MACHU PICCHU

First stop: Cuzco

In order to get to Ollantaytambo from Cuzco, we had to take a van with a bunch of locals up a really windy road..a two hour ride up and around mountains! Of course we were in the back seat. blehhhhh. Sarah almost threw up.

At least the scenery was beautiful.

Somehow we recovered in Ollantantambo. Sucking coca leaves and drinking the coca tea may have helped.

Then we took a train to Aguas Calientes.

We felt so attacked in A.C. by people trying to sell us stuff for ridiculous prices. Bargaining is hard! They weren't very nice about it either. Whether we got a good deal or a bad deal, we felt bad either way.
The next morning we woke up at 4am to hike up to Machu Picchu, instead of taking the bus, cuz we're cheap! We quickly regretted it. The 1.5 hr hike up the mountain, just stair after stair, was torture.

 *false expression, Justina is actually in lots of pain

 We basically climbed the whole mountain.

Once we got up to MP it was gorgeous..just like in the pictures!

We even tried to reenact the MP ad from all the airports.

Then we had to hurry to do an additional hour hike up Waynapicchu, the mountain of DEATH dundundunnn.*the really tall mountain in the distance, above and below

 BIG. the sign isn't lying.

The stairs were SO SCARY. We were both freaking out, because most of the stone stairs have no railing to protect you from a 8,800 ft plunge of pain. But it's so worth it for the view.

Obligatory jumping pics.

 That's Machu Picchu in the distance.

And then...

LLAMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The baby llama was happy to let Justina hug it in exchange for a nice back-of-neck scratch. All the naysayers who said llamas are mean were wrong. They just need some good luvin.

YAY!