27th February 2015 – Machu Picchu to Cuzco

Today we rose before 5 am as we are off to Machu Picchu to watch the sun rise over the mountains and cast it’s first rays onto the stone walls of the site. We arrive at the bus station at about 5:25 and the buses are queued up waiting to take the tourists like us up the mountain. We are on bus 4 or 5 for the morning but still arrive in plenty of time to see the sun come up. We climb up to a good viewing spot and we aren’t disappointed.  We walk down into the ruins and Michael is on the trail of the water that flows through the site. We revisit the Temple of the Sun and the Inka houses ending up at the fountains after inspecting the sumps and water channels that in some cases have been drilled out through solid stone.  We make our way back to the bus stop by 8 am to catch a bus back down to Aquas Calientes and return to our hotel for breakfast & shower before checking out. Our next visit it the Museum in town which has a lot of interesting exhibits and films including original photos from 1912 when Hiram Bingham led an expedition into Machu Picchu to clear away the jungle that had overgrown the ruins, revealing basically what we see today.  We catch the 1:30pm train back to Ollantaytambo and then catch a bus back to be reunited with our little cars. We drive approximately 52 kilometers to Cuzco winding our way up out of the Sacred Valley through a wonderful patchwork of coloured fields where corn, potatoes, quinoa and other crops are growing. It is a very pretty drive on a great MG driving road.