See you soon,

Andy

Headed home soon remains copyright of the author Hughes9115, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Christ Statue and views above Rio remains copyright of the author Hughes9115, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Enjoy!

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Of course Rio is very famous for its beaches. It was ridiculously crowded on the weekend as you can see in the pictures below.
At one point a helicopter had to come to save a little boy that had been swept out too far. The waves are huge and crash right on the beach so its pretty easy to get yourself into trouble like that.

A few days ago I went to the Sugar Loaf which is a famous lookout point in Rio. It was cloudy but we still got some good views.

The Sugar Loaf is the pointy rock on the right side of this picture.

Yesterday I went on a tour of a favela (poor/slum neighborhood). I almost didnt go on this tour but then I read about the tour company online and found out that they fund a daycare operation inside the favela. It seemed like a good organization.

This favela has 200,000 people living in it and its the biggest one in Latin America.

Usually favelas are near rich areas of the city because many people living in the favela work in the rich neighborhoods.
This is the view from the top of the favela.

The local band.

The house on the left looks like its going to fall over any minute.
There is no more space for the favela to grow larger, so they are now building UP. Some of the buildings have 3 or 4 foors now which seems quite dangerous because the construction is so poor.

We visited the daycare center that the tour agency helps out with. The kids were really playful.

Look how cute this little guy is.

More favela pictures

Check this out. Everyone just taps into the power supply illegally. Looks pretty safe!!

Favela kid and some grafitti.

The favela is pretty safe with very little crime (other than drug trade). The gang in charge of this area doesnt want the police coming inside the neighborhood so they make sure there is no robbery or fighting.

When we were on our way out of the favela we saw a gang member with a big assult rifle. Woah.. I decided not to take a picture of him though....I dont think he would have appreciated that very much.

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BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
LA BOCA NEIGHBORHOOD

A few days later I got on a boat and headed over to Montevido to catch a flight to Rio in Brazil.
Many people told me that Montevideo was like Buenos Aires 50 years ago. I tend to agree. It was much more relaxed than BA. One difference that we noticed was that the cars actually slow down or stop when you are crossing the street. In BA...they speed up like they are TRYING to hit you.

Some pics of Montevideo, Uruguay

Wandering around town with people from Ireland, Germany and Canada.

Drinking MATE (hot tea) with some Germans on the rooftop of our hostel.

This dog looked very sad....poor guy.

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After finishing up with 1 week of Spanish classes in Buenos Aires I decided to head 4 hours north along the river to Rosario. I had met a guy from Rosario about a month or so ago while travelling in Mendoza and he invited me to Rosario to visit. Guido is the one on the far right of the picture.

My first night there was a Wednesday and Guido´s friends took me to a VERY interesting bar/club called Roswell. I cannot describe this place very easily. Ask me about it when I get home and Ill try to explain it.

Here are some pictures I took while walking around a monument in Rosario.

The next night Guido had planned a big Asado (BBQ) at a friends house. He was the cook for the night and it was cool to see how they cook it up Argentina style.

Here is Guido working his magic as the Asador (grillmaster).

They use charcoal and cook with low heat. I think the steaks were on there for over an hour.

We had a great time and I met a lot of Guido´s friends that night.

Rosario is on the banks of the Parana River and there is a small but very nice beach there. These pictures were not taken on the weekend, but I went back on Saturday and it was packed. Yeah!!

I saw an ad for a drifting competition with cars brought from Japan. I thought that this was strange for this area so I went to check it out. The track was pretty weak but the cars were cool to see since they are very hard, if not impossible, to get in the United States. After the competition I was feeling adventurous so I decided to hitch hike back to town. I stood there with my thumb out for about 2 min and the 5th or 6th car that passed stopped and took me into town. No problems....I should do that more often.

Nissan Skyline

Nissan 240SX (S15)

Ernesto (Che) Guevara was born in Rosario. The first picture is near his house and the second is a monument/painting nearby.

There was a huge cultural festival in Rosario for the week. There were tents from many different countries with their local food and many had a stage with some traditional dancing too. I walked around the fair with 2 lesbians from Buenos Aires for a few hours. Good times!

