Are you ever frightened to go to sleep in case you sleep through your alarm? Well that was me. I had to be up for 4am and I woke up every hour checking how long I had left to sleep before Passanger began his rendition of ‘Beautiful birds’.

Needless to say when the time finally came I was completely exhausted but up I got and crawled to the top floor of the hostel (who in their right mind puts a breakfast bar on the top floor!!!) and munched my way through a croissant, a boiled egg and the all important cup of tea with coco leaves.

Although my entry ticket for Machu Picchu wasn’t until 7am, I wanted to be inside before sunrise which was agreed to be possible by the rep the night before. What a lot of rubbish that turned out to be.

I left the hostel at 5am to see half the pack-packing population of the village standing at the bus stop. Everyone had an earlier ticket than me and I joined the end of the queue.

I was quickly chastised and told to join the 7am queue way, way up the hill. So way up the hill I couldn’t see where it ended 😩. Which meant , I had 2hrs to wait in a ruddy queue when I could have had a longer lie and leisurely breakfast and, I was going to miss the sunrise.

It was a long boring wait until the 6am bus queue finally depleted and we were all moved down to the bottom of the hill.

On the journey up to Machu Picchu I could help noticing all the missed photo opportunities of the enormous mountains and the hanging clouds but I felt reassured that the ruins would more than make up for what I had missed.

Gosh it was mayhem at the top. I had taken an enormous amount of extra clothing – 2 jumpers, waterproof jacket and a fleece in case it was cold but it was so hot and I was left burdened with an overweight rucksack.

The tour guide was meeting us at 9am so it was pointless me hanging around wasting another 2 hrs so I went in by myself and started to explore.

There are no words to explain what I saw before me – well there might be but none of the words I would use would do it justice – let’s just say it was stunningly awesomely beautiful.

Some of the boys in the hostel said I must go to the Inka bridge which I did. I expected a rope bridge type of thing but it wasn’t. It was an extremely narrow path that was constructed by placing rocks against the sheer cliff face – so scary. I’m glad it was decided to close it to the public for it would be hundreds of free falling feet before splattering at the bottom.

I caught up with the guide and the rest of the tourists around 10am and was given an very informative explanation to the history of Machu Picchu. Being a bit cynical, I’m never sure how much of these talks are over exaggerated and a little elaborated to make the talk more entertaining. Explanations certainly conflicted with what I had already read. Never the less, I listened with enthusiasm.

After the 2hr walking tour finished, I went off to explore some areas that hadn’t been covered as it was impossible cover the whole of the ruins in just two hours, it was colossal. I sneaked into other group tours to get some info on the buildings I was in.

I could have walked around for hours adding photos to the many hundreds I had taken but I desperately needed to pee and there were no toilets inside and once you were out there was no getting back in so reluctantly, I headed for the exit taking many photos on the way.

I decided not to get the return bus to the town but to walk back down. I had missed so many wonderful views on the way up and it would great to be away from the crowds to have some quiet me time, stretch my legs, admire the views and listen to nature.

The descent took almost two hours, down roads avoiding the toing and froing of the constant stream of tour buses and constructed steps through jingle like conditions where I was bitten to death by mozzies.

It was a long journey home. I was dropped off in the middle of Cusco at 22:20, it was freezing and raining and I had no idea in which direction to head to get back to my hostel.

All the guide books tell you not to jump into an unregulated taxi – use only the ones with the chequers design on the door, but there were none, I walked about in the pissing cold rain for what seemed like an eternity and out of sheer desperation I took a chance and took any passing taxi who charged me triple but took me straight back to my freezing hostel where I stripped, P.J’s on, set my alarm for 8am and buried myself under the heaped blankets.

Nite 😘