More Machupicchu

This picture was taken by Marco Jr. , I wonder if this is the tree you were talking about Norma?  Cynthia says she remembers something about a tree but I don't remember anything.  Could be I was to tired to remember. :)Here we are in a sidewalk cafe in Mauchupicchu town, John, myself (Glenna), Martha, Cynthia and Dumenico.Look at this Christmas tree in the square.  It is very pretty and made of all green plastic soda botles.  Large one on the bottom rows and then individual size ones to the top.  They lite it up at night, what a great use of imagination.Dumenico is eating Llama here.  The kids keep saying I need to eat Cuy which is Guinea Pig, and for me that is a NO NO as can't eat a pet! :)

showing you a picture of the railroad track.  We came down to the tracks then walked dow them thinking to go a Water Falls down the way we went to got to Machupicchu the mountain. Marco Jr. took this picture as well as the others I am showing you at this time.

This is a monument to Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo  the ledgend of the founder of Machupicchu.  You see a Puma to the side of the one person.  They attach a lot of respect to the Puma.

Martha and myself (Glenna) are stnding between them.

Dumemico found a friend.  This puppy was so willing to be a guide, and he found a little white friend that decided they wanted to go hiking with us.  We decided to go with Dumenico and Marco Jr. to see the Water Falls, on the way down the tracks headed in the right direction (we thought). 

Here Cynthia and I are following the boys up the trail Marco seen and said "lets try this" so we followed.  You can see the little dog is encouraging us to come.  Let me tell you it was not what we expected and we went up up and up and there were lots of steps.

Here you see the little white and black dog that were our guides and protectors, it is a good picture to see the steepness of the climb.  We had some parts much steeper.  The little dogs were real troopers

This is a view of Aguas Calientes or also known as Machupicchu Town.  You can see a poition of the road that they take you on to get you up to Machupicchu.

Not long after the picture of the town, we came to this ladder and as you can see Marco went up so the little white dog followed him up and will show you that the little black dog just didn't have it in him to go up soooooooo

Dumenico as you can see took pitty on the little black dog and took him up the ladder.  We came along at at that time so had to decide if we were going to continue and go up the ladder.  We did and it wasn't to hard.  We decided to have the boys go ahead and let us know how much further we had to go.  (now little did we know)

We didn't go much further and a good thing it was, this is what the boys found not much further along the trail.  Notice it is almost traight up and the helper is a cable.  Had we seen this we would turned around right there, as it was we didn't have to make that call.

the little white dog tried to go up the ladder but couldn't and the boys didn't pack him up.  The little black dog had stayed with Cynthia and me.

I don't have pictures of our return as they are on Cynthia's camera and won't get them off until we get back to Portland.

 Marco after the ladder and you can see they aren't through climbing.  I don't have a picture but they said they came to a place where all they had was a cable and it was straight up with toe holes in the face of the rock.  Know I would not have done that!

 Dumenico getting close to the top.  When they got to the top they could look down on Machupicchu.  They didn't come to the water fall but had a better adventure. 

Not sure which river this is, either Rio Vilcanota or Rio Agus Calientes any way you can get an idea of how high they were.  They did eventually get to the Water Falls, but not until later that day and it rained so hard they were soaked in no time.  Thank goodness they did have some dry clothes to change into.  We left Aguas Calientes about 4:45 that evening.  The train ride was good, the car wasn't full so we could sit facing forward, which is good as Cynthia gets motion sick. :)