Machu Picchu tour and the end of our trip

After spending the night in Aguas Calientes, the village where tourists stay directly below Machu Picchu, we returned by bus up the mountain the next morning to tour Machu Picchu with our guide.
I am going to post a ton of pictures here.

What we are looking at in this picture is the way the builders channeled the water to the fountains at the site. These are water canals

The temple of the sun is built on a tremendous sized rock. And it is beautifully rounded. The way the stones fit together is really beautiful.

 Notice the trapezoid shape of all doors and windows.

 This is a bath.

 This wall....earthquake damage? Machu Picchu is built on two fault lines. Our guide said natural damage from tree roots. Troy is skeptical......

 This is the rock quarry on the site.

Look at the size of that gigantic base block.

 This rock is supposed to be shaped exactly as the mountains behind is. Eh........sorta kinda!

These pools are sky reflectors, to study the night sky.

This, I believe is a sacrificial stone. I think the grooves are designed to catch blood.

My girl, loving life.

My husband, feeling satisfied.

This is the town of Aguas Calientes. Which means "hot springs" by the way. This is a statue of Pachacuti.

These are pictures taken on the main street in town. We enjoyed shopping, eating and relaxing here.

The train runs right through it. The only way to get to this town is by train. In January 2010, there was a flood that washed out the train tracks, stranding many tourists, who were later air lifted out.

Another Pachacuti statue.

 Here is a guy transporting full propane tanks up and down the streets. These people can make you feel pretty lazy.

We left Aguas Calientes on the train. It was a beautiful train ride to Ollantaytambo. Then we caught a bus there back to Cusco. These next few pictures were taken in Ollantaytambo as we drove through. It was much like getting off the plane in Lima, with all the people with signs waiting to pick up passengers, when we got off the train in this town. But we didn't have our cameras out, of course, we were keeping an eye on our guide while he led us to our bus.

And this is the beautiful sun setting behind the mountains on our way back to Cusco.

The next day we went rafting on the Urubamba River with a guide. We drove from Cusco back to the Sacred Valley. Troy and I thought it was appropriate since it was our 23rd wedding anniversary, and we also went rafting on our honeymoon. Troy and I took the front of the raft. It was a windy day, with the wind working against us, so we ended up paddling a lot. Like never stopping, even on the slow part of the river. I kind of thought it might be more relaxing. But it was fun, we did have a couple good rapids toward the end. But we were worn out from paddling. Then we had a picnic lunch and headed back to Cusco.

In the area where we rafted people do mountain climbing. I noticed these one day when we drove by before, Troy got a picture of them on this day. Those are capsule hanging on the side of the mountain for climbers to sleep in.

And driving into Cusco, we saw people out in the streets at the San Pedro Market, which is always way busy and out into the streets on Sundays. So we decided we needed to head down there while we had time before dinner.

We picked up Carrie and Madison and walked several blocks to the market, which was awesome. There is everything there. We don't know what these are, but we suspect they are used to season soups. We bought a pair of leggings for Alina and some other little things.

We met with our group that evening for a last dinner together and said goodbye to all of them the next morning. Which is sad. Then we transferred over to another hotel, a hostel in the San Blas area. It's a much more Bohemian area of town, just a few blocks from the Plaza de Armas. We did have to hike some wicked hills to get back and forth, though. There are artisans selling their stuff all along the streets in that area. We didn't have much left to buy at this point.

I had left a couple days before our flight home from Lima so that we could take the bus if we wanted but Troy and Kalyn vetoed that. We were flying out of Cusco to Lima now, which is 1 1/2 hours compared to at least 20 hours on the bus. So we had a couple days to relax. We toured a couple museums, one of them had artifacts from Yale from Machu Picchu, most notably mummies....which was really pretty cool!

 Inca structures are all around you in the heart of Cusco.

Weavers demonstrate in the courtyards of the museums.

Kalyn and I got to go out for dinner a couple times together. I have to brag about two different times in restaurants when a waitress and then a waiter on separate occasions thought Kalyn and I were sisters or friends instead of mother and daughter.

This trip was really a great experience for all of us. Alina missed us something terrible, and we are still working on getting her sleeping back to normal. She wants me to sleep with her at night. But for me, Troy and Kalyn it was awesome! Kalyn told me the other day that she was at cross country practice in the heat thinking about how difficult it was and then thought "Kalyn, you hiked the Inca Trail, you can do this."

And I have had similar thoughts about things going on in my life. I had to start school right after I got back, but nothing could intimidate me. I was happy about my experience and also confident that I had what it took to handle anything that came my way. Vacations are always nice, but when there is a challenge involved they can also be real attitude changers.

Anyway, it's been a couple weeks now since we've been back and I have come down a little from cloud 9. And things are moving at a fast pace in life already since returning, Alina turned 10 and we've all started school. I am thinking about our next trip, which will include Alina. Thinking a tour of the Balkan countries. I'm also thinking Troy and I need to start doing some challenging weekends together on a more regular basis. Like the time we hiked that 20 miles on the railroad tracks or when we hiked the 15 miles at Elk City Lake that time. I lost a toenail after one of those, just like I'm about to lose my big toenail on my left foot now.