Ok, it has been some time since the trek but I've been busy with school stuff so I can finally catch up on this blog thing. I'll skip most of the details from day two of Machu Picchu because day three deserves more attention and day four just rocked my world.
Day 2 of the trek -- Basically this day was 8 hours of walking in the hot sun, up cliffs and through the forest. We walked through the towns of Santa Teresa and Santa Maria where a huge landslide wiped out hundreds of people and destroyed the train tracks connected many of the small towns in the area. Very sad, but just shows that mother nature has no mercy. So, there is a huge river that rages through the entire area and I imagine it would be a blast to go whitwater rafting on if it didn't suck you under and kill you. So, we had to cross this river many a time. Of course, there is the obvious choice to take a bridge but being a bit more adventurous we chose an alternate route. To carry supplies from one side of the river to the other they use a basket on a pulley system. This basket can fit two people and has only 2 planks of wood on the bottom to hold them in. Yeah, once we heard we could cross the river on this a bridge just seemed....too easy. So two by two we crossed the river in this little basket with our legs hanging over the edge. I can tell you the following story now because I've already done this so Mom and Dad you can't do anything about it. But some years ago (at least within the last 10 years) a man tried to cross the river in one of these contraptions. Yeah, he died. Ooops. Evidently his foot got caught in the rope and away he went. Well, moral of that story: we survived and it was pretty sweet to sit in a little basket hanging over a river. I felt pretty badass.
Other than some serious dehydration and sore legs from walking an insane amount of stairs (on the side of a cliff no less) we made it through the day without any injuries. We ended our walking trek with a nice dip in the hot springs. So as the moon came up over the mountains, we listened to the sound of the waterfalls surrounding us....not a big deal, but probably the coolest sight on day two.
Note: Hot springs, not hot. More or less bath water with some stones in the bottom...oh, and bats flying around your head.
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