Machu Picchu por 2008 & Cuzco para el cumpliaños de Max!

What a way to end the año viejo and begin el año nuevo! On the 31st de Diciembre Max and I got up at5am to catch a bus to a train which took us to the 104 mile marker of the famous Inka trail to hike into Machu Picchu. It took us about 7 hours. It was AMAZING! The hike really was not all that difficult after being at relatively similar altitudes for the last month, we had no problems. It was beautiful as you´ll see from the pictures. It rained on us for a few hours but by the time we got to la Puerta del sol ¨the Sun Gate¨ the sky opened up to blue and we were able to get out of our funny rain ponchos. Una vista buena! We then hiked down to Machu Picchu and arrived just in time to snap off a few photos as dusk approached and hike down to Aguas Calientes por el noche. We had a nice dinner and then celebrated El Año Nuevo en la ciudad central con la gente de Aguas Calientes. We counted down to midnight in the town center with locals and tourists. It was a riot, lots of yellow, which brings good luck for the new year. We then headed back to the room just before 1 to awake at 5:00am on the first morning of 2008(4 hours of sleep). We were we stoked to be the first bus up the mountain (as promised) but it turned out our guide didn´t go home until later than us. He had to be woken up and was a bit ´resaca´(hungover), so needless to say we were a tad upset. Max was actually pacing in the street anxious to see the first light hit the sacred ruins. Regardless, we made it to M.P. by 7:30am, had a 2 hour tour explaining the ruins (which was very interesting) which were suprisingly intact, and then we had free time in which Max, a girl from our group and I used to hike to the top of the famous ¨Wayna Picchu¨ (huge mountain in back drop of all the famous pictures of Machu Picchu) which ´topped´ off our journey to this magical location. It was an awesome vertical ascent which included crawling through a little cave in order to reach the absolute summit. And, as an added bonus, I got a sunburn! Hurts, but how often can you say you got a sunburn on the first day of the year? (well, in North America at least.)

So, that brings us to today, Max´s 28th birthday!! Turns out it´s also a big day here, ¨Cuzco Day¨, so we enjoyed a wonderful desayuno (breakfast) and plan to explore a bit more today and celebrate en la noche.

Our Spanish has been coming along well, although we still make MANY mistakes which we need to work on. We had two women in our hiking group who were from Spain and only spoke Spanish, so we practiced a lot with them and our guide. We´ve actually been getting quite a few compliments of surprise on how well our Spanish is for only studying 3 weeks. This is great and inspires us to speak more and learn more. It is SO frustrating when we can´t get an idea across or understand someone, so that feeds the fire to keep learning.

Well, FELIZ AÑO NUEVO!! We wish you all a very wonderful new year and look forward to hearing from you all. Tomorrow we are off to Uruguay. Another LONG layover (30 + hours), but that´s part of traveling on a shoe string. :)
Vanessa y Max