Kadin G's Blog: Cuzco and Machu Picchu

Been in Cuzco, Peru for awhile now... spent a few days hanging around the city and then booked the Salkantay tour which lasted 5 days 4 nights. I hiked over 50 miles and 3 mountain ranges... weeeeee.

The hike was amazing and I saw a lot of insane scenery. We hiked through valleys, over mountains, across rivers and through the jungle. It was quite amazing and I met a bunch of cool people. There were 16 people in my group and everyone was from all over the world.

The 4th day of the hike was by far the hardest... we hiked for about 4 hours in the poring rain over a mountain and through the mud and then hiked down hill for about 2 and 1/2 hours which killed my knees. We averaged about 10 hours of hiking per day. I am glad I am done with the trek and can relax but I am also really glad I did it and had a lot of fun.

Machu Picchu was really cool and I learned a lot from the guide about Machu Picchu and the Incas. The stone work is absolutely incredible on some of these buildings...

Here are a few pics of the trek/machu picchu. I took a ton more but don't really want to sit here and upload a whole bunch. Next stop is the floating islands and isle del sol at Lake Titicaca... I think we are heading there tomorrow.

Start of day 2 after camping out in this valley... the snow capped mountain is Salkantay:

The next day after hiking past Salkantay we hiked down into the jungle:

Kind of hard to see the scale of this waterfall we saw but it was absolutely huge:

The classic postcard shot of Machu Picchu. We woke up at 3:30 and hiked for about an hour and a half up really steep steps... I was the 2 person to get into Machu Picchu so was able to get a really good shot with no people around. The tall mountain in the back of Machu Picchu is called Wayna Picchu.