Climbing Machu Picchu Mountain
In addition to completing the ‘normal’ lap of Machu Picchu, we had purchased tickets that allowed us to also climb Machu Picchu Mountain 🙂
Machu Picchu Mountain is one of two mountains that you can climb while visiting Machu Picchu – the other, more famous one is Huayna Picchu Mountain – but this one is sooo popular that it was sold out when we booked our tickets… 🙁
Anyway, our ‘climbing slot’ for Machu Picchu Mountain was to start between 9am and 10am… we’d picked the second slot of the day so we could get up close to the famous Inca ruins before we had to start the ascent!
Before you start climbing you have to ‘sign in’… we officially signed in and started the walk at 9:54am (yep, we were cutting it fine!)…
According to official information, the roundtrip should take about three and a half hours – and the height at the top of Machu Picchu Mountain is 3,061 metres above sea-level, making it an ascent of 631m…
The hike up to the top was pretty awesome – not too crowded either (I guess they didn’t sell all 200 tickets for the second slot on the day we went up!)… the walk took us through the jungle and revealed amazing views – both of Machu Picchu, the famous Huayna Picchu Mountain, and the surrounding cloud forest 🙂
It took us about one hour twenty minutes to reach the top – where we were rewarded with amazing views and an awesome lunch spot – the ranger at the top didn’t seem bothered that people were eating and drinking at the top… (so I guess the normal rules don’t apply on top of the mountain! 🙂 )
After a bit of time at the top, we started the downhill walk… an hour later, we were back at the bottom and ready to keep strolling around the main archaeological ruins 🙂
Climbing Machu Picchu Mountain turned out to be a great addition to our day at Machu Picchu 🙂