Hi ho, oh shit! Are we there? Damn right we are...

Apparently it's traditional to see Machu Pichu as sunrise. Hence we were woken at 4am this morning so that we could climb the last 8km or so to "The sun gate". It was manic. For some reason lots of people get very competitive when they're this close to the final destination. The biggest risk at this stage is being barged off the trail by some impatient fuckwit that desperate to get to Machu Pichu incase it gets stolen or something. Really, what is wrong with these people? It's not like the ruins of a city are going somewhere is it? They've been there for long enough, I don't really think there's any reason to try and get there 10 milliseconds before for closest competitor?

Anyhoos, after an hour or so of climbing we finally arrived at the sungate. It was the biggest disappointment ever. The clouds didn't want to clear so we spent 40 minutes looking down at clouds. Yep, down at clouds. Did I mention that Machu Pichu is rather high in the Andes?

We carried on hiking and then reached the city itself. It was awesome. Having seen so many Inca ruins over the last few weeks I didn't think I was going to be dumb struck or anything. Wrong. Rather than a few buildings, it was of course a whole city. Nothing can prepare you for the size of the place. Even looking down on it I didn't get any grasp for the size of the place until I was walking amongst the walls. From above it didn't look that big but when you're inside - WOW.

We had a guided tour which took about 3 hours. And guess what? The visitor centre had real toilets! After 4 days of no running water or electricity we suddenly had real toilets! It was heavenly. I was sorely tempted to take a picture of the toilet but then I realised that no one reading this could possibly be so excited as me about the prospect of seeing a real working, flushing toilet.

After exploring we visited the nearest "real" town. A place called Aguas Calientes. Honesty we could have done without this. After 4 days pretty tough hiking we would have just preferred a hot shower. We were too tired to explore the town very much so we had lunch a drank loads of beer.

After that we caught a train and then a bus for the 5 hour trip back to Cuzco. We pretty much went straight to bed when we got back. I fall asleep wondering whether this really counts as a holiday as I'm feeling completely knackered...