Day 42
I had the worst dreams ever last night. I barely slept and my body was destroyed. We woke up at 3:30am and packed up all our shit to leave it downstairs since we wouldn’t be back for checkout time. We had another shitty breakfast which was absolutely horrible. We were outside as a team ready to start moving at 4:30am and Aurelio wasn’t with us this time. He was taking the bus to the mountain. We had a 20 minute walk to a bridge and when we showed up it was closed. They checked our passports and were told to wait until 5am to open it. The gates to Machu Picchu opened at 6am up top and Aurelio said it takes about an hour to get up there.
Will stayed up drinking a bit later than I did and we both gunned it as soon as the gates opened on the bridge. We were on a mission to get up there as fast as we could to finish the whole trip with a good and fast ending. We took off like a bunch of animals at the stairs. I think it was 450 meters of stairs to climb. We got after it straight away and weren’t planning on slowing down. Will is 22 and in great shape, his heart rate hit 190 and he was starting to lose it near the top but kept it together. We ended up hitting the top at 29:02. I can but I can’t believe we got up there that fast. Will nearly had a heart attack and now was completely soaked in sweat and it was cold up there. The guards up there couldn’t believe we did it that fast. They said record! Doubt it but cool if it was. We waited around for the rest of the group to show up and we were some of the first in MP that morning. I was speechless and I cried a bit looking around when we saw the first view.
We got to witness the sun coming up over the mountains behind us and saw the first light on MP that morning with the whole place nearly empty. It was the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen with my own two eyes. This place is magical and i’m getting goosebumps writing about it and thinking about it all over again.
We did the tour with Aurelio and were in heaven. Funny part coming up. We paid for circuit 3. You can do Circuit 1,2,3,4. circuit 4 is booked out three months in advance and all we got was 3 for $70 I think I don’t remember. After we exited MP he said we also paid for the MP mountain and we could go climb it. We were all beat and once Aurelio split up from the group to start heading home on a bus we decided we would check out the mountain and see how far we could get.
On the way up I saw a sign for Circuit 1,2 and no security guard there. I got everyone to make a hard right and we walked in like we owned the place. Everyone’s tickets allow them in for only 2 hours. We turned into Circuit 1,2 and ended up doing a tour of the whole place and we were in there for about 4.5 hours. I couldn’t believe it. We did it. We snuck in and got to see it all. We had such a good time and took so many pics and got in trouble a bit here and there.
We made our way back down the mountain which was brutal on the knees, made it into town and had a huge brunch. I got two burgers and a few juices. We hung out and walked around the cute little town until 2pm when we headed over to the train station. Our train took off at 2:30 and dropped us off 1.5 hour later where we took a bus for about 1.5 hours back to Cusco. I showered and headed over for a dinner spot called Organika recommended by someone. It was the best food I had in South America so far. I went to meet up with the guys after my dinner and I called it a night pretty early.
Ok enough typing. Now go look at all these lovely pictures I hiked for so long to take.
