Welcome to Machu Picchu!
This place is incredible!
We've been exploring it for the last seven hours.
We actually got up before 5:00 a.m. this morning so we're gonna cut back to that
and then we'll get you up to speed.
Just after 5 a.m. It's raining. And we're going to Machu Picchu.
Let's go!
So some people are hiking down the street.
That's if you wanted to hike up to Machu Picchu.
We are going up here so we can take the bus.
The bus station is right by the main bridge, right in front of the train station.
When you get here, just hop in line.
The first bus is at 5:30.
And then they'll keep going. As soon as it's filled up,
that'll leave and another one pulls up. You just keep getting in it.
Right on time.
Brian? Thank you.
That process is efficient!
They loaded all of us on the bus. It's been like two minutes!
Six a.m. They just opened the door.
There are a lot of rules.
Passport check. They're for real.
That bus was $24 and worth every penny.
Every time we crossed the trail where people were hiking up, I'm just like, oh my gosh. I can't.
Yeah, these steps are no joke.
We are well above the clouds,
but we're here!
These mountains are so cool!
So Peru made these steps for us, but check out these original Incan steps.
This place is just unbelievable
I mean I've seen pictures and videos, but in person it's unreal!
We're gonna hike out to the Inca bridge.
So, the trail to the Incan bridge is one of the entryways into Machu Picchu.
What I was reading earlier says it was like a back entrance.
Like a secret entrance into the place.
So this trail is free but we're supposed to sign in and out.
But it looks like they're not open yet, so we're just gonna go. Maybe we'll just sign out on the way back.
Except for the first little part it's mostly flat here
These views, though! Unbelievable!
Yeah, there's no guardrail here.
That is a drop!
There's the trail.
And there's the bridge.
So I imagine if they were being followed, they could just ditch the bridge, and then
you cannot cross that.
We can't cross it either. There's a gate.
There's another straight drop off the cliff here, but there's a wire if you want to hang on to it.
These mountains. They're just something else.
That's crazy.
So here's the view through the gate.
Let's throw a poll up here. Would you cross that thing if there were no gate here?
That looks sketchy!
It's got the little steps down the side, so if they did break this thing off,
you'd be able to cross it anyways.
It would just take a long time.
What happened to Machu Picchu?
There are one-way signs. They're trying to avoid bottlenecks.
So, although it may be easier to go down a particular way, you may have to go out and around
to get where you want to go.
We're gonna hike down and explore the city now.
So, that's the city gate.
We're gonna just kind of walk down and through and see everything...
This is SO COOL!!
We're in somebody's house! I know, right?!
That is quite the door.
We can get through if we take the backpack off.
I think I'm in the bedroom.
So you've got some windows...
and that's like shelf space, like a little medicine cabinet or something.
So there are a couple little paths you can go off and explore, like the houses,
and the little rooms, and areas there.
For the most part though, you just follow the trail. So where it goes, that's where we go.
So as much as we might want to go down those steps, that is one way.
To the sacred plaza.
Oh.
How on earth did that thing get up there?
Okay, this is the tower at the top.
That's funny. Don't stop...
...unless you have a guide that stops you and talks about it.
We have a tour scheduled for nine o'clock,
so we'll come back through here later and find out all this stuff is.
So this is the guardhouse,
which is just bonkers right now.
You can get a little shelter from the rain, if you want,
and then get your picture, if it were clear.
[Guide]: Later, they were farming in the terraces.
They made and built houses or temples in other terraces.
That guide's amazing, just full of knowledge. Highly recommend getting a guide.
One of the things that I thought was really interesting...
is that all these terraces, the dirt came from ten miles away.
Because if you look around, all these mountains? It's all rock.
And so they built the retaining walls with the rock from these mountains,
but all the dirt they had to get from outside
and brought it in here so that they can actually farm it.
There's about three feet of dirt below us...
...and then sand below that...
...and then rock and then the natural earth.
It's crazy.
[just music, I'll tell you what the guide's saying later]
It's a serious traffic jam everywhere we go.
And we finally get a view of Wayna Picchu.
Can you mean imagine hiking up that?
That's crazy steep!
By the way, Wayna Picchu means small or a young mountain
and Machu Picchu means big or old mountain
This is cool. On the inside of the door, you've got these cylinders here.
There's one, there's one over here, and then there's a hole in the rock up top.
They would put this big door here and then tie it off
around this, through the loop up there, and around that.
He was saying the protection wasn't really for enemies.
It was against pumas and other wildcats and animals that would try and get into the city at nighttime.
This is one of the royal houses, and it has a bathroom.
So this is a double doorway.
You only see double doorways going into royal homes or into temples.
