diagnose Candice.

While all that was going on, Brit and I worked on trying to get a refund for the tour we had all booked. We waited for our guide to show up at 8 and tried to figure out what we were to do considering it was evident that Candice would not be able to go. The doctor diagnosed her with gastric enteritis, a bacterial intestinal infection treatable with oral antibiotics.

There was a bit of confusion with the tour guide, but we finally arrived at the acceptance that we would not get a refund at all for anything, Catherine would stay behind with Candice to be picked up the next morning for Aguas Calientes, while Brit and I would head out on the biking and hiking tour to Aguas Calientes.

How great were our new friends who had only known us for 24 hours and yet so willing to act as such a team.

So I split off from Candice and on I went...

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