The (difficult) road to Wayna Picchu - Machu Picch

Part of the Machu Picchu experience is waking up at 4 in the morning to walk up to the entrance of the sacred city. Why? There are only 400 people who can go up to Wayna Picchu every day. 200 between 7 and 8, and 200 between 10 and 11.

Down at the river there is a gate which officially opens at 5 am. Our guide told us, however, that the workers often open it earlier. So we left our hostel around 4 am, to get to the gate around 4.20, wait a bit and walk up. However, still not feeling 100 %, my body didn't agree that much with me walking up a gazillion stairs. My friend Charly - thanks a lot, you're awesome! - walked up slowly with me and helped me on the way. When we finally got upstairs some of the buses already arrived (they start driving at 5.30 if I'm not mistaken), but we joined the cue to get inside. Happy as we were when got our stamp on our ticket that said "Huaynapicchu 10 a 11"; getting up there at 10 was the next challenge for me.

After getting into Machu Picchu, we got a tour of a new guide. Even though he could tell some interesting stuff, I missed our own guide - Wilber - who had his birthday today which he rather spend with his family, how strange. Also, have to note that the group we were traveling with contained a nice bunch of people, fun to travel these four days with!
Machu Picchu is amazing, the clouds everywhere made it more mystical to me (although sometimes it would have been better if they would disappear for a bit for the view) Great end of an amazing journey through South-America!

Maybe Definitely not the most original picture I took, maybe not the most beautiful I took today, but it's Machu Picchu. The mountain you see in the picture is Wayna Picchu (young mountain) and we walked that one up :)