After that, we chose to walk/hike to Aquas Caliente from the train station in Santa Teresa (instead of taking the train there as originally planned). It was a nice hike along the river and the train tracks. A bit easier than the originally planned hike and I throughly enjoyed it. Marco is also an avid bird watcher and botanist of sorts - he pointed out many birds and plants along the way. I'd like to note that Marco spoke perfect English and in fact at one point was telling us about a bird we had just seen - he gave us 2 Latin names for the bird and one more common name - all of which we had never heard of - at that point he said that he only had those THREE translations for us - I guess he knows more English than we do - at least words for birds and plants!!!
We also got to see Machu Picchu from the back side which was interesting -- then when we were up there we could look down and see where we had been walking! It was a long, intense walk of approximately 3 1/2 hours - it was a real treat once we could see Aguas Caliente come into view. A nice reward at the end of the hike. We checked into the lovely El Mapi hotel (what a great treat after 2 days of camping), then we had dinner and got to bed early so that we could get on one of the first buses up to Machu Picchu.
