Wayna Picchu or Huayna Picchu

Wayna Picchu or Huayna Picchu is the mountain you can see behind Machu Picchu in most pictures. Wayna Picchu means "Young Mountain" in Quechua whereas Machu Picchu means "Old Mountain". We wanted to go up this mountain to get a different view of Machu Picchu. We had heard that only few people were allowed to climb the mountain every day, so we booked places through the travel agent at the same time as we booked the whole trip. We didn't know it when we booked, but it turned out that this way we also got a free personal guide for the same price!

The guide came and picked us up at the hotel the morning after we arrived in Aguas Calientes. The three of us took the bus up to Machu Picchu. It is a completely different feeling to arrive to the old ruins by bus compared to getting there after having walked the Inka Trail. You have to enter and walk through Machu Picchu in order to enter Wayna Picchu. The guide offered to show us around Machu Picchu as well, but we declined since we had already been there the day before.

The amount of people who are allowed to enter Wayna Picchu is limited to 400 people per day. These are divided into two groups of 200 people, one starting at 7 am and one starting at 10 am. However, it seems that it is not too popular to go up this mountain as it was no problem at all to be among the allowed 400 either of the days we were there, despite the fact that there were an enormous amount of people visiting the main ruins of Machu Picchu. Well, we heard that there is an official limit of 2500 people entering the ruins each day, but this is rarely kept. Our guide told us that hikers from the Inka trail are not counted and not people going to Wayna Picchu either.

Apparently there is a mist over Machu Picchu about 300 days per year. However, this is mainly in the mornings and typically lifts after a few hours. We were lucky to have a perfect day with a blue sky when we arrived from the Inka Trail and to also see the ruins with the mist the day after.

When reading about Wayna Picchu, you are often warned that it is a difficult climb and that you have to be fit to make it. OK, it is a nice climb, but it's not that difficult. Simply by taking it slowly, basically anyone who is not too unfit can make it and enjoy it. It's not too much of a challenge after having just hiked the Inka trail. We almost felt like we were flying since we didn't have to carry our backpacks anymore.

Our guide noticed that we weren't getting tired so he started to speed up a bit. He basically didn't tell us anything about the place. Instead he seemed to be more interested in beating his fastest time to reach the top. Despite the fact that we stopped to take pictures everywhere, we only missed his time by a couple of minutes. When we reached the top, he sat down to rest and let us explore the place. He almost didn't tell us anything about the ruins or the Inkas during the whole tour. It was quite disappointing after having had a great guide the previous days.

Most people who enter Wayna Picchu seem to just go up to the top and then straight back down again after having explored the main ruins a bit. However, there is also a trail you can follow around the mountain. This trail is narrower and you can clearly see that fewer people follow it. It seems to not be taken care of as much as the other paths you can walk in the Machu Picchu area. 

At some point you can walk, or rather crawl, through a short tunnel. At one point you had to climb down a steep ladder and sometimes you could see how the Incas had shaped the mountain into a walking path. There were also plenty of places with amazing views, often with a long ravine to one side.

The main attraction along this trail is the moon temple with its great cavern, as you can see in the picture below. The temple might not be too impressive after having seen so many other amazing ruins, but it was still nice.

 Sometimes we stopped and just looked at the incredible landscape we had around us.

The ruins in the pictures below are Machu Picchu. You can clearly see that Machu Picchu is not located at the top of the mountain, as I naively thought.

It was definitely worth it to stay one more day in Machu Picchu and climb Wayna Picchu. It was an amazing day and we were lucky to see the historic place both in mist and with a clear blue sky. However, it is impossible to get lost so you don't have to bring a guide, unless you manage to get one who knows a lot and shares his knowledge with you. Then it can be very good, since the Inkas were very interesting!

Aguas Calientes

Aguas Calientes (or Machu Picchu town) is the closest town to Machu Picchu. The name Aguas Calientes means means "hot water" or "hot springs" in Spanish. The town lives on all the tourists who are visiting Machu Picchu, so it's full of hotels and restaurants. For some reason, the town actually had a feeling similar to a ski town in the Alps. 

There is no road that connects the town to anything else than to Machu Picchu. Instead, most people who visit the old ruins take a train from Cusco or Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes and then continues up the mountain by bus. That is, of course, for those who don't walk the Inka Trail. For those who have just walked the Inka Trail, it is the first contact with modern civilization they return to.

We were curious to see what kind of hotel the travel agency had booked for us. They had given us one cheaper and one more expensive alternative, of which we chose the cheaper. It turned out to be a very nice hotel, especially after having spent the previous few nights in tents. We were just very happy to have a clean toilet! And it had a shower! We didn't realise how dirty we were or how much we smelled until we walked into the hotel lobby. It was really clean and nice, but something smelled a bit funny and we quickly realised that it was us... It was also really nice that one lunch, one dinner and one pisco sour (a typical drink) were included in the price.

