4th day to Machu Picchu

This is our camp the morning we hiked on to Machu Picchu. It rained in the middle of the night. And we heard people from another group practically running through the camp very early in the morning. When we woke up we saw that their camp was gone already. I learned later that a lot of groups leave this last camp at 3:30 A.M. in order to reach Machu Picchu at sunrise. My first thought at that was "Oh, cool! You would reach Machu Picchu before the crowds." But then I thought about hiking in the dark down those steep steps, which would have also been wet this morning. And you wouldn't be able to see all the beauty along the way. And I wasn't sad at all about "sleeping in" until 5:30. We got to eat breakfast, too. And when I got home I read that sunrise isn't all it's cracked up to be there anyway because of the mountains blocking the light.

 We said goodbye to our porters and cooks this morning.

 Umm, not a bad sunrise view up here.

 This was us for breakfast this morning.

Kalyn and Madison resting on some steep steps on our hike down this morning. There were Inca ruins right away on the trail this morning.
I didn't stop at this one, I was trying to get a head start on the trail since this part of the hike was mostly downhill and I was so slow on the downhills. Troy said there was a sacrificial altar at this one. It was apparently an important sacrificial site.

Troy took a lot of pictures of the orchids along the way.

There was a building along the trail where a guy had a collection of Andes Mountain fauna. I stayed on the lower level and looked at the butterfly and moth displays. He had some taxidermy of animals on a level just a few steps up, but I didn't want to even walk up there, my knees were so sore. Troy's knee was hurting too, but he looked. He's a trooper. He got some ice for his.

After lunch we could choose to stay at the campsite and rest (Me! Me! Me!) or take a short hike up the hill to another Inca ruin site. Troy took my walking stick and went on the hike. Carrie, Kalyn, Debbie and I stayed behind. This one was an agricultural site, they grew food to help support Machu Picchu and other communities.

I want to point out the Urubamba River below, on the left of the picture. And to the right of Troy's left elbow you can see our trail wrapping around the mountainside there. I love looking at the trail from a distance.

 And then we were off again. Toward the end of the hike we got to a portion of the trail where it's very steep. This part in the picture is called the "Gringo Killer".

Troy climbed it first so he could take a picture of us. That's crazy steep!
And then there is just a little more of this:

And then we were at the Sun Gate!

It was a little weird there, because we hiked the trail pretty much in isolation, but there were quite a few people at the Sun Gate. That's because Machu Picchu visitors (who took the bus up there) can take a 45 minute hike from Machu Picchu up to the Sun Gate to get the classic view. (And that is when I envied the group that left in the middle of the night to get there before the crowds!)

This is it!

Before we left for our trip, I saw pictures of this view and I thought that zig zag road was our hiking trail. But it's the road the bus takes up the mountain to get to Machu Picchu from Aguas Calientes, the village in the canyon below.

Then we walked on down to Machu Picchu.
This was what we walked upon first, this is a sacrificial altar very much like the one they saw at the site earlier this morning.

I was very surprised at how massive this city was. We had seen so many Inca sites along the way, none of them on this scale.

 Of course, this is our group. In the back from the left: Nick, Ben, Debbie, Pierre, Me, Troy. On the bottom from the left: Dave, Madison, Kalyn, Carrie.

Excited, tired, in need of showers, we would take the bus down to Auguas Calientes and check into our hotel. Then we would go buy "I Survived the Inca Trail" shirts and eat at a pizza place in the village. In the morning we would come back for a tour.

I have a lot more pictures of the rest of our trip and I will try to wrap it all up tomorrow, so I can move on to other things in life on my blog!