Near the fairgrounds.

I tiny little bar in the middle of a park that I thought was cool.

Rainstorm rolling into Rosario.

If you are ever in Argentina I highly recommend a visit to Rosario.

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Best perfomers (in my opinion)
1) Carl Cox
2) Chemical Brothers
3) Dubfire
4) Hernan Cattaneo
5) Zuker XP

27) Digweed

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We went to the football game shown below, but without a digital camera. But Scott found these on the web to show how crazy the fans are at these games.

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Map of my route through southern Argentina remains copyright of the author Hughes9115, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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A safe sex public service announcement from the health department that is posted all over Buenos Aires.

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GLACIER NEAR EL CALAFATE, ARGENTINA

Look at the people in the lower left hand corner. They help give you the scale of this thing.
Its huge!!

After the glacier I headed a few hours north to a national park. The plan was to stay there for about 5 days of 1 day hikes. However, the weather was bad for the first 2 days so I just did one hike and then decided to leave. As far as I could tell there was absolutely nothing to do in the town except go hiking. It was the off season so there were not many people around to hang out with.

EL CHALTEN, ARGENTINA

Cool shop with a climbing wall in the side

Beginning of hike in El Chalten

End of hike in El Chalten

The mountain that I couldnt really see because of the clouds.

People that I met on the trail and hiked back with.

When I left El Chalten I headed back over to Chile to see the Torres del Paine National Park. Its the most famous park in Patagonia. I stayed in a really cool hostel called Erratic Rock. The owner also writes a local newspaper about hiking in the area so they had a lot of information and a huge movie collection for rainy days. I met an English guy there who was finishing a trip from Vancouver, Canada all the way to the southern tip of Chile.....on a motorcycle. Actually, he was a mechanical engineer who was working as a designer for the last few years and then decided to go on a long trip. That sounds familiar for some reason. Anyway, he offered me a ride from Puerto Natales to the Park on the back of his Triumph motorcycle. I put on 3 pairs of pants, 4 shirts, 2 coats, my miners backpack, and a helmet and jumped on. It was freezing cold but it was cool because we could stop whenever we wanted to take pictures, unlike the people on the bus. Plus it was free.

TORRES DEL PAINE NATIONAL PARK, CHILE

Geared up.

Tom gassing up the bike

First view of the park and the Torres del Paine

Classic shot (not a setup)

If you see this guy on the side of the road someday with a broken motorcycle, please help him out. Cool goggles!!

More views of the park and its lakes during the 2 days I was hiking there.

It was really great to be able to drink the water from any moving stream in the park. It was perfectly clear, cold and tasted amazing.

After a grueling 30km (about 17 miles) hike over the course of 8 hours on the 2nd day I was dead and half insane. I think I was talking to myself for the last 2 hours trying to stay motivated to keep going. I thought it would be a good idea to hike the extra 10km to avoid having to take an expensive ferry ride back to the bus. It wasn´t exactly worth it because I paid for it when I got sick two days later.

After the trek I went back to Argentina and caught a flight to Buenos Aires.

Here are some shots from around the city. There are some pretty nice parks and a lot of people come out of the office for an hour or two at lunch time and hang out and eat there. Really nice atmosphere.

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

Ive stayed in a lot of hostels in the last 5 years but this is the first I´ve seen that has triple decker bunks. Crazy.

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I spent a lot of my time in Mendoza figuring out how to get my new Bank card sent down and waiting to pick it up. I also managned to find a new camera charger near the end of my stay there. One night I managed to meet up with a friend that I had met in 2005 in in Morocco, we have been in contact through email sporadically throughout the last few years so it was cool to see him.

I liked the town of Mendoza but it wasnt spectacular by any means. Below are a few pictures of random things from Mendoza.

MENDOZA, ARGENTINA

Quilmes is the most popular beer in Argentina.

Guido from Rosario, Argentina and a girl from the Netherlands.

An interesting type of truck I´ve never seen before.

