Machu Picchu

So Cusco is a really nice place, very tourist orientated though, but it´s not too bad. One night here and then an early start off to begin the famous Inca Trail.
I´ll apologise now, I´ve pretty vague with the names of places that were part of the inca trail, there are a lot of little campsites along the way and other small archeological sites that we visited, some I can remember, most I can´t.
Our first day started in the sacred valley, over looking the city of Cusco, there is still a lot of excavation that can be done so it doesn´t look like much but walking through parts of it is still quite spectacular.
The most impressive was a building that was designed to represent lightening, which was a important sign of fertility for the Incas. A quick stop at an alpaca and llama farm we then went on to a couple of other archeological sites which involved a bit of a climb, but were quite interesting places.

We spent the night in the last town before the actual inca trail started, a few families have rooms set up in the area for travel groups, it is normally a quiet town except the night we stayed the locals were celebrating the birth of the town, lots of music and dancing as well as home made fireworks which rattled the windows everytime one went off, right throught the night till early morning!
Our first day on the actual trail was a bit of a workout, but relatively flat compared to the following days.
The most luxurious part of the trail is having a group of porters who carry tents, food and extra gear that you don´t want to carry with you during the day. They run ahead set up tents and cook lunch and then after packing that up run ahead again to the nights campsite and set up all the tents and prepare dinner also.
The second day, our hardest day out of the 3, dead womans pass. We´d decided as a group to complete 2 passes in the one day so as to have only one the next day and get into the town before our last day at Machu Picchu itself. The morning was probably the hardest for me, for some reason the altitude was affecting me a bit, which it normally doesn´t,
I was very light-headed and very out of breath, which is not the best when you have some 2000 odd stairs as well as rocky inclines to climb. The first part or the first pass was through forest, which was quite cold and damp, the second part was dry and hot.
Nearing the end of the dead womans pass I´d finally gained control of my breathing, so had a decent rhythm going, we made the first pass before lunch, so after travelling down the other side of the mountain we stopped for lunch, and then started up the second pass, which fortunately wasn´t as big. We still had to come back down part of the mountain before we could retire to our campsite, just as the sun was setting.

The third and final day of our inca trail experience, was a little less strenuous, were it not for the fact that we were all so tired and sore from the previous days climb. Some more archeological sites to view, and another lunch break, we had one final descent and then a trip along the train tracks to the town aguas caliente, the town at the bottom of Machu Picchu. Because of rain and landslides part of the trail has been closed, normally we would have been able to continue the trail right up to Machu Picchu instead of going via the town but it is impossible at the moment until the damage is repaired.
So we stayed the night on the floor of a restaurant, which was cosy, and left by bus to Machu Picchu 5:30am. Our guide took us in and around the city, and then left us to continue wandering.
We were there from 6am when the gates opened, by 10am it started to get very busy so we slowly returned back to town where we had to wait until 4:30pm for the train and then bus that would take us back to Cusco, we were all very tired but it was all worth it in the end.