after four days of hiking in the andes and successfully conquering the salkantay pass
with my parents we have finally made our way to the lost incan city of machu picchu
visiting this wonder of the world has always been high on a bucket list
and today we'll be showing you what it's like to tour this ancient city
good morning and welcome to another episode of nicole and mico today is
the day that we finally get to see the ancient city of machu picchu
we're going to be taking you around with us today and at the same time we'll be giving
you as many tips as we can so that you can plan your next visit to machu picchu
six in the morning there's already a big lineup six or five I'm like, did I sleep an hour more?
5 o'clock in the morning and there's already a big line up ready to go to machu picchu for 6 am
so the first tip that we have is buy your tickets as early as you can
we'll talk more about tickets later on but we chose the 6am tickets and it's around 5
15 right now we're waiting for the bus to take us up to machu picchu and i think it's gonna be well
worth it because it gets incredibly hot during the day also in this line you can find a lot of people
who are offering tour guide services in different languages we had a bunch of people just come up
to us asking if we need an english tour guide so if you don't have a tour guide to walk you around
machu picchu that's something you can easily get in the lineup for the bus going up to machu picchu
so we are on our way now from aguas calientes to machu picchu and aguas calientes
is like the place that you need to get to if you're trying to visit machu picchu because
that is the town that is really the jumping off point for machu picchu so there's a lot
of different ways to get to aguas calientes one of the ways of course is to hike the salkantay
trek of course which is what we just did people know about the inca trail that's one way to get
to aguas calientes you can also take a train you could take like a bus and then do a little bit
of walking there's a handful of different options to get there but once you get to aguas calientes
in order to actually go and see machu picchu you have two options for how to get to the mountain
like it's a big mountain right machu picchu is on top of a big mountain so you can either take a bus
which is what we are doing right now it takes about half an hour to get from aquas calientes
town to the entrance to machu picchu or the other option is to actually hike it it's a four
kilometer hike it's quite steep and i know that takes about an hour and a half so if you've got
six am tickets to enter machu picchu you might want to try the bus might want to try the bus
all right first impressions of machu picchu site a lot of stairs
there are a lot of steps to come up so the first 15 minutes is just like stairs apparently getting
here early in the morning is so cool because the lights like coming over the mountains
is so beautiful oh it's beautiful the mountain range is like a silhouette
yeah the mountain range is like and there's still a couple stars out man it's gorgeous
we got some llamas joining us they're like what are you guys doing here
i feel like this site can't get any more like peruvian
there's like the llama here right at machu picchu
i think they're petable i don't know i saw some other guy touch the one that walked across the
grass like pet him as he walked past yeah how cool is that i want to do that oh he's very fuzzy
okay we finally made it the most iconic spot this is what we hiked the last like
four days for machu picchu has been on our bucket list for like a long time
i know we've been in south america for like five months now yeah but it's been so cool to like
work our way to this point and finally get here and finally see it in person this is like the
most iconic spot to take photos it's just like i bet maybe we haven't even been here for like
10 minutes of like proper walking if you were to just like walk here quickly yeah it's gorgeous
mom dad yeah machu picchu thoughts on machu picchu no photo in the world can it justice everything
you hope for your bucket list yeah yeah yeah you've been wanting to come for ages you made it
i'm so glad you made it thank you i'm so glad i get to come with you me too
yeah i can't get over just how majestic things look up here like really unique
to see like a mountain and then like a city nestled in like the cradle of that mountain
it's so beautiful and then either side is like a sharp drop into a valley
yeah you don't want to fall off the edge there's no finding you again it's cool because
the guide was talking about how like it's so difficult to see this city like from below
at the last part of our our hike yesterday we were actually circling machu picchu from
the river down below and like you could hardly see anything was up there i could see why it'd be like
a lost city for like 400 years
so we just sat still for about 45 minutes and our guide Yiyo told us all about machu picchu
and like the history of this place and how it was found in 1911 and then just like excavated to what
we see today and it's just like this completely operational city that just went sort of dark after
um the spanish came in the 1500s and it sat here for like 400 years but we would highly recommend
if you're able to to get a guide when you come here it just gives so much more context to what
you're seeing otherwise you start to feel like you're just walking around like rocks right
we've done that before in places where we're like cool another statue that i know nothing about or
a structure i know nothing about but if you get a guide you'll learn the history and understand what
the heck all of this cool stuff can teach us okay this is like the official entrance to the city of
like where everyone would have lived and like where the religious site was the university all
that kind of thing right through here where my parents are getting a photo don't they look cute
this is the fertility temple yeah my parents are attempting to get me to go in the fertility temple
i'm not going yeah nicole's parents really want us to walk in there have a few kids in a few years
yeah they're pretty close to picking nicole up and just throwing her inside the fertility temple
so the other thing to think about if you're coming to machu picchu is of course what you're going to
wear so you may have noticed if you watched the salkantay video that for the last five