A cool car about the size of a Mini Cooper but I think its a Fiat.

The next generation of race tires from Kumho (the same brand I used to use while racing the Integra). The Power Racer 2 is supposed to be some pretty advanced stuff....haha

After Mendoza I headed down to Bariloche, Argentina which is on the northern fringe of Patagonia. We were there in the off season but it looked like a pretty cool ski lodge town that would be really happening in the middle of winter (June). I was travelling with a guy named David from England at the time and we decided to rent bikes and ride to the base of the ski slopes and see if we could get a cable car to the top. The views were great and the pictures are below. I used to snow board about 10 or 11 years ago on the little hills in Ohio. Visiting this resort made me want to pick it up again. Maybe I will......

BARILOCHE, ARGENTINA

Below are some of the pictures from back in the town of Bariloche. There is a big lake there, which is pretty nice. Even though the weather wasn´t great we went for a long walk in a national park nearby. A few dogs from one of the hotels found us and followed us for about 2 or 3 hours. There were were 3 of them and 2 of them were pretty smart. At one point we went the wrong way and the smart ones just stopped in the middle of the road and refused to follow us anymore. The young ¨dumb¨one followd us for another hour or so. When we got on the bus back to town at the end of the park the dog looked so confused and sad. We felt bad about leaving him there but had not choice.

Lake shore

View from town

Lake

The dogs that followed us all day.

David getting ready to cook dinner. He loves to cook, can you tell?

After Bariloche we took another LONG (maybe 16 hour) bus ride towards Puerto Madryn on the East coast of Argentina. I decided to leave Bariloche a few hours early and stop in another town about 4 hours south to break up the trip. When I arrived at the bus station I checked my backpack into a storage facility and was about to walk around town when two plain clothes police officers came up to me asking if I had any drugs. I didnt believe they were real police so I just walked away, then one of them grabbed me pretty forcefully and kept talking in Spanish. I said if they wanted to search my bag we had to go to the police station. One guy pulls out his cell phone and calls someone to come pick us up. They wanted me to give them my passport but I didnt want to give it up so I gave them a copy instead. Then I´m thinking, wait a second, I dont want to get in a car with these guys so I tell them Im not going to the station unless we can walk there (it was a really small town). When I said that they asked if I had any drugs again. I said no. Then they let me go. Sounds strange but when I saw a police officer in uniform later on in town I asked him and he confirmed that they had guys doing searches at the bus station. I think I handled it alright...not to toot my own horn or anything.

The main reason to go to Puerto Madryn is to see the Southern Right Whales and some Penguins there. The whale trip was a lot different than the whale trip in Ecuador because the whales werent jumping out of the water, but they were curious and swimming right up to the side of the boat. At times they were almost touching the boat. I think they are the only type of whale without a dorsal fin and generally speaking they are pretty ugly and have strange crustaceans on their bodies. Either way it was pretty impressive to see them so close to the boat.

PUERTO MADRYN, ARGENTINA

David was wearing his life jacket around on land all day. What a strange guy.

There were also huge elephant seals on part of the trip. Cool, huh?

You cant see it too well in this picture, but the whales are very close to the shore.

Some penguins....Scott was excited when he saw these pictures. For some reason he loves penguins.

While in Puerto Madryn we also managed to find a bar that would allow us to watch the final Formula One race of the season. It was an interesting race to watch so I´m glad I didnt miss that. After the whales and the F1 race, we were read to move on. Oh yeah, I got a haircut there too.

Me after travelling for 4 months without a haircut.

When we left Puerto Madryn we got on another LONG bus trip, this time about 24 hours in total to get to El Calafate. The road was long and straight and there wasnt much to look at. But the sunset was amazing. I slept most of the time and attempted to read a magazine using the electronic spanish translator that I had my dad send me.

Sunset headed south along the east coast.

Random Pic:
Race car parked out front of a house.

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Typical Bolivian city bus. Looks like a school bus from the 60s or somthing.

