MACHU PICCHU!

yesterday we visited Machu Picchu! It was out of this world. We left the hostal at 3:30 in the morning and started hiking the trail around 4. we finally got there around 5 in the morning and were the first ones there!! We didn´t have our tickets bought, so we didn´t actually get to enter the park first. But it was amazing anyways. The tour guide said that this was sort of the spiritual capital of the Incan empire. Only about 500 people lived there and they were probably doctors, priests, virgins, and healers. The mountain is in a strategic location because you can see the whole valley from the city. Pachacutec was the emperor who united all of the groups by force, so he had to have several strongholds. There were no bodies or gold found in Machu Picchu except one woman´s body a little ways from the main part of the city. This leaves archaeologists to believe that the city was abandoned as the Spanish were conquering the heart of the Incan empire. The ruins were not found by the Spaniards, therefore they remain entact. The city was not as much as a beautiful city but a normal Incan city. This is the only example of a city that remains in the world ... that we know of.

We climbed everywhere and climbed places where if we fell, we´d die, but it was SOOO worth it. It´s hard to explain without pictures, so I´ll have to show y´all when we get home!