Today (5th August) was our earliest start yet with the alarm going at 4.15am.
We arrived at the bus stop just under an hour later having rushed some breakfast to find the queue was already several blocks long. With 20 mins until the first bus was scheduled to depart the queue grew longer and longer, but so did the queue of buses waiting to take us all up the mountain. We counted 24 buses, each holding 25 people and there was enough people to fill them all.
Oddly the buses had to line up in ascending numerical order. Bus 13 was a little late and had to parallel park between the already waiting buses 12 and 14. Unlucky for some but this was our bus!
By 6.15 we were at the entrance gate. As we approached the desk we had our fingers crossed that our tickets would be accepted. They were scanned, an error popped up on screen. The error was ignored. Our tickets were stamped and in we went!
You can't appreciate just how big and magnificent Machu Picchu is from the photos but it was amazing.
The forecast was for rain (we got drenched yesterday as the heavens opened just after we started walking back to our hotel, and to add to the scene there were large claps of thunder), but as the sun rose the clouds cleared and slowly the golden light shone on the amazing brickwork of the sacred plaza.
Finally satisfied I'd taken enough photos we started to explore the city.
Although 600 people had arrived around the same time as us it didn't feel too full and the deeper we explored the less people we saw until we had the place to ourselves. This shows just how large Machu Picchu is.
The stones for each of the walls were all cut carefully to size with the more important buildings having perfectly square bricks.
The triangular end of the houses have been designed to resemble the shape of the mountains in the distance with one side slightly lower than the other.
After around 3 hours of exploring and still no rain we set off back to the bus stop. On arrival a large buzzy thing flew straight up Stu's t-shirt sleeve and stung him! His arm came up bright red with a large bump in the middle where the sting was. Over the next 30 minutes the redness spread to be the size of a beer mat! :-(
Fortunately the anti sting ointment and an antihistamine tablet brought the swelling down and now there's just a raised bump the size of a penny.
We're now sitting having lunch whilst we wait for our train and it's just started raining again. It seems the weather forecast (luckily) was 6 hours out!
No comments:
Post a Comment