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After yet another sleepness night on a bus we checked into Hostal Anita, hidden away up some stairs that nearly killed me! The altitude here is more noticable than anywhere so far even though we have been much higher! (Hostel is nice though).
Our first couple of days in Cuzco were spent organising the train to Machu Picchu, tours, hotels, buses and post etc as well as meeting up with friends and plenty of eating and drinking. One minor incident involved us locking ourselves out of the bathroom and when Simone went to get someone from the hostal she snapped the key in the front door locking them out of the room itself.
We did a city tour which was naff. The guide spoke very little English but was a very sweet old man so we forgave him. I think it was more to do with the sights (Qoricancha, Sacsayhuaman, Q´enqo, Pukapukara and Tambomachay) being less than impressive. The highlight was when a fat Peruvian kid fell over and started crying. This wouldn´t normally be funny except for the fact he was about 14 and didn´t have a scratch on him!
We also did a tour to the Sacred Valley which was better. After a stop at a crappy market near Pisac we visited some decent enough ruins there before a lunch stop at Urubamba and a visit to Ollantaytambo. We left the tour at Ollantaytambo and took a train in the evening to Machu Picchu town aka Aguas Calientes.
In the morning we were up at 3:30am and set off for the walk up to Machu Picchu around 4:20am. We had been told plenty of people make the walk so it is not a problem finding your way etc. However when we set off there wasn´t another person in sight and in the pitch black and jungle it is slightly unnerving! However we persevered and after an hour got overtaken a few times. It took about 1 1/2 to get to the top ariving around 6am as the first buses were pulling up.
The sight itself is amazing and well worth the walk or any trail people take to reach it. I headed up Wayna Picchu (the mountain behind Machu Picchu in all the pics) which gives even better views of the site and surroundings. We left the site around 11am after 5 hours there and headed down to Aguas Cali for some food. In the afternoon it rained fairly heavily and so we decided to bring our train forward getting one of the posher ones back straight to Cuzco.
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