If you are in South-America, there is at least one place you cannot miss – and might it be deserved or not, you will have to visit it: Machu Picchu. Thus, of course also we went to Cusco, the former Inca capital, and stayed there one day for seeing the last traces of the Incas. Especially the “Fortaleza Sacsayhuamán” and the “Convento de Santo Domingo”, located above the Incas’ sun temple “Coricancha” are interesting and can give you a small glimpse of the masterpieces from this highly developed culture. Unfortunately the Conquistador Francisco Pizarro (“el cuidador de chanchos”) and the Catholic Church have done a really good job and destroyed almost everything or built new buildings on top of the Inca walls. But luckily those walls are a lot more earth-quake proof and hence they stayed intact while the rest of the newer construction just fell apart.

Thanks to Yuri, the owner of our hostel, we could book an alternative trail to Machu Picchu, namely the “Inca Jungle Trek”, which is a lot cheaper and less touristic than famous “Inca Trail”. Accompanied by our guide William “Wallace” and 12 Chilean fellows we passed 4 unforgettable days together. On the first one we had a crazy bike ride 50km downhill from 4300m to 1300m towards Santa Maria. Unfortunately it was raining a lot and Esteffen got a little bit cold (but did not get ill, so no need to worry, Kristine), but I must say that personally I really enjoyed that kind of weather because it made the ride even more adventurous: with the fog you couldn’t see very much where you were driving to and you had to cross lots of small rivers which almost made you fall down and of course even wetter. Luckily the guide let me go faster than the group so I could pedal quite hard and I stopped freezing all the way down, and at the end we all arrived “sano y salvo” at our first overnight place. The next day we trekked a lot through the “selva”, where we could eat lots of super-tasteful mangos, and also on a former “camino de los Incas” – quite vertiginous but very impressive view. After a relaxing stop at some hot springs we went to Santa Tereza where we stayed for the second night. On the third day we walked to Aguas Calientes, the rather touristic village at the bottom of the Machu Picchu site. Without knowing it we circled around the whole mountain on which the famous ruins are located.

Last but not least, early on the next morning at 4:30am we started walking up and 30 minutes later and 400m higher we finally reached our goal. The atmosphere was great, because after those 3 days everyone was expecting the deserved reward with some sort of curiosity and anticipation. We were not disappointed, because the site is indeed spectacular. And thanks to the size you are not feeling restricted while visiting, despite the amount of tourists who also like to see this fascinating place. We also climbed to the 600m higher mountain in 1 hour – and it was definitely worth the effort, because we had an amazing view over all the ruins, jungle and mountains and could realize how crazy you have to be for building such a city at exactly that place.

During this 4 days we additionally had the chance of trying out some local and Peruvian specialties: I ate “cuy” (don’t worry Eli, Esteffen didn’t) and we clinked glasses with the national drink “Pisco Sour“, a lot better than the horrible “Inca Kola“, which tastes as pure chemistry like liquid Haribo.

Well, that’s it for Perú. Next stop will be Bolivia, first with the “Lago de Titicaca” and La Paz …. so long!