Pictures I´m currently adding to some old posts. remains copyright of the author Hughes9115, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Most of the pictures were taken in Sorata, Bolivia. Sorata is located about 3 hours northwest of La Paz. I think Sorata normally has about 2000 residents but the weekend I was there was their annual festival so there were many vistors from the surrounding communities.

The photo below was taken in La Paz, not Sorata and needs some explanation. When I first arrived in La Paz I was surprised to see a lot of people with ski masks on. It turns out that most of them are the shoe shiners and some are the trash collectors. As far as I can tell they are wearing these masks to hide themselves from the shame in their jobs. Very interesting to see.

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My last stop in Peru was Puno on the coast of Lake Titicaca. The thing to do here is take a trip out to the floating islands. It was pretty interesting because they acually were FLOATING ISLANDS with people living on them. When a large boat went past the whole island would move around. Its basically just a tourist attraction now because I dont think anyone would be living there anymore if it werent for the tourists coming and paying for tours. Either way it was an interesting way to kill a few hours.

Below are some pictures from when I first entered Bolivia. As soon as we crossed the border on the bus there was a festival going on.

A well dressed young lad with his mother twirling aorund behind him. Look how much fun he is having.

Just an example of one of the very simple streets in the town called Copacabana on the coast of Lake Titicaca

From Copacabana I took a 2 hour boat ride out to the Isla del Sol. To be honest it wasnt worth the 2 hour boat ride but at least I got to go out onto Lake Titicaca. Here is a picture....its nice, but not spectacular.

When I left Copacabana on a bus to La Paz I learned that there was one section that couldnt be crossed in the bus. The procedure here is to put the people on small boats and load the bus onto this barge. I think there was one tiny little outboard motor with about 40 or 50 horsepower that had to push this thing across. It took a long time...... Anywhere else there would be a bridge, but not in Bolivia.

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I havent posted in awhile so I just wanted to write a quick one until I have time to upload some pictures and the daily chain of events (maybe Tuesday or Wednesday).

Since the last post, Scott and I travelled around the southwestern part of Bolivia and northern Chile for about 5 days. The trip was pretty awesome and we have a lot of good pictures. If youve seen Scotts pictures then you know what I mean..... if not I will post them soon.

Ive been in Santiago for the last 5 days or so and Im living in Scotts appartment at the moment. We are taking 4 hours of Spanish classes every day and having a good time. After Spanish class is over at 1PM I have a lot of time to wander around, relax and read. Ive actually been reading quite a bit lately. I read Deception Point by Dan Brown and Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. Right now Im reading The Broker by John Grisham. Its pretty easy to kill a 400 or 500 page book in a day or two when you have the time I spent a lot of time last week looking for 2 books that I really want to read. One is called Marching Powder and is about the life in San Pedro prison (see below), and the other is called Shantaram about a guy who escapes from prison in Australia, moves to India and becomes a doctor in the slums (i think). Anyone read either of those?

Holger sent me the below link....thanks Holger. Its about the San Pedro Prison that I talked about in my last post. There are some pictures and some information about how crazy life is in the prison. Check it out!!.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/
picture_gallery/06/americas_inside_a_bolivian_jail/html/1.stm

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I decided to go on another mountain biking trip. I ended up meeting a guy who runs some pretty aggresive downhill mountian biking trips and decided to go to the nearby town of Sorata with him. It turned out there was a huge festival in Sorata (Fri, Sat, Sun) so it worked out great. We left La Paz on Saturday morning at 10 AM and drove 2 hours towards Sorata. The final leg of the trip to Sorata was a 4 hour downhill ride on a very narrow Inca trail. The others in the group were not paying tourists like myself...they were experienced downhill mountain bikers with all their own gear. I was definitly the novice of the group. Within the first 10 minutes I found myself at the bottom of a 6 foot sink hole because I was not able to orient myself correctly to pass a narrow 6 to 8 inch wide section of the rocky path. I think I had the guide worried for a moment that I wouldnt be able to keep up, but after that incident I kept up with them pretty well. Below you can see the narrow Inca trail that we were riding on.