days we've been like living in these 100% alpaca hoodies they're from appalachian gear company
we absolutely love them they're their all-paca fleece hoodies and we're just in love with them
we wanted to try something different from merino like another technical fiber and this has so far
been really doing the trick they're super durable really versatile and they're really good in every
weather like this morning was really chilly and then as the sun comes out like we're still
wanting to wear them because they just like keep you cool when it's hot and warm when it's cold
anyways we're in love with them so if you want to give them a try or take a look at the company
we will put a link down in the description below and there's also a discount code for anybody
watching this video so the incans were incredibly brilliant people who were so tuned in with the sun
they have down there is the temple of the sun and when it's just right during the winter
solstice the sun would shine through from above the mountains and hit a window and then shine
into a circular table inside the temple of the sun and during the summer solstice the sun would shine
out from over there which is the sun gate and then it would shine down through another window
inside the temple of the sun back to the same table so everything is aligned with the solstices
it's super neat to see how they've incorporated that into their culture a couple other pieces of
helpful information if you are coming to machu picchu soon you need your passport to get in
your original passport to get in there are no washrooms in machu picchu so there is a washroom
like before you actually enter the site so you can use that for two soles um and also there's
a snack place right outside of machu picchu like the entrance as well and now ever since um just
changes with covid times um you can only go one direction so once you kind of choose your circuit
at the beginning when you get to the machu picchu site you go one direction and you cannot turn
around i think for the circuit as well definitely follow circuit number two which is high and long
and that will get you to the spot where you can take like that super nice photo the picturesque
one of machu picchu and as well you can gives you the most options for seeing as many things as you
can throughout the city we're honestly learning so much from our guide you can't go through machu
picchu and just like look and and read about stuff because number one there's not really any signs to
read about and number two everything is just so subtle like having a guide and walking us through
all the important spots and like pointing out like the cool nuances and the details and then
tying it back to incan culture is so important so we highly recommend that you get a guide either
with a tour company like we did on the way here with the salkantay and machu picchu
or if you can get one at the beginning at the bottom of the where we grabbed the bus
because we're learning so much and i don't understand how you can walk through this
without being like a true incan scholar and know what you're looking at so you can buy a
separate ticket for lots of different things here we bought a separate ticket for waynapicchu which
is another mountain that we're going to climb up and the purpose is to get beautiful views of
machu picchu from really high up but i won t lie I'm a little nervous it looks very
steep apparently only takes 45 minutes to an hour to get up but i don't know
oh how you feeling actually pretty good i honestly think we're like
two-thirds or three-quarters over there we've made really good progress
all right so this place is not for the faint of heart if you don't like heights or get a
feeling of vertigo when you're up this high i wouldn't recommend it but if you can stomach it
so far it's been 30 seconds or a minute here and it's been already well worth it
okay that was great that was awesome we made it in like 50 minutes or something honestly it
wasn't as terrible as i expected it to be i don't know if you can see it behind us but epic
views of machu picchu this is pretty cool it's pretty cool 360 degree views dad's
right here we're just keeping her safe there's not a lot of room on this rock no there isn't
the top's weird it's just like everyone's just like on top of huge boulders just big rocks and
everyone's just climbing on top and like just you don't want to miss step because yeah bad yeah it
could be a long drop i definitely think it's worth getting an extra ticket for waynapicchu
i agree if you've got the time this is a pretty spectacular view it's very unique and the energy
you need the energy all right we're gonna start heading back down see you guys in aguas calientes
so we've made our way to the train you can also take the train like to aguas calientes for part
of the journey if you didn't hike like we did but this is actually our first time being on the train
because of course we hiked here but we're super stoked for it because it goes through part of
the sacred valley which we haven't seen yet so we're hoping not to fall asleep because we are
a little exhausted but we really want to be able to watch the beautiful scenery go by and they're
shipping us all the way to ollantaytambo and then we'll just catch a bus from there
so as we've been going through this train journey we've been talking about our
impressions of machu picchu from this morning and i think we both agreed that like we were a
little concerned that machu picchu would be pretty underwhelming because we've heard so much about it
but honestly i'm super impressed and i think the reason that i'm so impressed with machu picchu
is i mean the city itself is incredible the ruins obviously are amazing but also the landscape
around it i don't think gets enough attention like that to me is what brought it from like this
is cool to like this is actually exceptional it lives up to its hype and also this train ride is
still living up to its hype it's been so beautiful going through the sacred valley here
the scenery is impressively managing to keep us awake which i think is like a serious job today
because we're pretty exhausting it's been a long day and a long five days we're really excited
to get back and take some rest yes and actually tomorrow we drop my parents off at the airport so
so we're saying goodbye to them we're saying goodbye to them tomorrow and uh yeah we're gonna
leave you there we're gonna catch it in the next one just on our own again yeah thanks for watching