Travel Diary: Machu Picchu, Peru

I was able to check off a true bucket list item on this trip with a visit to the magical land of the Incas.

Getting to Machu Picchu, even with the comfort of modern travel, takes a bit of doing. The Peruvians have an incredible system for getting folks to and from the former Incan city, but Machu Picchu sits in the highlands of the Andes Mountains at an elevation of nearly 8,000 feet above sea level. Even after reaching the remote mountain town of Urabamba, we would still need to ride a pair of buses and a train each way to see this wonder of the world.

Our day began at 05:45 with a bus pickup at our hotel. From our hotel we rode the thirty or so minutes to the train station at Ollantaytambo where we could catch our Inca Rail ride to the village of Aguas Calientes, the modern town set just below the ruins. We boarded our train and pulled out of the station just after 7:00 am.

The train ride to Machu Picchu is breathtaking. Ollantaytambo sits at a higher elevation than the ancient city, so the train descends along the Urabamba River which runs violently down the mountain churning up river ra…