Sorata Mountains
/

At the end of the ride I was exhausted and sore. Travis, the guide, said it was time to take the bikes to the storage unit and I was happy that I had made it through the day without any injurys. Next thing I know he bombs down a huge flight of stairs. There were little kids all around me encouraging me to go as well. It was too late to chicken out but I knew that if I crashed and burned the kids would have a field day making fun of me. Luckily I made it down without incident.

The next day I relaxed in Sorata and enjoyed the festival. They had even converted their football stadium into a bull ring for their annual bull fight. It didnt really turn out to be a bull fight though....they didnt try to kill the bull, they were basically just teasing the bull for awhile.

Bullfight Spectators

After taking a bus back to La Paz I checked into Adventure Brew hostal. It turned out to be pretty nice, clean and had a free pancake breakfast in the morning. On top of all that, it has its own micro-brewery and every night that you stay there you get a free beer.

The next morning I wandered around La Paz with the intention of seeing two sites, the Coca Museo and the San Pedro Prison. The Coca Museo was intersting but small. It talked about the significance of the coca plant for the local people, the changes that occured when the Spanish arrived and a little about the production of cocaine.

After the Coca Museo I headed to San Pedro Prison to have a look. An English guy I met told me about a book called MARCHING POWDER (I think) that is set in San Pedro Prison and it sounded pretty crazy. I expected there to be some sort of tour or something but what I saw when I arrived was very surprising. As I walked along the sidewalk in front of the prison (which happens to be in the middle of a neighborhood) I looked to my right and there, 10 feet off of the sidewalk, was a large gate with hundreds of prisoners peering through the bars. Some guy form Holland starts yelling at me in English to help him because he has no food and no money. According to the kid who read the book, the prisoners inside have to buy their own food and can even buy their own property inside the prison. None of the prisoners had uniforms on, it looked like they all had their normal clothes on from they day they were thrown in there. I asked the guy what happened (still standing on the sidewalk in the middle of the neighborhood) and he told me he was in there for drugs. How long? I asked. 28 months.....WITH NO TRIAL, he yelled back. After a few more minutes talking with him and the guards he wanted me to come in and talk to him and I think the guards were going to allow it. However, the thought of going too close and being stuck in there for 28 months for no reason scared me a bit so I bailed back to the hostal.

Next, I decided to catch a night bus to Potosi to check out the silver mines. This would be my first night bus of the trip but I had a nice seat that reclined almost all the way into a bed so I didnt think it would be too bad. I actually slept pretty well, which turned out to be part of my problem. I had heard a few stories lately about backpacks being stolen from the bottom cargo hold of the bus so I decided to take my bag on board with me. I had my small bag under my feet and my bigger bag directly over my head. After reading for a bit I fell asleep like everyone else. When I woke up in the morning, my large bag that I had stashed over my head was gone. The bus had made a stop or 2 in the middle of the night and someone made off with my bag. All he (or she) really got out of the deal was a nice backpack filled with random half dirty clothes and a cheap sleeping bag. Now I´m travelling really light with just a small shoulder bag. I went to the market today and bought some sweatpants, 3 shirts, 3 pairs of underwear and 3 pairs of socks for about 30 USD. I think this setup should at least keep me warm until I make it down to Santiago.

Even though my bag just got ¨nicked¨ as the English say, I decided not to let it bring my trip to a standstill. After I filled out a police report (just for the hell of it) I headed out on a tour to check out the Silver mines. This turned out to be pretty intense. First we suit up in some miner gear and head to the miners market where we are supposed to buy presents for the miners. Did I mention this is an active mine that is being mined by hand by kids as young as 15 years old? Anyway, we bought them some coca leaves, some soda and some dynamite. Yeah, it was sick how easy it was for me to walk into a store and buy 2 sticks of dynamite (Nitroglycerin) and 2 small plastic bags of Ammonium Nitrate. After a brief tour of the silver processing plant we dove into the mine. It looked exactly like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Very narrow dark passageways with a narrow train track setup running down the middle and Bolivian miners running everywhere. Once we were in a narrow tunnel and heard a train of rocks barreling down the tracks....the guides yelled and we all had to run out of the tunnel to a wider area before we were crushed by the 3 small train cars full of stone. As we made our way deeper and deeper into the mine we stopped, talked to the miners and gave them presents. Apparently, some of the miners work a few 8 hour shifts a week followed by a 24 hour shift. Crazy. There were many differenty mining ¨groups¨as they were called (like cooperatives) and some were well off and some were not. The well off ones had electric motors to hoist the huges baskets of stone from the depths of the mine, small gas powered tractor things to pull the train cars of stone out of the mine, and pneumatic jackhammers. The groups with less money had do to all the labor by hand: hoisting, pushing carts, and hammering with a baby sledge hammer. Wow. It was tough to walk through the mine without thinking of the possibility of an earthquake ruining my day. After making it out of there, losing my backpack didnt seem like such a big deal.

