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Gallery 1 - The Train Ride to Machu Picchu

Gallery 2 - Entering Machu Picchu and The Caretaker's Hut

Gallery 3 - Through The Main Gate

Gallery 4 - The Temple and the Intihuatana Stone 

Gallery 5 - The Sacred Stone, Huayna Picchu & the Main Plaza

This was it.  The day I returned to Machu Picchu!  After 2 years and some weeks I would return, with serious cameras in hand, and once again see the fabled lost city of the Incas.

And the day began early.  The train to Machu Picchu leaves Cuzco at 6AM.  In the morning.  In the early morning.  I suppose I should be used to it by now, but it's still EARLY!  I was still wired from the lost luggage etc., so I didn't sleep as well as I should have.  Up at 5AM.  Showered and ready to leave at 5:30.  The good folks at Coltur took me to the train station.  It's only 6 or 8 blocks from the Royal Inca I hotel, but the market around the station has a reputation for pick pockets and thievery, so I opted to avoid chances to lose what gear I had left.  It's cheap peace of mind.

PeruRail.  Coach B seat 56, right side of the train.  There's a fair number of people I met on the flight from Guayaquil, or on the Cuzco tour yesterday.  Some are on other coaches. Some are on my coach.  The train leaves Cuzco by traversing a number of switchbacks that get it up into the hills, and then out to the Urubamba Valley.  Then it's 4 hours to Machu Picchu, with a number of stops on the way.  It's a spectacular journey, and everything is far more green than the last time. 4 weeks into spring really makes things come alive.  I bought a PeruRail hat as my Tilley hat was lost in my luggage, in Lima at that point.

Then we arrive in Aguas Calientes (literally hot waters, named for the hot springs above the town).  I am met by a gentleman from the Machu Picchu Hotel, and take my luggage (not that there's much in this case) to the hotel and check-in.  The hotel is very up-scale, up a cobbled street from the main square in the town.  Aquas Calientes exists solely for the tourist trade, and is very small.  Then I grab my gear and I'm off to the bus. 

The bus to up to Machu Picchu is a bit of an adventure in itself.  You get a ticket ($9US round trip) and then climb on board. Then you ride through the vendor gauntlet and follow the Rio Urubamba for a bit, and then cross the river and head up.  Up 8 Km. of narrow switchbacks that after 30 minutes gets you to the tourist entrance.  No clouds overhead, and lots of sunshine.  It's going to be a great day for pictures!

At the entrance I buy my entrance to Machu Picchu. $20US.  It's doubled in the 2 years I've been away, and the second day isn't half price.  Still, it's worth every penny, and they continue to keep it very clean, and continue to rebuild and catalog each and every building, wall and stone. 

Day one I retraced my steps from the 2000 trip.  I hiked up to the funerary plain, and the Caretaker's Hut.  Below the Caretaker's Hut, the classic view of Machu Picchu can be taken from a terrace above the main city gate.  Then I hiked down to the Main Gate, and passed into the high rent district, where the upper class and priesthood would have stayed.  I followed the standard tour loop through the quarry to the Primary Temple, and the Temple of 3 Windows.  Then you go up to the Intihuatana Stone, The Hitching Post of the Sun.  Then I went down to the Main Plaza and the Sunken Plaza on my way to the Sacred Stone and the 2 Huts in the shadow of Huayna Picchu.  Tomorrow's trek would be to climb the mountain, something neither Peter or I did in 2000.  Then it was back to the tourist area for lunch, and then a hike across the main path in the terraces, between the Temples and the Residential Section.  And then I was out of film, and I made my way back to the hotel.