día cinco

we got up at 338am. since gary and karen didn´t have an alarm, katie went downstairs with a flashlight to wake them up. poor twan, sharing a room with two ladies, didn´t get a chance in the bathroom until five minutes before we had to leave, mostly because a certain weasel (no names) decided to wait till the morning to take a shower. we started out, at four am, walking down a dark path outside agua calientes (good thing dani brought a flashlight) in the jungle. our only directions were to walk down the bus route and take a left at a bridge at some point. it was great fun. when then came to a giant group of other backpackers waiting at a gated bridge that wouldn´t open for another 45 minutes. the night before, the guide had provided little bagged breakfasts for everyone - twan decided it was a good time to eat his entire breakfast. once the bridge opened, we poured across and found ourselves at the bottom of the path that led up the mountain. we were a little worried about bottle-necking, but it soon became apparent that climbing a set of stone steps up the side of a moutain tends to thin the group out a bit. sadly, we had to leave gary and karen behind, and were subsequently abandoned by twan and his culca canyon legs. an hour later, we staggered up the last steps and found ourselves at the entrance to machu picchu. once inside, we met our guide and the rest of our tour group, and the whole of machu picchu was revealed in the sunrise that was just breaking over the tops of the surrounding moutains.

after machu picchu, we arrived back in agua calientes to get lunch ... twan´s choice of chinese/mexican.*

*chexican.

we were all so tired, we stopped by the previous night´s hostel with said mean woman and asked if we could stay for a couple of hours and sleep, but at the price of 50 sols, we left and went to an internet cafe, where we spent the remainder of our afternoon listening to twan dutch on skype and dos señorita-ing. the train ride back was festive. we´d accidentally booked a first class train, and it was filled with well-to-do americans and south american business (or rather, just one, who was creepy and decided to swtich seats and sit across from katie and try to make weird conversation). dani went to sleep and somehow slept through this:

and then woke up for the fashion show:

once arrived at the station, we shared a taxi back to cusco with a girl who is traveling for the next eight months, lucky dog. we were starving, but barely able to function and didn´t want to waste energy on going out to dinner.