A New Member of Kevin’s Top Three

5/18/10: Inca Trail, Peru

For a plethora of reasons, today might have been the most anticipated day of the trip. No other place on our itinerary required such a combination of time, effort, money and intestinal fortitude just in order to get a glimpse of it as did Machu Picchu. Sure, we hiked further and harder in Nepal. We paid comparatively more to see the gorillas in Uganda. We went further out of our way to get to Easter Island. But this had it all. And on top of that, it had more. We had heard from countless other tourists how this would be the best day of our trip. We had seen pictures of the ruins since we were in elementary school. And we had Dad and Steve who flew in from the States almost solely to share this experience with us.

We were not let down.

You may have seen these exact pictures countless times, but this time they’re a bit different: we took them! We witnessed Machu Picchu firsthand. Nothing could ruin these ruins for us. (Although at various points during the day my last night’s dinner attempted to come back up and soil the soil, but in the end it failed.)

The history behind Machu Picchu is incredibly interesting even for a guy who slept through every history class he ever took, but this isn’t a history blog so I won’t go there. And my elementary school level writing won’t be able to do any justice to this incredible ancient site, so I’ll let our pictures speak for themselves. (I’ll caption the pictures just in case you don’t understand them.)

We awoke at 3:30am, lined up at the gate at 4:30am and were released down the trail at 5:30am. Imagine Black Friday at Wal-Mart taking place on a skinny trail on a mountain and you'll have the exact opposite picture of the orderly speed-walking everyone did to get to Machu Picchu this morning.

Our first view of Machu Picchu, from the Sun Gate.

Only three of the 11 of us didn't get sick at some point, but we all made it.

Did Steve just eat the world's hottest chili pepper? Nope, that's just Machu Picchu.

Yellow flowers, courtesy of The Real Steve Curry.

Dad's cowboy hat had the best view of anyone.

Actually, our view was pretty good too.

The green lawns and pretty flowers are the government's attempt to make Machu Picchu more photogenic. It works.

Little known fact: they modeled Huayna Picchu after my face.

There is nothing but pure hate in this faux-bunny's eyes.

Try not to fall off the back side of Machu Picchu – it's a long way down.

I was sitting down to avoid throwing up.

No caption needed – what a honeymoon!

One of the most fascinating things about Machu Picchu is the exquisite stonework and the incredible ingenuity of how it was put together to withstand anything nature could throw its way.

Plus there are spots to keep Zhou-sized people out of the sun and rain.

Steve is definitely buff enough to have helped in the building process.

Despite the awesomeness, it was a long day.

_____________________________________________

Puzzles for Postcards

Hidden TV Characters (Find one famous TV character hidden forward or backward in each of these, must be at least five letters long)

Climbing the stairs of this tall urban office really makes the cowboy’s old rural legs sore.
“The Smiley Face is a registered trademark of Wal-Mart, Inc.” ran early morning headlines.
_____________________________________________

Ohio Picture: At the end of the trip we’ll conglomerate all the O H I Os and send them to Zhou’s old boss at Vanderbilt: Ohio State president Gordon Gee.

_____________________________________________

Picture of the Day: People seem to enjoy bad pictures of us, so here you go. This one reminds me a bit of American Gothic.

Advertisement