Machu Picchu

I got to go to Machu Picchu yesterday, talk about childhood dream. It was rather surreal. Especially the getting there part, argh! I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to get my tickets and get on the 6:15 train, but for some reason the line did not move. I sat in line for almost 3 hours with very little clue what was going on. It was excruciating, watching the train you wanted leave without you when you got there so early to buy a ticket! and I was literally the 10th person in line. I guess most of the people before me were from agencies and they were each buying many tickets. The machines were also horribly slow. But, I made it, even if I had to take a taxi to the next train station to catch another train. The taxi ride ended up being great, I shared it with a group of swiss girls who were very uninclined to include me in their conversation (though, I did have a moment of pride: for the first time, I had a conversation in spanish with people who spoke english - besides my Cesar, of course). I ended up starting to talk to the taxi driver and that was so much fun! He was a really cool guy, and I even mostly understood him! He was also really cool because he stopped to let us take pictures a couple of times. The area was really beautiful.
For breakfast:The train ride itself was excruciatingly slow, but it followed this amazing river that was some of the scariest whitewater I have ever seen (or foamy chocolate, if you talk about color).Machu Picchu itself was amazing. Again though, I both love and hate going to ruins in other countries because they let you go wherever you want, regardless of the damage to the site. It makes for a lot of fun, but with the volume of people doing it, it cant be good for anything.




I then got the stupid idea that I wanted to climb to the top of Wynapicchu, thats the mountain in the back of all the famous pictures. Dont mind that I was still slightly sick from whatever food I ate, and am terribly out of shape. The climb almost killed me, I literally had to sit down to avoid getting sick. But, by god! I made it to the top! The view was pretty cool, and I played my flute for a while. Not too shabby of a day!

On the way back down by bus, we had a kid following us, on foot, down the incredibly steep mountain... and he beat us! The road was a huge run of switchbacks and he would wait for us at each one and yell as the bus went by. He was all dressed up, and moved like the wind. At the bottom, before we even picked him up, people were pulling out their wallets, and when he got on, he got a huge cheer! It was tons of fun. Amazing kid.