for $40 in only 10 steps, hooray! OK so being the masters of doing things on our own we didn’t book an Inca Trail tour in Cusco or even worse – before coming to Cusco (DON’T DO THAT!). A common mistake of a traveler is that they book a tour from home because they’re scared it all might be booked by the time they get there. It’s so bad that people end up paying $500 for a 4 day Inca Trail. So whoever is going to Cusco and thinking of doing an Inca Trail – just GET TO CUSCO and book it there, you can go the next day. You can do it for $150 – 5 days, trekking, biking, food and accommodation included. Now that’s a good deal. Still, if you don’t care about the trail too much and will do all your real hiking in Patagonia or something… you can do it our way and you’ll be in Aguas Calientes at 5 PM:
1- take a bus from Santiago Station in Cusco at 7 AM to Quillabamba
2- get off at Santa Maria
3- take a local shuttle from Santa Maria to Santa Teresa
4- take a local shuttle from Santa Teresa to Hidroelectrica*
5- walk on the tracks from Hidroelectrica to Aguas Calientes, 2h walk, flat **
6- buy a ticket for Machu Picchu, $20 students / $40 full price
7- starti hiking at 4:30 AM to get there before anyone else
8- when you enter, go to the bottom of Wayna Picchu (through the city of Machu Picchu) and get yourself a TICKET (free) to enter Wayna Picchu. You can climb it anytime you want until 11AM, i think. The key thing is to GET the ticket, because only 400 people/day are allowed to climb it.
9- go back to the entrance and take the ‘Long Way’ up to the terraces. That is where the photo above has been taken from. You would think it’d be crowded but most of the tourists go straight down to the ‘town’. HaHA!
10- take the same way home the next morning. 9AM is early enough.
* You can trek this part of the way, takes about 2 hours. In that case you might want to sleep over in Santa Maria because it will get dark and you don’t want to walk the last bit to Aguas at night.
** There is a train you can catch at 3:30 going from Hidro to Aguas and it costs $8 and takes about 20min/ half an hour. Whether you take the train or decide to walk you will see Machu Picchu and Wayna Picchu up on your right after crossing the Urubamba river (red steel bridge). If the weather is nice you’ll be able to see the Machu terraces.
Note: The train to Machu Picchu is owned by a British person. Now you know who all that money goes to.
Fotke: click
Aj lahk leps… iiiiiiiii!