travel bags
machu picchu means old mountain. there's a city built between it and wayna picchu, young mountain. i don't remember the ancient name of the city. today we call it machu picchu. i can't properly say machu picchu. there's a sort of click sound between the double c's. pee-click-shoe. anywho, it's in the middle of the andes. which is a really freaking big range of really freaking big mountains. and it's a wee bit difficult to get to machu picchu. we flew from ecuador to lima. and left our largest bag there. the next day we flew to cuzco. then we took a bus to a nunnery where we left our next largest bag. the next day we took a train to agua caliente. where we left our overnight bag. we took a bus up the mountain to machu picchu (the city). at this point the only baggage we have left with us is a day pack. we got the tour the first day. you know how everyone always says some of those ancient piles of rocks are astrological observatories and interesting stuff happens at dawn and sunset on the solstices? well, the second day was the winter solstice. so we got up before dawn. and rode the bus up the steep side of this mountain. i think it was better that way. and waited to be wowed. unfortunately it was cloudy. and the effect was somewhat less than spectacular. ah well. to get home we retraced our steps. and collected our luggage along the way. nothing got lost. which is remarkable.