Machu Picchu

After a 4:30 start and a 5:30am bus I arrived at the park at 6:10. It was raining (funny thing about rainforests), and completely fogged in. I hired a guide and by 7am the rain has stopped and the fog started to lift. Simply awesome.

Machu Picchu means old peak and is a 15th-century Inca site located at 2,430 metres. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Sacred Valley which is 80 kilometres northwest of Cusco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas" (which is what Hiram Bongham was actually searching for when he stumbled across it), it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilisation.

The Incas built the city around 1450, but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by Yale Professor Hiram Bingham (on whom apparently Inidiana Jones was modeled). The city was in disrepair and most of the buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like.