Machu Picchu

Yea! We are on the way to Machu Picchu. We take the train and travel beside the churning river that runs beside the track. We ogle views of the Andes, glaciers, and hints of ruins that we see in the mountains everywhere as we travel. A group of backpackers about the take the Inca Trail wave at us as we pass. During one stop, we see local workers, including some older men and women, all gather to drink chicha, the local beer. At another stop we buy some beautiful flowers from a woman by the tracks. Boris and my husband look lovely together!

At last we arrive at Machu Picchu town and ride a bus up the hairpin turns to the top of the mountain. Again, somewhat scary. We get our passports stamped with Machu Picchu and begin the climb (yes, more climbing!) up to the ruins. Boris laughs at us as we stumble up the steep steps, but he waits patiently for us. Again, WOW. Standing atop the ruins surrounded by the smokey blue color of the sky and mountains around us, and the green of Machu Picchu, we begin to understand why the Incans thought this a spiritual place. There is an intense feeling of being more in touch with everything here that is hard to describe.

The ruins themselves are unbelievable and Boris shows us more amazing details about the Incans. At this point, we are overwhelmed with what the Incans accomplished, and are almost numbed by the impossibility of it all. We do find the energy to take a photo jumping (with Boris chiding us that we were going to fall off the mountain - worse than my mother!). We have a great time exploring, even finding a chinchilla hiding in the ruins, and return exhausted to our hotel perched on the side of a hill (and up an endless set of steps, to my husband's dismay). But our hotel is worth the endless steps to get to it, and is like staying in a tree house.