The ¨PachaMama¨ Machu Picchu Four-Day

I realize that I´m behind on this blog thing, but there is much to say so please forgive me and read on.

From Puno (you may remember Puno from waaayyy back in November), we headed to Cusco, the Inca capital. After a day of Inca Trail prep, we began our four day trek to Machu Picchu. I will break it down:
Day 1 - Walked....and walked...until we reached an altitude of 3000m and camped at Wayllabamba.
Day 2 - This was the most challenging day. We walked straight uphill for most of the day, walking right through the clouds and stopping at a few Inca ruins along the way. We reached our highest point at Dead Woman´s Pass (4200 m) and then had to walk all the way down to camp at Paqaymayu, which is at 3500 m.
Day 3 - This was also pretty tough because it was all downhill. This may sound easy, but they don´t call it ¨The Gringo Killer¨for nothing. We visited a series of massive stone terraces, which were amazing, and camped at Winay Wayna.
Day 4 - After a 4 am wake up, we walked to the Sun Gate to see Machu Picchu from above. It´s a really incredible sight and definitely makes the walk seem worth it. From there, we hiked down to Machu Picchu proper and had a tour inside. Lucky for us, despite it being the rainy season, we were blessed with a perfect, clear day. It was just beautiful and amazing...Machu Picchu is going on my list of spots that have completely lived up to my expectations, along with Petra and the Taj Mahal. After our tour of the ancient city, we took a train back to Cusco to celebrate and recover.
The entire experience was really wonderful. The porters and guides who walked with us were amazing and helpful and the food was unbelievable (obviously of the utmost importance to me). Everyone in my group had a great attitude and made the experience, although challenging, consistently fun and entertaining. Returning to Cusco felt like a great accomplishment at the end and we all celebrated with a big night out and the culmination of the 24 hour challenge. Pretty self-explanatory...we stayed up until 4 am the next night, could not tell you why.

After a day of doing nothing in Cusco, we headed out for La Paz with a bushcamp night along the way. That night, we ended up sleeping in the lobby of an Inca museum, definitely one of our more unusual campsites and the next day, we arrived in La Paz, Bolivia.