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| View from Huyna Picchu |
Since I was meeting up with a friend from Lima, we decided to take the train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes together. We played bullshit with a kid in our booth for the whole trip. We got in late at night to our hostel (The Mystical Hostel), which was AWESOME. The owner has his psychedelic paintings of Machu Picchu on display and a small store of magical stones and such in the basement. The whole place is rainbow-themed, which I loved. At night, the sounds of the nearby river were loud and sleep-inducing.
The next day we got on the earliest bus to the mountain, where we flashed our pre-purchased passes to Huyna Picchu. I didn't find the climb very difficult after two weeks living in the much higher altitudes of Cusco. The view from the top is so worth the extra effort.
There's actually a little bar on the mountain, so I had a quick chilcano de pisco before our tour of Machu Picchu. I definitely recommend a guide, because the history of Machu Picchu is complex and interesting. Apparently no one is really sure how the Incas were able to build such an impressive system of roads and a friggin city on the tops of mountains. My favorite part was wondering how they cut such huge slabs of perfectly rectangular granite.
