On Christmas Eve day we woke up around 6am, left our big bags at the Airbnb apartment and left just with our day packs to spend the following two nights in Aguas Calientes, which is the village close to Machu Picchu. We walked to Plaza de Armas and waited for a van that had to pick us up and drive us to Hidroelectrica. After a while waiting in the main square, a woman came and told us to go to another square just one block away. We waited there with a bigger group of people and we heard many contradictory information about the road to get to Hidroelectrica: some said the road was closed due to a landslide caused by the heavy rain of the past few days and we should change vehicle after Santa Teresa and some said it was already repaired or that there was an alternative route. Anyway, the driver finally arrived one hour late and didn't clarify anything about the road status. The trip was even more delayed as the van needed to refuel. The driver was crazy, he started the engine and accelerate while refuelling the van! After that we finally left Cusco and started our trip. We stopped near Ollaytantambo for 30 minutes. A couple of hours drive later there was a truck blocking the road before Santa Maria, so we had to get an alternative way up to the mountains.
We finally arrived at Hidroelectrica around 15.30pm. We still had to walk 10km to arrive to Aguas Calientes, so we had to wake up if we wanted to arrive before the night comes. Luckily the way was nice and flat and it was not possible to get lost as we just had to follow the railway. We walked through a long bridge and a couple of tunnels and after around 2 hours we arrived to Aguas Calientes. When we got to the village it was already getting dark, so we walked to our hotel, which was still at the other side of the village. We booked the hotel through Airbnb as it was cheaper there, however it was the most expensive accommodation we've been in the whole Peru. While checking the booking for the next day to Machu Picchu we didn't find the confirmation email for the tickets, so we had to go to the bookings agency which was almost closing.
On Christmas day we woke up at 4.30am, got a packed breakfast at the hotel and went straight to the bus stop. There is only one bus company offering the service between Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu, so it's very expensive (12$ each way) and we had to book it the day before. There was already a lot of people waiting for the first bus from 5.30am. We finally got the 2nd bus, there was a bus every 2 minutes. We went up to the entrance of Machu Picchu and arrived there at 6am, there was already a long queue to get in.
We first went up to the main lookout point to make pictures but it was very foggy during the morning. So we decided to visit Puente del Inca first waiting for the fog to clear. It about 15 minutes each way to get there but in the way back it was still very foggy and even started to rain a bit, so we went down to Machu Picchu village and continued to the temples area.
At 10am we entered Wayna Picchu, it was a very steep one hour hike to the top. The steps to go up were very small, incan feet size. When we got to the top it was still foggy. We decided to rest for a bit at the top and around an hour later it finally started to clear. The views of Machu Picchu were amazing.
We went down again, exiting Wayna Picchu around 13h. From there we could only visit the second half of Machu Picchu, including Grupo de las Tres Puertas, Espejos de Agua and Templo del Condor. However, we managed to go back to the first half when Ari pretended that she was dehydrated, so I could exit and enter the complex again and take photos from the first lookout with plenty of sunshine. We finally exited the complex around 16h and we still had to walk down to Aguas Calientes as we didn't buy the bus ticket for the return. The way was around 1 hour but at least it was just going down. When we arrived back to the hotel in Aguas Calientes we wanted to rest for an hour and then go for dinner, however we were so tired that we fell asleep until next morning.
Next morning we woke up after around 12 hours sleep and had breakfast at the hotel. We walked up to the hot springs but didn't get in as for the same price we could have a 4x1 happy hour. So we stayed in a bar in the main street until midday and had lunch there as well. After this we got our bags and walked back to Hidroelectrica. We arrived there just before 3pm and got a van with the same driver back to Cusco. This time we didn't have to get the alternative route, but we had to cross a bridge that collapsed in a river just after Santa Teresa. After the long way back we arrived at Cusco around 21h. We went to Kathereen’s place to pick up our bags and got an Uber to our airbnb accommodation for that night, which was just across the street from the airport.
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