Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Today we got up at 5:30 am and stood in line for tickets to Huayna Picchu. We just had to walk out of our hotel to get in line, but if you wanted to get there before the first bus (which left Aguas Calientes at 5:30 am) and were not staying at our hotel you needed to hike about 1 hour up the hill, which many people did. When the line started moving, we noticed that people had their park tickets and that was what was being stamped for entry to the hike but we did not have our ticket. When it was our turn I told them that our guide had our ticket so they stamped yesterday’s. Troy was nervous about how this would work because only 2 groups of 200 people are allowed to hike on any given day. As we left the line and went back to our room, the buses came and the line got very long.
About ten minutes after we got back in the room, the phone rang. It was the front desk telling us that they have our ticket and the line was very long so we would need to go right away to get in line. We told him that I had gotten the stamp on yesterday’s ticket and he said that would work.
We met our guide Catarina at 9:30 am and she walked us over to where the Huayna Picchu hike started. People coming back from the first group of 200 had very big welts so we promptly put on bug spray. We left Troy and Adrian in line and then began our walk to the Sun Gate.