It was strange being back in Cusco 10 years later. Not a lot had changed except there was now a KFC and McDonalds. We spent a week in Cusco and loved the time we spent exploring the small cobbled streets and local markets.

Machu Picchu is 4 hours by train from Cusco, so we stayed in a town called Aguas Calientes the night before which is only a 30 minute drive from Machu Picchu. We purchased the 6am - 12pm slot and I wanted to enter Machu Picchu as early as possible. The first bus departed at 5:30am and we got to the bus station at 5am to find at least 100 people in front of us but all wasn't lost as the bus departs every 5 minutes. The Peruvian government has recently introduced a rule that all visitors must be accompanied by a guide. They don't enforce this rule but we joined a group with an older English couple who had travelled the world and were really interesting people. Our guide spoke perfect english and was full of knowledge.

Machu Picchu is incredible, it took the Inca people 70 years to build but they only lived there for 100 years. No one knows why they abandoned the site but there are theories that there was an outbreak of malaria or that they heard about the Spanish invasion. The village was created for the elite families throughout the Inca Empire, future leaders were sent there to attend school and top academics also lived there. Their engineering skills were ahead of their time and water system they installed 500 years ago still works to this day.