We had two great weeks in Arequipa, with the amazing Colca Canyon and our trips to Misti and Chachani as the definite highlights, but it was eventually time to move on. Following the Gringo-trail north to Cusco and the lost city of the Inca-empire; Macchu Picchu. When we in March decided to stop by Galapagos, we also said that we would sacrifice the Inca-trail to Macchu Picchu to make up for the lost money, and do it as cheap as possible. We stepped out of the bus in Cusco without any reservation, or any idea of how or when.This changed immediately after arriving at the city center, "Plaza de Armas", and meeting Betsy, a small chubby Peruvian woman who sat us up with a super-cheap hostal and offered us a ride to "hydroelectricas", only a two-three hour trek from the first ticket-control. We checked this offer with several agencies, but none could offer the same price as Betsy.

Here, as in every other tourist hotspot in Peru, it´s crawling with old volunteers from PSF. Our first day, we randomly ran into three of our friends from Arequipa, Chris, Ava and Helen, and by the second day we had almost gathered the whole gang from Arequipa yet again. They had all done their treks, and psyched us up for our trip with praises about Macchu Picchu. We said our goodbyes, again, and set out for our first encounter with one of the seven wonders of the world at 0730 the next day. By now, we should be used to the Peruvian way of organizing, which seems to be deliberately setting up a chaos, and just dealing with it from there. After a lot of walking, waiting, arguing and wondering what the f**k was actually going on, we left Cusco about 1.5-2 hours after the original plan. And that's actually pretty good, by Peruvian standards. Our fellow travelers this time was a group of 4 exchange - students from Lima and 5 slightly obese Brazilian 50-year olds, who all paid for a guided tour.

The usual thing to do when travelling this way to Macchu Picchu is to check into a overpriced hostal in Aguas Calientes, only a 20min walk from the entrance, get up at about 3 am to start lining up to be the first ones in. We, on the other hand, went for a little more "backpacking" way of doing this. Motivated partially for saving money and partially for being sure we would be the first ones passing the gates. We went straight for the control check-point, and asked the guards what possibilities we had. They denied us access beyond the first control point, but said we could spend the night by their "guard-shack". To us, leaning against a wall with two official guards right by seemed like a safe and cheap way to satisfy both our needs, money-saving and getting first in line. We got our tickets, some snacks and fruits in Aguas Calientes and made ourselves comfortable by the shack at about 2030. I spent a couple of moments playing paparazzi, taking photos of random bugs and spiders before we packed our backpacks well under our heads and backs and tried to catch a couple of minutes of shuteye before the queuing started.

We woke up after a couple of sporadic 15minuters every now and again when the first two people arrived at the gates. Little by little, people were lining up behind us, and within an hour there were a good 100 people in line. And then, 5min before the gates were opened, hell broke loose. I realized my camera was no longer in my backpack and urged Ludvig to go through his stuff. We lost our place in the line just to find out that both of our cameras had been stolen during the night. f***. The one place in South America you travel almost solely to take pictures, and we now had now cameras but Ludvigs telephone. Out of spite I decided to be the first one up, even though everybody was well underway on the 1 hour walk up to Macchu Picchu, so we ran. I know, and knew, that I probably looked like a crazy fool, and pissded a lot of people off on my way up. But it was well worth it, because I managed to be the first one up, with Ludvig as the third. Luckily, we still had Ludvigs phone, so being the first ones into Macchu Picchu we managed to get the mandatory naked photo. On a top, with the lost city in the background.Even though the quality is kind of poor, it´s one of my favorite photos so far on the trip.

Whilst walking around, admiring the amazing architectural precision, we bumped in two of our climbing - companions from Chachani, who had brought their super SLR-camera! Yes! So even though the day started out in complete chaos, it ended pretty perfectly. We got to see the sun rising over the mountains tops around Macchu Picchu, a landscape that´s actually almost as impressive as the city itself, with nobody else around, we got a view from the more restricted Wayna Picchu, a part of the city on a hill-topp nearby were only 400 people are allowed each day, and we got our photos.

Macchu Picchu is really a structrural wonder. How the Incas managed to construct managed to construct such a city with millimeter precision, hundreds of years ago, Is beyond me. And seeing this leaves me wondering how the andes mountain-region would be like if the Columbus had waited a good hundred years before travelling to South America, giving the Inca empire more time.

All in all, despite of the camera-theft, Macchu Picchu was a great experience and I would recommend anybody that is thinking about stopping by South America to include Cusco and the areas around in their plans.

Next stop; crossing the continent by boat on the amazon!