The fun began the night before, when we got a call from our guide from Alpaca Expeditions about how to pack for the next two days. This was when it was explained that we would be leaving our main luggage at their office and anything we wanted to bring we’d need to hike with the next day. This is normally not a problem for any of us but this time we had all opted to bring very small day packs since we thought we’d have our main bags at the hotel. The reason for this was that we’d be leaving the train at km 104 to begin the hike. Some quick repacking and then off to bed for the earliest wake up of the trip, 3:15 am! Oh yeah, during all of the last 30 hrs, our 5th member (Avi) was trying to make his way to Cusco with varying degrees of plane delays and airport hassle! He finally made it sometime after midnight. Lucio, our guide, was adamant that we not be late for pick up since we were the first group. Steve was still suffering from the food decisions he made the day before, so the mach 10 driving through the twisty roads was a less fun adventure! The drive to the train station was about 2 hrs on roads that twisted their way up the mountains, complete with areas narrowed by rock slides. We eventually made it to the train station in Aguas Calientes and I got my first ever train ride!

After passing the checkpoint into the area, our group was given snacks and then we followed Lucio on the trail to the first Incan site. From there, it was about a 3 hour hike up to our lunch spot and another site that was breathtaking! After a delicious hot lunch with so many options, we continued on to the Sun Gate.

This section of trail was more rolling hills than steep switchbacks. The clouds moved in and a drizzle made sure we didn’t get too hot during this hike. We did see a cool horizontal rainbow across the mountain face!

After the monkey stairs, we had a short hike over to the Sun Gate. This would offer us our first glimpse of Machu Picchu, and of course the clouds were sitting just on top. Add another classic pic of Steve and I at the top of a cool thing with only clouds in the background!

Lucio didn’t rush us out of the Sun Gate and eventually the clouds did lift a bit for a nice view. We continued our hike to the final destination and got our classic Machu Picchu pictures.

After the photoshoot, we hiked down to the bus lot and caught our bus to town. The tour with Alpaca included dinner in town and lodging at a local hotel. Aguas Calientes seemed like a really neat little town and I would have loved to spend some time roaming around but after dinner we headed right to bed since we had another early wake up the next day!