Mine Entrance

Train used to transport rocks

I think this guy said he has been working in this mine for 25 years.

Mine access tunnel

Me in the mine hoping for no earthquakes

Me holding dynamite

Me in mine access tunnel

Oh yeah, we kept one of the sticks of dynamite and the guide showed us how to arm it and then we set it off outside the mine. Something tells me that this tour would not be allowed in the States (or most other countries for that matter)...perhaps a little too dangerous. I´m looking forward to a calm and hopefully safe next few days.

Tomorrow morning I´m headed to meet up with Scott again to tour the Salt Flats of south western Bolivia. After that I´ll head south through Argentina on land or fly directly to Santiago a day or 2 after Scott.

Send emails.......and don´t worry about the backpack, Ill live. I´m sure whoever stole it is in much worse shape than I am.

Andy

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Here is the phone number that you can call to leave me a message.

614-364-4282

This number will allow you to leave a voicemail on my SKYPE account which I usually check at least once a week.

Inness is the only person thats been leaving me messages, thanks Inness, so I wondered if the rest of you had this number or not.

Feel free to give me a call and then, if the computer I'm on has a mic, I will be able to call you back for only 2 cents a minute.

Later,
Andy

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andrewcharleshughes@gmail.com

Thanks,
Andy

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About 3 months ago a large truck fell off the edge and many people died. The people from the surrounding area held protests in La Paz because they were angry that it was taking too long to open the NEW road which is a lot safer. As a result the government rushed the opening of the new road and now most vehicle traffic takes the new road. This was nice because we didnt have to deal with traffic on the way down.

Here is a picture showing what it was like at 4700 meters at the start of the trip.

During second half of the trip the road became very narrow.

Here is an example of what often happens when the truck drivers are too tired to navigate the tight turns and narrow road.

A good pic showing how steep the cliff is.

At the end of the trip the climate was dramatically different. It was like 75 degrees and sunny. Amazing.

Here is where we had a nice buffet lunch that was included in the tour.

Beautiful mountain range near La Paz

PS:

One of the guys in our group was from Italy. The below picture shows the worst fashion disaster I have ever seen.

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2 days ago I crossed from Peru into Bolivia. I spent 2 nights in Copacabana and took a boat trip out onto Lake Titicaca to check out some islands. My first night in Bolivia the whole town lost power during a huge thunderstorm so we had to wander back to the Hostel in complete darkness. People told me that things work kind of upside down and backwards in Bolivia and the power outage was the first indication that it might be true. The other thing I heard was that Bolvia was very inexpensive. The fact that I paid $1.39 per night for my hotel room is proof....amazing.

Now I´m in La Paz and I´m getting up early to do some downhill mountain biking in the morning. I think we are going to start at 4670m above sea level and a few hours later we arrive at the bottom which is less than 2000m so it should be an intersting trip. I went to the shop today to check out the bikes. They are pretty cool bikes that cost about $3500 dollars and have full front and rear suspension and front and rear disk brakes. I´ll try to have some pics up soon.

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On Friday night we packed our bags with the essential items. Tent, sleeping pads, sleeping bags, about 2 days worth of food and approx. 5 liters of water. We were not sure when and where we would be able to buy food and water so we decided to play it safe and take more than usual.

