Photo´s-Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

Back safe from the mountains. Here are some pics of Machu Picchu. Post on the way including some great mountain scenary, ladders on ice and Guinea Pigs for dinner...

The Inca Trail was outstanding, much better than either of us were expecting...

Machu Picchu at sunrise


Porters wearing sandals over ¨Dead Womans Pass¨ at 13,776 ft


Terrace site on the Inca Trail

Llama in Machu Picchu

Llama´s just jump in front of your camera

Inside Machu Picchu, many of the stones were cut to fit with no mortar

View from the top of Wanya Pichuu, the mountain you see rising above Machu Picchu

Wow. What can we say...Machu Picchu was incredible. It was almost unbelievable. However, the four day trek to the actual site may have been more amazing than the actual sight itself...maybe.

For those of you wondering what the heck Machu Picchu is, think The Great Wall, the Colosseum, Taj Mahal; it´s one of the seven wonders of the world. It´s a pre-Colombian Inca site about 50 miles northwest of a city named Cusco (which is darling). It´s sometimes referred to as ¨The Lost City of the Incas¨ and is probably the most familiar symbol of the Incan Empire built around 1450. Once the Spanish came in, it was abandoned in order to preserve it and in turn, ended up being forgotten for centuries. Although local Peruvian mountain villagers most likely knew about it, it wasn´t brought to the world´s attention until 1911 when an American historian, Hiram Bingham, caught wind of it. With that, today, Machu Picchu sees hundreds of visitors a day.

Skipping the typical train or bus ride from Cusco directly to the ruins, we opted for the four day trek to the site. For our hard work, we were rewarded with passing through multiple ruin sites which most travelers don´t get to see.

Unfortunately you are going to have to wait for photos for a few days. Our next stop after Cusco was Huaraz, the center of high altitude sports in Peru. So far, the scenery has been absolutely breath taking and we´ve only just begun. The city sits between two ranges, the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Negra.

Brent wasted no time and has already headed out to do 3 peaks in an area called the Ishinca Valley. I on the other hand, found a fabulous coffee shop and met some good company, so I decided I needed a couple down days to read, rest and drink lots of good coffee. I´m off tomorrow to for a few days in the valley and promise to have photos for you soon!