Macchu Picchu

We hurriedly got to the sun gate, with that famous postcard picture in mind, and saw...absolutely nothing apart from a fog of white clouds.

The Sun Gate

Despite the cloud cover, it still felt pretty amazing to be standing at the sun gate and looking over the sacred site. The sun gate was built by the incas and is one of many parts of the Macchu Picchu site. Its actually only quite small, but similarly to many of the Incan sites we had visited on the trail, this sun gate was built as it is at the very first spot on the mountainous horizon that the sun rises up and beams over Macchu Picchu itself. Essentially, it is a stone archway that sits on the crest of a mountain to frame the sun. To the Incas, this was a hugely spiritual place and a key component of the whole site. It did clear up in waves and each time we got a tantalizing glimpse of what we had hiked the 43km and climbed the 70'000+ steps for. 

From here we were told by Carlos that another 40 minutes hiking and we'd soon be at the sacred site itself. With this in mind, and after a few group pictures we decided to press on and we were all pretty excited. We started zooming down the rest of the track and with morale so high Steph, Melisa and Tom began singing a Destiny's Child medley (obviously Tom was Beyonce). The Sun Gate is open to the public who do the day trip to Macchu Picchu, so a few people passed us to go and see the Sun Gate and looked at us like we were fully mental. As we emerged around the bend and through some thick bushes, we heard some faint Irish tones finishing off our single ladies rendition. At first Tom thought it was someone trying to out sass him, but then there was a sudden realisation it was SUSAN!!!

 As soon as we saw her we sprinted towards her. She was with the rest of our group, Andrew, Irina, Elana and obviously Henry! They were all waiting for us on a section of grass just up from Macchu Picchu, and it was so lovely to see them after the 4 days. Melisa and Susan were finally reunited! (they had been room buddies for the last 4 weeks) They had a loving embrace and they all clapped us in. We all caught up on the last few days activities. Susan and Andrew on the Lares trek, and Irina and Elana on their boozy couple of days with Henry in Cusco. The lovely ladies even snuck in some champagne and gave us all a celebratory cup or two.

Macchu Picchu

Despite not being able to see anything of Macchu Picchu yet, we were still eager to get down and ready to start exploring. We left the site to drop off our bags and get freshened up, and we also bought somthing for breakfast for the day trip. We re-entered to take a group picture. The time we took getting sorted allowed for some of the early morning fog to vanish.

Carlos took us to one of the tiers, and we sat down whilst he gave us some history on Macchu Picchu. Carlos was a fantastic guide, but the sun had started to shine through, and having had some breakfast and feeling a little warm, we all one by one started to nod off. The early morning start meant we had little energy after the initial adrenaline rush of arriving at the site, plus having a few bubbles of champagne meant it was a recipe for a sleepy disaster. Steph even got in a blind panic as her phone had vanished from her pocket, so she ran around trying to find it. Thankfully her pre tired and fuzzy head had put it in a safe pocket so we were safe!

A picture Ryan took of us on the tiers

We walked around a large part of the site, whilst Carlos told us more information (being up and walking around helped the trail fatigue). He was showing us some ancient windows when a woman jumped over the security rope to take an up close selfie with an ancient rock, and suddenly Carlos and a few other security men who popped out from nowhere were telling her to get back. The Peruvians are very precious about their sacred incan site, and clearly don't want it put in jeopardy.

With that said, Carlos said we were free to explore for another hour, as long as we didn't touch anything we weren't supposed to. We all wanted to explore the site more, as realistically we'd only seen about 50% of it, but we were all so conscious that we didn't have the classic postcard picture perfect photo yet, due to the cloudy weather.

The weather started to clear, and between ourselves, Susan and Melisa, we decided to climb as high as we could to get a picture. (or a PPP and Henry would call it)

We realised we had to move quick as the site was filling up as the day went on, so we weaved in and out of the crowds that were forming. The tiredness even got to some of us (Steph), and we were becoming quite snappy with the slow walkers.

We got to the postcard spot, and the rock we had had our team photo with earlier had a queue to get on to it! We were in full blown panic mode as we only had an hour. Melisa noticed further up the site there was a similar rock poking out, with the same view and absolutely no queue. No one had seen it yet so we ran up, and finally got our postcard perfect pictures.

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We were overjoyed, and took pictures of each other for at least 20 minutes. By the time we had finished, there was a queue starting to form by our rock, so we left the people to it and climbed even higher. The higher you climbed the more spectacular the views, and you got a really good idea of the sheer size of the site.

We decided to do some classic jumping shots, but we were told off by a security person. We wern't sure why, but maybe as its an old site the ground is unstable. That said, we felt our 4 day trek entitled us to get the pictures we wanted, so we sneaked around a corner and took some cheeky ones!

The Girls

Our hour was up, and having got about a thousand pictures, we were satisfied with our collections. We were slightly sad that we didn't have longer to explore the site fully. The famous pointed rock pictured at the back is actually open to climb which we would have liked to have done. In all honesty, we felt like we couldn't say we had properly been to Macchu Picchu due to not being able to explore it at its fullest. We may go back one day to have a proper look around and to take in every bit of it without feeling so dazed and tired, any excuse to go back!

Nevertheless, having done the Inca trail, we were so elated at having got to our destination. It is currently one of the biggest achievements of our lives, and if your thinking of doing the trek, you should 100% do it. It will make you appreciate Macchu Picchu so much more if you know just how difficult it was for the Incas to get there.

The trek will make you feel like you've conqured the world, if not, at least make you feel like you've gone a bit crazy.

We rejoined the group at the entrance to the site, after stamping our passports with the Macchu Picchu stamp. 

We got onto a bus that would take us down the windy hill to the town 'Aguas Calientes'. Tom fell asleep almost instantly on the bus

After about 20 minutes, we were in the pretty little town. We went into a restaurant to have some lunch, with a backdrop of the sacred river rapids behind. This would also be the spot that we would say goodbye to Leo and Carlos.

They sat down and wrote us all our certificates to say we had completed the trail, and we all shared photos and funny stories from the last few days. We all gathered up our money and gave our tip to Carlos and Leo for their outstanding service on the trail. Both of them showed such a passion for the Incas, and they had been so helpful and supportive throughout the whole trek.

We messaged our families on the free wifi to tell them we were still alive, and then walked to the train station. From the restaurant it was only about a 10 minute walk through the picturesque town, and we walked through a huge market that sold lots of trinkets and more textiles. From there, we boarded the train to go back to Ollantaytambo. The train had windows in the ceiling so you could look out to the towering mountains above, with the satisfaction of knowing that a few hours prior you had been walking along them. The train journey was a beautiful one, the river rushing along side most of the train track for the journey. We were so tired yet none of us were able to sleep due to the excitement and views.

We arrived back in Ollantaytambo with the Inca trail successfully completed and got on another bus to take us back to Cusco.