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Today we went up to Machu Pichu by train. We had to wake up at 5am which was a bit horrible as that has been the time to wake up for the past week. The train ride up was supposed to be one of the most spectacular in the world, but Lisa slept most of the way and Matthew contemplated murder as the americans sitting next to us kept coming out with stuff like 'Stonehenge is the same as Easter Island'. There was also this absolute freak who came and sat opposite us, wearing essentially two blankets and a load of jumpers. It wasn't even her seat, don't know why she thought we'd want her when no one else did. So we had her stretching her legs out and coughing everywhere without covering her mouth the whole time.
When we arrived, we got off at Aguas Calientes which is Machu Pichu town. We immediately went for lunch then got the bus up to the ruins. When we got up there (28 dollars later for a 15 minute journey), we realised it was 50 dollars each to get in. Of course we were 8 dollars short and so had to spend ages trying to convince some guy to exchange a 20 euro note for us, there were no atms and we'd have to go back into town to get to one. The note had been with us since i don't know when so it was a bit ripped. This isn't acceptable in peru so we had to convince the guy that even if the note was devalued he would still be making money off us by giving us 20 dollars.
Machu Pichu itself was quite amazing, really very beautiful against the backdrop of the mountains. We trekked all the way around it although it was quite busy when we went. As hyped us as it was, we prefered the sacred valley settlements which seemed to have more of a history to them.
The train ride on the way back wasn't bad, we had seats on front of us to stretch out our legs on and the views were pretty good. Lisa thinks she saw a speckled bear which are able to be seem beside the river - according to one weird waitress anyway.
We got fast food of some sort for dinner and went back to the hotel to crash for 4 hours - an early start the next morning too. We also realised we had been eaten alive by sandflies and mosquitos despite wearing deet insect repellant. Monsters.
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