The first thing we did when we arrived in the town after having been hiking for a few days, was to find a restaurant and have a beer. When we were sitting there chatting, some guy came and wanted to sell pictures from Machu Picchu and the Inka Trail. We were not particularly interested since we had taken a few hundred pictures ourselves. However, he definitely wanted us to look at some of his pictures. You could say that we were pretty surprised when we saw that we were in the pictures he wanted to sell. We had completely forgotten that there was some funny guy taking pictures of us in the airport in Cusco and later in the very beginning of the Inca Trail. Now we finally understood why.

The Inka Trail - day 4 - Machu Picchu

We spent the last night in the Winay Wayna campsite, which is about 6 km from Machu Picchu. It feels a bit annoying to stop when you are so close to reaching the goal of the hike. Many people had problems falling asleep since we were so close and they were filled with excitement. Me? I slept nicely, but half of the people in our group said that they were awake for most of the night. Someone could not sleep at all, but instead spent the night playing solitaire in the light from a torch, and kept playing until the battery ran out.

There is a last checkpoint just after the campsite. Everyone has to pass through this checkpoint, which opens at 5.30 in the morning. Well, the porters take a different route and go back to the town directly instead of continuing to Machu Picchu. A lot of people go up quite a bit before 5 am and start forming a queue to the checkpoint. We got up around 3.30 am already! This way we had time to have some breakfast and pack everything before going to the queue. It is really dark that early in the morning (or late at night...), so it could be useful to have a torch with batteries.

We started queuing around one our before the checkpoint opened. There were already around 50 people standing there, waiting. I think most of the tourists from the whole camp were there queuing when the checkpoint finally opened. Until that time you stand there and chat with the people around you. I ended up close to a couple of swedes and talked with them, which was really nice. 

It started getting bright around this time, so you don't really need to use your torch too much. The problem was that all the friendship and lovely atmosphere from the previous days were completely gone. Now everyone wanted to be the first ones to see Machu Picchu. Where people before were friendly and let faster people pass and you sometimes chatted a little bit, people now seemed a bit grumpy and did their best to stop people coming from behind. At one point S. was almost pushed off the path by some guy who couldn't handle the thought of us passing him. This way it went very slowly and people got frustrated. 

The worst part was an extremely steep flight of about 50 steps. They were almost vertical! Naturally this was the slowest part of the trek. However, all of these things were quickly forgotten when we reached the top of the stairs and saw this:

The first thought was: "ahh, there are some nice, big ruins". Then we all realised that we were looking down on Machu Picchu. We were there! For some reason I had naively thought that the ruins were at the top of a mountain, looking down on the peaks around. This is not the case at all, as you can see in the pictures further down. In fact, Machu Picchu is located at a relatively low altitude of 2400 m. This can be compared to the highest point of the Inka Trail, the Dead Woman's pass, which is at 4215 m. The ruins are instead on a mountain side which is protected on three sides by the Urubamba river.

Those almost vertical steps leads up to the final pass, called Intipunku or "the Sun Gate". This is where you first can see Machu Picchu. A lot of people stop here to see the sunrise over the Machu Picchu, see the picture above.

However, we continued a little bit further down the path, where we got this view of the ruins:

We stayed at some small ruins between the Sun Gate and Machu Picchu itself and watched the sunrise from there.

The picture below shows the Urubamba river and the winding road the buses take up to Machu Picchu. 

We then continued into the old ruins, where our guide told us a lot of the history and explained how life was there during the Inka times. 

Machu Picchu was a town for priests and the upper class, but there were also workers and farmers in the area in order to provide food for the rich. However, these were not allowed into most of the town. They were not allowed in many more areas than the farming terraces you can see in the pictures below.

Only the people who were allowed to go to Machu Picchu actually knew where it was. This was a big problem for the Spanish when they invaded the Inkas. In order to "civilise" the Inkas, they killed the whole upper class, which resulted in that they killed everyone who knew the directions to Machu Picchu. The Spanish therefore never discovered Machu Picchu. It was not until Hiram Bingham rediscovered the town in 1911 that the world started to know about it.

There are plenty of temples in Machu Picchu. The picture above shows the Sun temple and below you can see the out of the temple of the three windows. 

Coca leaves were important to the Inkas and they had some growing in Machu Picchu. There are some plants in the picture below.

The Inkas were extremely good at working with stones and using them for buildings. They could shape the stones to fit each other perfectly as you can see in areas all over the old Inka empire. However, they did not always fit the stones together perfectly, as you can see in the pictures below. The pictures were taken of walls that were very close to each other in Machu Picchu. One shows a temple wall, one a wall of a priest's house and one shows the wall of one of the worker's house. Can you guess which is which?

Below is another example of the Inca's ability to shape stones. The huge boulder has been shaped after mountains in the horizon and it also resembles a crouching puma. The puma was one of three very important animals to the Inkas. The other two were the snake and the condor. The snake represented the underworld, the puma the world of the living and the condor represented the upper world.

We arrived quite early to the ruins, so there were not too many people there at first. But that quickly changed. During most of the Inka Trail you have the landscape, nature and ruins almost to yourself. For a few days you see a very limited amount of people, and for most of the time every one is relaxed and happy. Then when you arrive at Machu Picchu, there are hordes of tourists who came with the buses. Everything is quiet during the trek and you can hear birds sing and so on, but when you come to Machu Picchu there is almost chaos with loads of shouting tourists. It is a strange feeling that after you have hiked for a few days and you finally arrive at the goal of the trek, you encounter so many people who just took the bus. 

