The day we had been waiting for!! Knowing that we are a little bit slow in the mornings, Erick woke us up the first, 03h55... but still we were the last ones at breakfast... At 04h50 we left the camp to go to the last check point (less than 10min walk), which opens up at 05h30, but if you don´t want to stand in line with the other 300 people, you got to get there early. Finally we were the second group in line, and we hang out at the gate in the dark until it opened. Once everybody was cleared, we walked with our headlights on for the first half an hour on a quite narrow path. About 07h00 we got to Inti Punku (Sun Gate) under a clear sky, this is the point that we saw the MP and Wayna Picchu mountain the very first time! And of course we took photos!! We were very lucky, because as soon as we continued towards MP, the clouds came and the people who arrived after us to the Inti Punku didn´t get their photos...
After another 30min of walking we arrived to the check point at the entrance of the MP site. Short toilet break and we started the tour with Erick. Since MP covers a very large area, Erick had chosen the most important buildings to show us, the tour with him lasted about two hours. We started off from the Temple of Water, continued to the Sun Temple via the Temple of Pachamama (Mother Earth). These three temples represent the three levels of Inka mythology, which are also represented by three holy animals: condor for the highest level (gods), puma for the middle level (our world) and snake for the underground (mother earth). We also visited the Temple of Three Windows, the Temple of the Condor and the Temple of the Rainbow. The highest point of the complex is the Sun Calendar, which was used as the agricultural calendar and as well as a religious calendar to know when different ceremonies should take place. Inside the MP we saw some llamas who were there to cut the grass... The tour was very interesting (as usual) and added up to everything we had learned during the hike. At this point the weather was no longer on our side. It started to rain and during the rest of the morning it just got heavier. After the tour we had free time, but because of the weather we just went to see a couple other constructions that were mentionned in our guide book. Around 11h30 we took a bus back to Aguas Calientes, the bus ride took about 30min on a very muddy, unpaved road. We met up with the rest of the group for lunch, in a restaurant called Pachamama (Mother Earth).
After lunch the weather cleared up a bit, so Jo went to walk around the city and to see the market with Rick while Steph stayed in the restaurant drinking Pisco sour (a Peruvian drink made of pisco liquor+lime+egg white), with Mike and Erick... The train back to Cusco left at 17h, it was called the Backpackers train and filled with tourists. It was impossible to rest, except for Steph who slept throught the noise with the help of a few Piscos... but for Jo it was the worst trip of her life!! The seats couldn´t be declined, there were no leg room, horrible loud tourists around... even the ear plugs didn´t help... We made it to Cusco about 21h30, took our stuff from the old hotel and moved to the new one. With a heating, TV and breakfast included in the price of 40$ / night!! We had a plan to go and meet up with some people of the group in a bar later on, but we were simply too tired and crashed in our beds. Sorry guys.
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