On Saturday morning we left Cusco in a shared taxi headed for the small town of Santa Maria. There is not much to see in Santa Maria but it was a perfect starting point for our hike. We set up camp on a concrete slab inside a hostal courtyard and then headed to dinner. The reastaraunt we chose only had one dish...chicken. I was skeptical but it turned out to be some of the best chicken I've ever had, no joke. If you're ever headed to Santa Maria let me know and I'll tell you were to find it.

We woke up a little sore and wet on Sunday due to the concrete slab we were sleeping on and the rain in the middle of the night. Within an hour we were hiking towards the next distination, Santa Teresa. As I mentioned before we had decided to do this trek without a guide so we didnt really know what we were getting into. After about 2 or 3 hours the trail got a bit tricky and we were started to wonder if we were going the right way. We saw a mountain hut and decided to go ask if we were on the right track. If not, we were prepared to turn back and find another way (taxi) to Santa Teresa. About 20 minutes after we arrived at the moutain hut a guide showed up leading 2 Spanish guys. We decided to follow them for the next leg of the trip because the path was so confusing.

Bridge ruined by a landslide on the way out of Santa Maria. Landslides are very common here.

During the next few hours we hiked an Inca trail along the edge of a mountain. The view were amazing. See photos below.

Just relaxing and enjoying the amazing view.

Scott headed into the dense Jungle

Me near the highest point of the trail for the day

Scott carefully navigating the narrow path along the Inca trail.

After a few more hours, a few bridge crossings and a rickety cable car river crossing we made it to Santa Teresa. We found a legit campsite with actual grass (we were thrilled to have a grass campsite after the concrete the previous night). Take a look at the view from our tent on Monday morning. Notice the family of chickens walking past.

We expected Monday's hike to be less challenging than the previous day and that turned out to be true. The day started out with another cable car crossing. The only difference was that this time we were solo (without guide and Spanish guys) which made the crossing a bit more exciting. See picture below of Scott in the tiny little basket crossing the river.

Here is a pic of Scott as we were hiking towards Aguas Calientes at the base of Machu Picchu.

Half way to Aguas Calientes we reached the hydroelectric plant where the road stopped and we had to decide to wait 2 hours for the train to Aguas (8 USD), or just walk along the tracks. We decided to walk along the tracks and we made it to Aguas shortly after the train.

Taking a break along the train tracks on the way to Aguas.

Here Scott is trying to use commando tactics. He thought he could calculate the trains distance from the vibrations in the track....what a dork.

On Tuesday morning we decided to get up at 330AM so that we could start our hike by 4AM. Our hope was that we would be able to make it up to the MP gate before the first tour bus arrived. Without our large backpacks we were able to make it up to the gate in only an hour and 20 minutes. We were first in the line!!! It was great because the tour group behind us had hiked up early as well because they REALLY wanted to be first in line. They sounded pretty disappointed that we beat them!!
When the gates opened at 6AM we ran up the path which rose in elevation a few hundred feet in order to get the first pictures. The goal was to get some pictures without any schmucks in the background.

Check out these pictures from around 6AM before the clouds had lifted. It looks like we are floating.

After the first couple shots we headed to a lookout point on the other side of the ruins. We were with some Ecuadorian kids and we had the whole area to ourselves so we broke out the Fiesta Caja and played some Radiohead and some techno for about 45 minutes as the clouds lifted......Amazing....

Next we up another 1000 or 1500 feet to Wayna Picchu. There were quite a few ruins up there as well and the view of MP from up there were great.

Below are some other pictures from between 10AM and 2 PM that turned out pretty decent...

Trying to be fancy with the camera....I don't really know what I'm doing though.

In the afternoon we just chilled out on one of the lower terraces and listened to music. Here is a pic of Scott dancing....the Fiesta Caja was really pumping out some killer base hits that afternoon.

This view shows the road that the bus takes up to MP. We hiked right up the middle of the switchbacks (through the jungle) instead of following the road.

Another view of MP.

Hike to Machu Picchu remains copyright of the author Hughes9115, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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