Stunning Machu Pichu

We left Santiago were we had a great time looking forward to visit Cusco and Machu Pichu.

As soon as we arrived Cusco, we inmediately noticed a huge change with Santiago. This is a real touristic place: where there is tourism, there is money and where is money there is people who buy and where is people who buy there is the double who sell. Cusco is like a circus, there is always somebody trying to sell you something: but I have to say that they are polite.

Food and transport are very cheap in Peru but the tourist attractions are incredible expensive, just to give you an idea, we are having dinner for less than 10€, but to visit Machu Pichu we had to pay a train, a bus and the entrance: in total, around 180$.

To get to Macnu Pichu, we had to take a train that takes around 4 hours. It crosses the mountains and the landscapes are gorgeous.

Finally we arrived to Machu Pichu were we saw some of the most fascinating scenaries.

Machu Pichu is one of the most captivating places I have ever seen. We took around 200 pictures here, all of them amazing.

Taking a bad picture here is almost imposible and it should be prosecuted by law.

Isn't this litle llama cute?

The day was a bit cloudy, but in this case, it made it even more divine.

Machu Pichu means "old peak" and in front of it there is another one called Wainapichu meaning "young peak" that is posible to climb and see the view from the other side. Here I am a bit showing off doing an impersonation of Indiana Jones.

And just when we were getting back, the clouds started to climb up and we could see this marvelous ghost-like view of Machu Pichu.

Even though it wasn't particularly sunny, being at more than 2.500m was more enough to make me look like red like a gringo. Everybody talks to me in English first. Sometimes it is not that bad and I pretend I am Russian and nobody can hassle me anymore.

Here is a picture of Cusco. Despite all tourims, it is a truly beautiful city: clean and well preserved.

The height here is around 3.300 meters, and it takes a couple of days to get used to the lack of oxygen. It is posible to drick coca tea but it tastes horrible, so I stuck to coffee.

This is from on of the cofee restaurants in the main plaza.

We spent the last day visiting the Sacred Valley. I don't like organised tours where agencies charge you a premium just to carry you like a sheep and telling you what to do, when to do it, where to buy, etc.
So we did it using local buses, which was far more fun, cheap and adventorous.

We visited Chincheros, Ollantaytambo y Pisac.

We had a great time spending this day visting the Sacred Valley on our own.

Some of the temples were located at almost 4000m and after that I had a terrible headache and decided to have a few coca teas to reduce the altitude sickness.

I am not sure if it helped with the altitude sickness but I think I have developed x-ray vision as a side effect.

Tomorrow, Jose and I will take different routes: he will go back to Argentina and I will meet Zaidy in Trujillo. I think we will spend New Year's Eve in Mancora, drinking, dancing and swimming in the beach. See you next year.

Happy 2009 to Everyone!!