Day 6 in Peru was one of my favorites. We had to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to walk down to the train station in Ollantaytambo to take a 6:40 am train where we met up with our pre-booked tour guide Adner at marker 104 to hike 7 miles along the ancient Inca Trail into Machu Picchu.
When researching Machu Picchu I was surprised to learn quite a few things I didn’t know:
1) Seeing Machu Picchu is expensive! Most tours are around $400-800 per person and it takes most people at least 2 days to see it! We lucked out and found a tour that was only $218 per person, but with our large family it still cost us around $1200 to enter this world wonder.
2) Normal reservations for Machu Picchu require you to book 7 months in advance. Thanks to the pandemic, we were able to book our tickets 3 weeks in advance and still get in. Talk about a tender mercy for our family. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to see this amazing world wonder.
3) There are 4 different ways to enter Machu Picchu. Three require hiking in, and one requires you to take a Train in about 1.5 hours and then a 20 minute bus up to the Inca Site. All require you to have a tour guide to be with you at all times, both when hiking in, and going by train/bus.
4) The most famous way to enter Machu Picchu is the 4 day Inca trail which covers 26 miles of Inca trail and requires you to hike and backpack 3 nights. That tour unfortunately wasn’t available due to the pandemic, but we were still able to do the last day of that same tour or what tour companies call the 2 day Inca Trail Tour. Our tour was only 7 miles of Inca trail, (or 9.5 if you are frugal like us and don’t take the $12 bus ride per person, down from Machu Picchu). Then on day 2 you hike 1830 up steep Inca stairs and another 1830 steps back down the stame stairs from Machu Picchu in order to tour the grounds. This tour, although difficult, ended up being just right for our family considering we had a 6 year old with us who doesn’t love hiking yet, but it was still one of the hardest hikes I’d ever done because of the thousands (not kidding) of Inca stairs you are climbing both days which are about 2-3x taller than normal stairs. All our legs were shaking by the end of day 1 and I’d never been so tired in all my life! BUT the views were 100% worth it. Seriously one of the most beautiful hikes I’ve ever done.
5) Machu Picchu is one of the only Incan cities in all of Peru that the Spaniards did not destroy when they conquered the country. In order to ensure Machu Picchu’s survival, the King at the time, ordered his people to destroy parts of the Inca trail so that the Spaniards couldn’t find it. Although the Spaniards arrived in Peru in 1532, Machu Picchu wasn’t known to the world until 1911 when American Archaeologist Hiram Bingham discovered it while looking for another site and introduced it to the world. Incan families were still living there at the time and the city was largely found intact. This is why its such a treasure and world wonder.
One of our favorite parts of the day was the hour long train ride we took from Ollantaytambo to where we met our guide Adner. We went from tall barren brown mountains, to beautiful green tropical mountains in that short amount of time. It was fascinating.
Also because we were hiking in, we had to leave most of our luggage at our previous hotel, and pack only what we would need for our 3 night stay in Aguas Calientes. Thankfully we had brought some of our backpacking packs for just that reason, but it still meant that all 6 of us had to carry in heavier packs than what we were expecting. Plus we needed at least one laptop and all our charging cords to charge our phones at night since Peru’s electricity is different from America’s. But its all for the adventure right?
Luckily we had a perfect day weather wise for our hike, and only saw 1 other family and then a single guy with his guide the entire day. Our tour guide said that normally the trail is packed, so we once again felt grateful to not feel rushed by other groups coming up behind us.
As we hiked we were able to see several amazing Inca sites, as well as 2 different waterfalls, and then just the mountains themselves filled us with awe. Seriously some of the prettiest peaks I’d ever seen. They seemed to go on forever.
One of the things that made my heart happy was how well my kids hiked. In fact at one point, my older boys who were further ahead than everyone else, dropped their packs and came back to carry my and Jamison’s packs. They then came back a 2nd time for their Dad’s pack as well. This kindness impressed Ady so much that she too joined in the fun with her brothers and also started helping carry packs, and then even little 6 year old Jamis started helping too. I was seriously amazed!
Instead of complaining about how heavy their packs were like most teen/tween/ and younger kids, these incredible children of mine actually started fighting over who got to carry extra packs. It made my mamma heart happy, and I once again was taught by my children about what Christlike behavior looks like. I’m tearing up again just thinking about their generosity and kindness.
It was midafternoon before we all made it to the crowning jewel of the Inca trail. That of Sungate, which is where you get your first glimpse of Machu Picchu! Seeing the kids joy and happiness and awe at seeing Machu Picchu was priceless. Even Jamis when he saw Machu Picchu said, “Mom that was the longest and hardest hike I’ve ever done, but this is also my favorite hike! I love this place!” ❤️
From there we hiked down into Machu Picchu, but because our tickets were for the next day, and because the sun goes down so early in Peru (at 5:30pm) all we got to do was hike down next to it without entering. But even that was amazing. We were all pretty tired by this point, having just hiked 7 miles, and would have loved to take the bus down, but when Adam heard how expensive it was, he decided we all had a little more in us, and could hike the rest of the way down. This unfortunately wasn’t the best decision for me, as my knees started to give out on about the 300th Inca step down out of the 1530 left to go, but although I was slower than molasses I eventually made it down. 🤣
Adam then took us all out to dinner (including our awesome tour guide Adner) where we stuffed ourselves silly with peruvian food. We then went to try to find our airbnb we’d rented, and funny enough ran into our hosts in the streets who were out looking for us. They took us up a few alleyways, and then through the city center, where we discovered that our airbnb was up another 118 steps! All I could do was laugh at that point and under my breath say, “you’ve got to be kidding me!” 🤣 But I once again put one foot in front of the other and we all eventually made it up. A hot shower and bed never looked so good! 😁
