It felt like we had slept in when we didn’t have to wake up until 7 am. We had relatively dry cloths and we felt like we were ready to get back to Machu Picchu. After a light breakfast we noticed it was raining. At this point, it didn’t bother us because we now knew that each day in the Sacred Valley it is nice at sunrise, it rains until about 10 am and then clears off by noon. Other people were racing up to the city in the clouds to great rained on for the next 3 hours.
We got to the gates just after 10 am and watched the new pack of hikers that had arrived that morning trying to recover from the Inca trail hike. We felt their pain, but we were also more or less over our physical experience after soaking in the hot springs and a great night sleep in a nice bed.
Huayna Picchu is the incredibly lush mountain that overlooks the citadel. It is a good hike up about 300 meters on a narrow staircase, and ends at a very interesting set of buildings that sit on top of the peak. We made really good time up, even stopping to get some pictures along the way.
After about reaching the midway point the sky started to clear. We saw people coming down who had made the trek too early in the morning to get the view and now were cheated out of the most incredible view in the whole experience.
Once reaching the summit, we found ourselves there with about 50 plus other hikers all staring off towards Machu Picchu. The people down below looked like little festive ants in their multi-colored ponchos. It was also interesting to see how defined the contours of the citadel are; some people say that it actually looks like a condor in flight.
We found a way to get away from the crowds by climbing up to the higher rooms, through a short tunnel, and up to the highest boulders that crested the peak. We grabbed a seat and avoided all the other people vying for their next Facebook profile picture. We had a perfect view of the whole Scared Valley, the Urubamba River, and the Sun Gate that we had passed yesterday, and of course the Machu Picchu citadel itself.
I pulled out my trusty GPS SPOT that I have been using to track our movements on the trip (it provides a location and time to a list of people). I hit the send function and handed the device to Catherine. It takes a couple of seconds to triangulate. While it was working, I reached into my bag and pulled out a little cedar box and gave it to Catherine. In it was an engagement ring made of Peruvian gold with two dolphins coming together in a kiss. I asked her to marry me, and she accepted. It was the perfect location, the perfect time, with perfect weather, to have asked the perfect question, and I even got the perfect answer from the perfect girl. Perfect!
We spent about an hour on top of the mountain having a little private celebration while surrounded by, but not noticing, the other tourists. After getting some important pictures, including ones of our travelling companies (Bear and Mulligan) we headed back to see a couple of our favorite spots in the citadel and to sit and look at the amazing view one last time before we left to catch our train back to Cuzco.
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