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After a rather smelly bus journey, during which our ears continually popped as they adjusted to the altitude, we arrived in Cusco which is 3310 metres above sea level. Carrie´s head was feeling the pressure, but we weren´t sure whether this was the altitude or the lack of food! The most pleasing part about arriving at our hostel was the fact that the beds had duvets; they were the first duvets we´d seen in 5 weeks and we were very excited! Yet again, we bumped into some more people from Birmingham Uni, we are everywhere!
The main objective of our time in Cusco was to get to Machu Picchu. Booking our train tickets with the little man down the road seemed a splendid idea at the time and we went about booking everything else we needed. However, when we returned to him later in the day he hadn´t managed to get our tickets at all and said we would have to leave on a different day! A small argument ensued but we eventually worked out some other options, hoping it would all go swimmingly. We did a day tour of the Sacred Valley during which we went to a local market and were accosted by all of the stall holders wanting to sell us some alpaca clothing. Carrie found a jumper she liked but asked if there was one without tassels....Cue the little Peruvian woman beginning to rip all of the tassels from the jumper. Non gracias!! We also visited several Inka ruins, all of which required climbing many many steps. We were not told about this part of the day! Our last stop of the day was a church and Carrie finally found the alpaca jumper of her dreams after being adamant she would never buy one!
After yet another argument with our little ticket man, we finally had our tickets to Aguas Calientes, the town at the bottom of Machu Picchu. Getting there was a lot more straightforward than the acquiring of the tickets! As we arrived in Aguas Calientes we were amused to see that the main road of the town is actually the train line and everything else is buil around that. Knowing how tiring the following day would be we made a pit stop at the hot springs and got an early night. At 3.30 am our alarm went off and by 4 am we were walking towards Machu Picchu. We had a little bit of trouble finding the bottom of the hill, but we were walking in the pitch black! The first 1k was flat and easy whereas the following 3k up the mountain were definetely not. Stopping for breaks every hundred or so steps definetely helped as Laura was lagging by the first few! We were somewhat saved by someone we met offering us Coca leaves to chew; it shows up in your bloodstream as cocaine for a while but it was either that or leaving Laura halfway up the mountain! We reached the top by 5.45 and sat getting rather cold before we were allowed in to Machu Picchu. As soon as we were in we grabbed our spot to watch the sunrise and jumped around for an hour trying to get warm! The weather we had was perfect, not a cloud in the sky, and watching the sun rise and hit Wayna Pìcchu, the mountain behind the ruins, was absolutely incredible. We have a good few hundred photos all of the same thing! Our next task was climing Wayna Picchu. Only 400 people are allowed to climb the mountain so at 8am we were in the queue and were numbers 126 and 127 on the list. We are hugely amused at how little information they give you about anything in Peru. Wayna Picchu was sold to us as a climb up steps to the top of the mountain. We´ve decided you can´t really call them steps! At some points we were pulling ourselves up sheer rock face but once at the top, the view was immense and we couldn´t believe how easy it would be to fall off! Our climb back down was rather interesting, a lot of slipping and sliding about! We wandered Machu Picchu for a few hours before heading back down the hill (by bus this time!) and all agreed that although Machu Picchu is an amazing site, our climb up to it and then our climb up Wayna Picchu were the real highlights of the day.
Back in Cusco under our beautiful duvets, Laura slept the first night whilst Carrie went out with our dorm. The next day she felt shocking and Laura was massively gleeful which she then regretted a few days later when she felt even worse herself!
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