I knew that at some point on my trip through Peru I’d eventually make it to Machu Picchu. I just never imagined that I’d be visiting this epic place high in the mountains with my dad by my side.

After traveling via combi to Chinchero and then catching two more combis from there to Ollantaytambo, my dad and I took a short train ride through the night to the tiny tourist town of Aguas Caliente. Once there, we secured an overpriced hostel for a two night’s stay and then we hit the sack. We’d be visiting Machu Picchu the next day!

In the morning, my dad ran down to the ticket office and bought us our entry tickets to Machu Picchu while I showered and got ready for our trip. Once I was showered and awake, my dad and I split up. I wanted to walk from Aguas Caliente to Machu Picchu… and my dad (like 99.9% of the other Machu Picchu tourists) wanted to take the bus up to the ruins.

So, with an agreement to wait for one another near the entrance, my dad and I split up and I began my long and strenuous walk up the rocky trail that leads from the river near Aguas Caliente up to the entrance of Machu Picchu.

About half way up the trail I realized I had made a mistake. The mountain was huge… and my father was waiting for me. All I wanted to do was stop and rest, but with my dad surely waiting at the top, I had no choice but to forge ahead and continue to climb.

It took me about 50 minutes to get from Aguas Caliente to the entrance of Machu Picchu… and by the time I got there I was dripping with sweat. Standing amongst the throng of tourists who had ridden in cushy buses up to the top of the hill, I felt as though I stood out like a sore thumb – I was so wet with sweat I felt as though I had just come down a slide at a water park.

After a few moments of rest at the top of the hill, my dad and I made out way into Machu Picchu… and the views from the very get-go were fantastic.

The place was huge… and we weren’t sure which way to go first… so we ended up tackling the ruins in a clockwise fashion. Starting at the main entrance, we climbed over to the Temple of the Sun and the Royal Tombs. From there, we checked out the ceremonial baths and the royal palace. Then we crossed over to the House of the High Priest, the Sacred Plaza and the Temple of the Three Windows. After snapping nearly a million photos, we then crossed the grassy Central Plaza and circled underneath the entrance to Wayna Picchu and the Temple of the Moon.

Then, somehow, my dad and I got separated. He went one way and I went another. I wasn’t sure how we got separated or where he could have gone, but I figured he must still be making the circuit around Machu Picchu. So I wandered over into the Residential Sector and then into the Mortars. It was there that I found my dad, shuffling his feet through a seemingly endless number of stone houses built on the edge of the  massive mountainside.

Together again, my dad and I continued exploring the ruins. We hiked down into the Prison group where a number of caves and hole-like structures could be found. Then we meandered into the Temple of the Condor, where I must have snapped another dozen or more photos.

It was here that my dad and I separated once again. I wanted to climb to the top of Wayna Picchu… and my dad wanted to explore the terraces above the main entrance. So we split up temporarily with a plan to meet back by the main entrance at 2 PM.

It was 12 PM at this point and I knew that the climb to the top of Wayna Pichu was going to be a long one – especially since I had already climbed up to the top of Machu Picchu from the river below.

So I checked in at the Wayna Picchu registration booth and then quickly began my ascent.

The sign on the trail said that the hike to the top of the mountain should take about an hour, but I was able to tackle the the hill in only 35 minutes. The entire way up I was passing people left and right… and by the time I reached the top it had started to rain. There were only a handful of people at the top of Wayna Picchu when I got there… and when I descended back down the trail just a few minutes later, I realized that every single one of the people I had passed on the trail on the way up had quit at some point and simply turned around. I was the last person of the day to make it to the top of Wayna Picchu!

That said, it was sprinkling rain on the way down… and descending the trail was a lot harder for me than going up. The trail was wet and slippery and the stones that made up the narrow staircases leading to the top of Wayna Picchu were much smaller than I needed for my colossal size 12 feet.

Nevertheless, I made it back down to Machu Picchu in no time, spent a few more minutes wandering around the ruins on my own, and then I met up with my dad back at the entrance.

By this time, my feet were incredibly sore. I could feel the blisters, bruises and blood in my shoes and I wanted nothing more than to get back to our hostel, take off my shoes, and take a long, hot shower.

My dad was also extremely tired by this point. But like two crazy nuts, we decided that instead of taking the bus back to Aguas Caliente with the rest of the Machu Picchu tourists, we were going to hike down to the city on the same trail I had hiked up earlier in the day. So that’s exactly what we did!

We walked all the way down the trail, up the dirt road that parallels a massive rushing river, and eventually made our way back to our hostel in Aguas Caliente. We went out to dinner that night (the food sucked) and then we went to sleep. It was a long, tiring, and epic day… and I’m so glad I had my dad there to share it with me.

The following are some of the photos I took at Machu Picchu. They are shown here in no particular order.

The photo below shows a bunch of tourists standing beneath the Hut of the Caretaker of the Funnery Rock.

The big mountain peak in the photo below is Wayna Picchu. That is the mountain I climbed after already climbing up to Machu Picchu itself.

Below is the Temple of the Three Windows.

It’s a little difficult to see, but there is a giant drawbridge in the photo below that stretches from one side of the mountain to the other. This drawbridge can be hiked to from Machu Picchu, but my dad went to check out the trail to the drawbridge for himself, and he says that the trail was closed at the time of our visit.

Above is Waynu Picchu… and below is me standing at the top of Wayna Picchu while looking down on Machu Picchu below.

In the photo below, my dad (on the right) and a group of Polish tourists are looking into two circular pools of water. Supposedly, these pools of water were used as some kind of celestial reflecting pool, enabling the Inca to look down into the pools of water and see the stars above reflected back at them. This way they could track the movement of the stars, etc.

The round building in the center of the photo below is The Temple of the Sun, which was supposedly one of (if not, the) most important structure(s) in all of Machu Picchu.

The photo below gives you a closer look at the Temple of the Sun (the circular building in the upper-right).

After hiking down the trail from Macchu Picchu, my dad and I had to cross a scary bridge (Look at the river below! In my entire life I have never seen such a monstrous river) and hike a couple kilometers up a dirt road before we arrived back in Aguas Caliente.