Our last days in Peru have come, as well as the time of our visit to the most popular site in the whole of South America: the ruins of the Inka citadel of Machu Picchu. The train ride from Ollanta to Aguas Calientes is during the night, so we don’t really get a chance to see much of the scenery which is supposed to be very charming. We’ll have the time for that later, though, on our way back to Cusco. As we reach Aguas Calientes we experience something we were not prepared for: the horrendous humidity of the rain forest! Even worse than a summer night in the Venetian country side! The hotel room is comparable to a swimming pool…

Even if it’s already almost midnight we agree that we would have breakfast at 4.45 to be able to catch the first bus to the ruins which leaves at 5.30 in the morning. We are told that “it would give us the chance to catch the magic of the sunrise, with the light slowly revealing the beauty of the Inka complex and the surrounding mountains”. How can you say no to that for some more hours of sleeping?? When the alarm rings the pain is clear and my hair is wet, there is kind of a fog in the room which the Urubamba river passing outside is not enough to justify! On the other (not explainable) hand, the breakfast consists of the driest pieces of pastries I’ve even eaten, not even soaking them into the coffee helps! What a start…but we have a great day in front.

Just few steps from the hotel the queue for the bus starts and it’s long…really long! We get our tickets, queue for a good while, jump on the bus and in 20 minutes we are at the site. We pass the ticket check, follow the arrows and here it is:

the first ridiculous view of Machu Picchu! Is it this what we have gotten up so early for? I don’t remember feeling so low in quite a while, the idea that it could be like this for the rest of the day is floating in the heavy air. We can’t see a thing! No ruins, no mountains. You could see something only if you would walk into things. To give the clouds some time to disappear we take a long walk to the site where you can see the old Inka bridge:

Great stuff! Do you see anything? It’s there, just behind me. But here it comes…as we get back to the old residential part of the ruins  the whole view opens up and we get what we expected: an incredible place. Just here in front of us!

We really cannot get tired of the view. It’s hard to think that a community lived all the way up here, in such an organized manner and surrounded by such a thick vegetation. We spend hours going up and down the different parts of the site: the temple, the terraces, the old houses, the main square. All the details are smartly built. Every little corner has something special. Being low season and early in the morning allows us to fully enjoy the peace and magic of the place and we manage to go back down to town before the big group of day-trippers from Cusco arrive for their visit. The walk back to town is pretty long and consists of hundreds of steps, each of which are not the best for my knee, but after 8 km, and a visit to a great museum, we are done and happy to have been here.

Back in town, we stay awake to grab some lunch and then follow the second last day of the Italian football season which crowned Juventus the winner of the league! Happiness is overwhelming, but we are in need of some sleep!

Next will be a train ride back to Ollanta, then a bus to Urumamba and another to Cusco. The trip is relatively quick. We also get the chance to check-in at a local office of LAN for the next day, when we discover that our flight is not direct to Lima, but will stop in Juliaca and Arequipa. But we have time to spare before our flight to Isla de Pascua. As we leave Peru, we are fully satisfied of what it offered us and happy to have experienced the amazing history and remains of a fascinating world.