Machupicchu, Peru - Polarsteps

The final destination of the trek, after four days of hiking there is only one hike left, but instead we take the bus 😅. At 6 a.m. we enter at the entrance of Machu Picchu! ✨ We find a nice place in one of the former gardens and listen to the history class by Ruben. The thing is, taking all ancient Inca-buildings into account, Machu Picchu isn't the most spectacular one. 💡In fact, it's never finished. The Spanish came and the area was abandoned, while still under construction. 💡What's more, this majestic building never functions as a city. It rather served as a relax and retreat palace for the emperors. There were of course traces of agriculture, a temple for the sun and some living quarters. But the cities were the Inca's really lived, are so much more interesting and there is much more to talk about. You could say that this is just an ordinary whorehouse, since the city hosted many (400!) of the emperor's concubines👸🏻. None the less, it is an impressive place to be! It does the title of Modern World Wonders justice! And we really loved to be in a place you directly recognize after all the pictures that you've seen! 💡Another funfact about this location. It is believed that the Inca's choose this location because of the relative weather stability. It lies high in the mountains, protected by mountains in all directions. These mountains prevent the rain - especially in El Niño periods - to overflow the region, making agriculture possible and allowing them to use the place as an astronomical observatory. 💡More fun facts: the Inca's were able to predict El Niño long before modern science was able to do it. How? They looked at the pleiades in the middle of the winter (June). When the stars were dimmed, this would be a sign of changing weather. Now we know that during El Niño the seasons getting wetter, which means more precipitation in the air (cloudier). 💡Final fun fact: most gringo's pronounce Machu Picchu wrong. It should be "Machu pikchu", old mountain, instead of "Machu Pichu", old dick. Oops! 🍆 After getting our history class (although not all these facts came from Ruben, he was not the sharpest this day (hungover)), we went to explore the site on our own. In our ticket the entry of the Machu Picchu mountain was included. But first we took our time to shoot the classic postcards pictures! 📸 The mountain was a long climb, where we were not sure whether it was worth it or not, but the views were good! 🥾After our visit, we didn't take the bus again, but did the hike back to Agua Calientes. So after all, we did finish the trek :) Back in Agua Calientes, or Machu Picchu town, it started to rain. Now we could finally say we got so lucky with the weather! We had good weather all the time, amazing views and a nice group as well ☺️. A train and bus combination brought us back to Cusco.

Country Guides:

Peru