Machu Picchu

Getting up at 4am to look at some ruins didn´t seem like the best idea as we made our way to San Pedro station. The streets were dark, and full of scary drugged up tourists looking mega alert, and as we sat in the station waiting room a fight broke out and the security guard had to chuck a guy out (at least I assume he was the security guard, he had a puffer jacket that said ¨Follow Da Lider¨on the back!).
3 and a half hours later we arrive at the train stop in Aguas Calientes, we dash through the millions of street sellers trying to convince us we want dolls or finger puppets, and finally reach the bus that´ll take us to Machu Picchu. I´m slightly surprised to see that all the buses are Mercs but then I didn´t know how much the entry fee was going to be at that point!
Deep in my heart I was worried that the lost city of the Inca´s would be a dissappointment, or that it would end up feeling like Angkor Watt, but it couldn´t have been further from that.
Even before we arrived I caught a glimpse of what for me was the best bit about Machu Picchu, the giant emmeral green mountains that shoot up into the sky and impose over the ruins. For me it was the setting, it was so breathtaking being up there that it made you feel that living there would have been magical. It was unreal!
Walking around was great, but the best bit came at the end of the day when the tourists started dwindling and we sat on the grass looking out and enjoying the silence, it was peaceful and made you smile.
I can´t believe that a young american who went to Yale stumbled accross it, you could just picture Hiram Bingham rambling around the mountains on his mule and coming to a cleariing to find this!!!!

Chris walked around with a faint grin after discovering that it´s thought that 75% of the inhabitants were female, and in particular perfectly formed virgins. He said he imagined they all walked around naked with flowers in their hair looking beautiful. I told him that I couldn´t see much water around so they were probably all smelly, and that I doubted many of them were virgins (the few men would have had a bomb there!!).
Machu Picchu is definitively one of the 7 wonders of the World and deservedly so.