The journey so far:
Wednesday 3/4/2026
After a quick breakfast we left Urubamba for the train station, and departed for Machu Picchu. As my and Blake’s chatting meandered, so did the river the railway followed, and the landscape gradually transitioned from green but dry mountains to a tropical cloud forest. After dropping our stuff at the hotel, we took a bus that switchbacked up the spectacular mountain road to the lost Incan city. As we toured Machu Picchu, our tour guide Peter told about the complexes architecture, how the stones of earlier or lesser structures were more rustic and roughly hewn, while the temples and newer buildings from the last years of the Incan Empire were made of precision cut, uniform bricks. Many of the buildings of Machu Picchu are made of granite, while Sacsayhuaman is made of limestone and Qorikancha is made of basalt. Noticing that some of the buildings were pulverized, I asked Peter if it was from the trees that Bingham (the American explorer who rediscovered and popularized Machu Picchu) felled to clear the ridge (the city was totally overgrown). He confirmed that those ruins were damaged by the tree clearing, and said that a lot of the city is still in the overgrowth. We ate at a buffet after the tour, and then returned to the town. I spent the evening wandering around the town and its alleyways before going to bed.
Thursday 3/5/2026
Some of us took the bus back up to Machu Picchu for unguided touring after breakfast by the white water rapids. Nate and I were hoping to hike up to one of the mountain peaks, but we could not sneak past the staff with the wrong ticket, so we had to settle with hiking back down to the town on foot. I got a surprisingly good milkshake at a cafe with Nate, Blake, and Teagan, and then went wandering around the town some more before the train back to Ollantaytambo. On the train ride back, the train would occasionally ominously stutter, before slowing to a snails pace and then a full stop. We spent hours sitting in the car as the sun set on the mountains, until it was pitch black outside, since we were in a rural area. I tried to ease the boredom and distract myself from the repeating pre-recorded train announcements by booting up a turn based strategy game called Polytopia and passing it around with Blake, Ollie, and Sophia. Soon we were conducting wars and diplomacy while waiting for the train to start up again. Later it seemed like multiple people in the group had downloaded the game as well. Finally, after moving backwards a couple times, the train started up again and we headed back to the station and took a van back to Cuzco.