And then the wall here is something that's kind of cool, too.
So you can see this stonework is really nice, but...
but as soon as you come over here this stonework is even better.
Like this is the royal family house, you can still see the holes in between some of the corners,
but on the temple, it's perfect.
and then the other side, this is just like common-folk people.
Temple of the Sun
royal family's house
This is really interesting!
So that's the temple of the Sun.
You can see that one window faces due east,
so when the equinox comes in June that shines straight through that window.
And that window is southeast for the December equinox.
And so they can see the calendar back and forth - the sun goes back and forth between the windows.
When Hyrum Bingham found the place, it was overgrown with 500 years-worth of jungle,
so the trees had taken out a lot of buildings, kind of like in Siem Reap,
with all the temples there.
So the archaeologists piled up all bricks.
This actually is, the path, this was part of the original Incan trail.
These fountains, waterworks that came down here.
So after about two and a half hours, the tour was only at the Temple of the Sun.
So there's so much more to go.
It's really interesting, just a ton of info.
But if we stayed with the tour we wouldn't have time to do the trail to the Sun Gate.
So we bailed,
and here's a really important thing...
If you leave, you can't come back in. And the trails are all one way.
So you've got to go through...
...but you just got to keep asking guards, like, "I want to go to the Puerta del Sol, the Sun Gate."
And then hopefully they'll let you back in like they did last time when we went back through.
That guy said it's not possible.
We just talked to a guard back there.
We're gonna see if it is possible.
We came through the same gate again.
We just said we really just want to see the Puerta del Sol.
And he said, "okay." So here we go.
The trailhead is up by the guardhouse.
We'll show you.
This is our third time in the last five hours with this view.
It doesn't get old.
I love it.
So to get to the guardhouse, you go up the stairs here and back.
But Sun Gate is straight ahead.
It says forty to sixty minutes,
let's see if we can do it in 35, because we don't have much time.
Got a little too hot for jackets.
So this is the original Incan trail.
We've been walking for probably 15 minutes now,
it's been stone the entire way.
It's really cool!
Well that was literally uphill the entire way.
I think this is it.
So you can see the stairs there, and how they just kind of disappear into the jungle?
You can imagine that's what it looked like when Hyram Bingham found all of Machu Picchu,
and then they just had to uncover it all.
I think we can go a little bit farther.
So we're gonna. :)
That may be the Sun gate.
If so, tada! Sun Gate!
If not, we're just gonna keep going up here.
This trail, this is the Incan trail, it goes for like four days,
down past Ollantaytambo.
So we're not gonna walk that far.
Oh man, we were over there just a few minutes ago!
Look how low the terraces go.
They go almost all the way down to the river!
Man, when they clear out all these trees, that's gonna be amazing!
So all those trees there, that's all growing on top of terraces.
So the archaeologists are slowly removing the trees and restoring the the terraces.
And if you come back in a couple years, the terraces will be even bigger,
and you'll see even more of Machu Picchu.
Are you seeing this?!
This is crazy.
Oh, my goodness.
These stairs never end!
More terraces over here.
Now we made it!
This is for real.
We made it to the Sun Gate in 31 minutes,
We were booking it though.
That was...
We're tired.
And then here in the back, the Incan trail keeps going.
We however are not going that way.
Machu Picchu is in the back there, though. Just trust us.
There's a fantastic view of Machu Picchu down there.
The clouds come in and go so fast.
I'm gonna do a little time-lapse, just so you can see how fast that clouds come in...
...and then they disappear and you got a clear view but only for like 30 seconds...
...and then they come in again. It's really cool.
Yeah, look how clear it is now!
We're back at the midpoint.
The "fake" Sun Gate. :)
It's 1:03 p.m., so that took us 26 minutes down, taking a lot of pictures.
Look how those mountains go back!
Oh, my goodness, this is so pretty!
I think this is the first time that this has all been clear.
That is unbelievable!
Man! I want to come back here in the dry season when it's all sunny.
I think that would just be gorgeous.
Very hot and sweaty, but gorgeous.
Look! You can see people on top of Wayna Picchu,
Ah, that's nuts!
The place has really cleared out,
but we came over to the guard house
to take a couple pictures down here because it's super clear.
All right, well that's it for our Machu Picchu experience.
Absolutely phenomenal.
Ten out of ten recommend come here, of course.
It's not a wonder of the world for nothing.
We're gonna head down because we got to catch
a train from Aguas Calientes,
over to Ollantaytambo, and then a bus back to Cusco tonight.
So we will see you tomorrow.
We're going to Lago Titicaca,
so subscribe if want to see that.
Click these other videos if you want to see those.
See you later!