In the beginning you can take pictures with very few people around you, like the ones above and below. But that quickly becomes impossible. The long queue of people to the spot where we are standing for the picture above is not shown.

Machu Picchu is an amazing place, which I definitely recommend you to visit. I completely understand why it was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World!

The Inka Trail - day 3

The third day is the longest day, both in time and in distance walked (16 km). It is also the day when you see the most amount of ruins. We started quite early, just as every day. I would guess that about half of the people camping at the same campsite as us started walking just a little bit before us. This made the first part of the trail crowded with people. It didn't help that it went upwards a lot in the beginning as well. 

Looking back at our campsite Pacaymayu.

The first ruins are located about halfway up to the second pass of the Inka Trail. These ruins are called Runkuraqay and were used as a resting place on the way to Machu Picchu. They might also have been used as food storage or as a watchtower, or probably as a bit of everything. 

Runkuraqay

There is a tradition to bring a stone from these ruins up to the pass and leave them at the top of the mountain as an offering. Every person from each group bring one stone and the group builds a tower, you can see our tower in the picture below. There were plenty of these small towers scattered all over the area. You are also supposed to offer something valuable. For example coca leaves are a good offering as these were very useful to the Inkas. We didn't have any coca leaves on us, so instead we put a coca candy as the top piece of our tower.

The view is amazing from the second pass, Abra de Runkuraqay, which is located at 4 000 m above sea level. You see a lot of the surrounding area with all the mountains and a pond or two.

We stayed at the top for almost an hour, just enjoying the view in the warm and nice sunshine. You can also see the Dead Woman's pass, shown in the picture below. Can you see the profile of a woman? She is laying on her back, wearing a massive hat.

Dead Woman's pass.

After a while our amazing guide joined us at the top. He took out a flute and played for the people who were walking up the last steps to the top. It was really nice!

Most of the paving of the trail in this part is original from the time of the Inkas. The trail has only been broadened a bit. It is a nice feeling to be walking on the same stones as the Inkas did so many years ago. The trail was first hidden for centuries and then it has been taken care of very well. 

We tended to take long breaks to explore the different ruins and to enjoy the landscape. We also stopped a lot to take pictures. Then we kept a quite good speed when we were walking. We ended up seeing the same people many times on the trail this way. We walked passed them and then they would pass us again and so on. It's really nice with the little chats with all the friendly people you meet. 

Half an our or so after leaving the second pass, we arrived the Sayacmarca ruins. The name means "inaccessible town", which is a perfect description since the ruins are protected on three sides of sheer cliffs. These were the largest ruins that we could walk around in so far.

View from the Sayacmarca ruins.

After a bit more hiking, you get a nice view of the Winay wayna ruins. However, it still takes a while to reach these ruins.

The last bit before reaching the lunch place goes through a cloud forest, which supposedly is full of orchids.  Parts of this path goes through the clouds. In one place we heard a lot of animals, that we were sure of were some kind of bird. Later we found out that it wasn't any bird, but some kind of frog.

The ruins above are called Phuyupatamarca, which means "town in the clouds". We had lunch on the mountain just behind these ruins.

There are several places to explore around this place. From some places you get a fantastic view of the surroundings.

View from inside the Phuyupatamarca ruins.

A short stroll after leaving the ruins, you get a view of these rocks. They look very similar to a cuy, or guinea pig, which are an important part of the Peruvian food culture.

The path now leads downwards and almost everywhere with long flights of stairs. This part is commonly known as "the Gringo Killer", since it can be very tough on the knees to walk down the thousand or so steps. Some of the steps are quite high, so if you are short you have a much harder walk than if you are taller. We had heard and read that this part should be very tough, but the only problem we had were blisters.  

I would definitely say that the toughest part of the whole trek was the climb up to the first pass ("the Dead Woman's" pass), whereas this part was relatively easy once you figure out how to best walk down all these steps. I found that for me it was easiest to almost run or jump down the steps. This way you don't loose as much energy on each steps, and you can save your knees a bit. This probably works best if you are a bit taller than the Inkas were (which I am), since the steps then becomes relatively short. If you are closer to the height of the Inkas (as S. is), it is easier to walk.

The pictures just above and below show the Winay Wayna ruins. We found wild strawberries growing in the middle of these ruins. A little bit before these ruins you can choose between two different paths: one that goes to the ruins and one that goes straight down to the campsite. I definitely recommend taking the path to the ruins, as long as you have time for it.

The last campsite is located just after these ruins. There are some showers here, which can be quite nice to use after having been hiking for a few days. However, there is only enough warm water for the first people who reach the campsite. If you arrive a bit later, you can choose between having a shower in the cold water, no shower at all or invent your own Inka shower.

This evening was the last before the end of the hike, so we had a special dinner. With pizza! How did the chef make pizzas only using the equipment the porters had been carrying the whole way?? We also exchanged a lot of memories from the trek and some souvenirs. We also tipped the porters, the chef and the guide.