One of the Seven Wonders of the World - Machu Picchu

Finally, what we have been waiting for all along we finally got to see.. And it was awesome! Of course, we had to wake up way early to get to see it but it was worth it. About a 20 minute bus ride from where were staying in Aguas Calientes took us up to a cold, rainy, foggy, and very eerie old mountain (Machu Picchu). We took about a 2 hour tour, guided by one of the locals, which gave us the history of the Incas that lived here and the discovery of the site. It took the Incas about a 100 years to build MP and only lived there for about 50. They built MP on top of this mountain because in their religion they believed they were closer to the sun god and it also protected from neighboring tribes (that did't think much of their mortality). In approx. 1545 the Incas packed up as much of their gold, idols, and ceramics and fled from the Spanish who were making their way across Peru from Cusco. The Incas destroyed half the trail from Cusco to MP so the Spanish could not find them.....and it worked. MP was not discovered until the early 1900s by a Peruvian guide who decided to benefit from this discovery by selling artifacts to private collectors. He did not tell anyone about MP. 28 years later MP was discovered by an American named Hirim Bingham who led an archeological dig for 3 years.

Walking through the ruins (Brecken, Phong, Tate, and I) we were in awe of the complexity and size of what was created by the Incas. The construction of walls, roofs, the irrigation system, agricultural terraces, and temples were amazing. A couple reasons why the ruins have lasted so long is because they designed them to be earthquake-proof and the built-in irrigation. The guide told us several highly educated engineers have studied the ruins and could not figure out how parts of it were built with the 16th century technology available.

We took tons and tons of pictures, probably too many. After about 6 hours of being baked by the sun (Brecken, Tate, and I all got sunburns) and getting bit by bugs we called it good and left. Instead of taking the bus back down the mountain we decided to hike down to our hotel. After the previous day's hike our legs and calves were taking another round of beatings.

Once we got back to town we were all starving and needed to replace the billion calories burned that day. So, we took a stroll to this pizza joint and all ate 3 "gigantica"-size pizzas (named that by the pizza joint).. We first ordered 1 thinking it would be a huge pizza (American-sized) but it was just a tease.. 2 more pizzas and 2 liters of beer finally hit the spot...

In all, MP was freaking awesome. It made you really want to be a fly on the wall when the Inca's inhabited the place just to see how they lived. The 3 rules lived by the Incas were: 1) do not lie 2) do not steal 3) do not be lazy. It was evident they weren't lazy by the amount of effort went into building this site. Also, they weren't even done building it by the time they left. They were still constructing it and there are still ruins being excavated today. Who knows what else they'll find up there in the coming years..