I had been wanting to visit Machu Picchu for years and years, but didn’t make it happen till the summer of 2018. I flew from Los Angeles to Lima, –and after a day or two in the Peruvian capital, I flew to the absolutely enchanting Cusco. After spending several amazing days in Cusco, we arrived, by car, to the small town of Ollantaytambo.
Detailed stone work at Ollantaytambo 
A glimpse of Ollantaytambo
After a mid-day lunch and an exploration of the town’s impressive archeological site, we hopped on a late afternoon train from Ollantaytambo to Aguascalientes–the base for most visitors to Machu Picchu.
There wasn’t much to see during our roughly two-hour train ride–as we traveled during the evening hours and the sun had already set. We arrived in Aguascalientes around 9pm–very much excited about our next day plans. After a nice dinner at a local Italian restaurant, we hit the sack, knowing we had an exciting, and long, day ahead of us.
We got up quite early the next morning, boarding one of the first buses out of Aguascalientes to the entrance of Machu Picchu. The bus ride–for a cool $25–took a winding road up the mountain.
After checking in some personal items and using the restroom facilities [there are none once inside], we made our way into the famed archeological site. To be clear, we had hired a local guide the day before in Ollantaytambo. We then spent about eight hours exploring Machu Picchu, including three hours [round trip] to hike up the Montaña Machu Picchu.
A bit about the trek up the Montaña Machu Picchu. First and foremost, you need an additional, timed entrance ticket to hike up the summit of this mountain. We acquired our tickets online months in advance–but this mountain seems to be less popular than Montaña Huayna Picchu–so you might not have trouble getting tickets closer to the date of your visit. NOTE: They only offer roughly 400 tickets per day for Huayna and 800 tickets per day for Montaña Machupicchu. The hike up the Montaña Machupicchu, while certainly worth is, was quite challenging. It took us one hour and a half to reach the top, as we needed to take short breaks often. And by often I mean we couldn’t go up more than twenty steps before we needed to pause. It was intense, to say the least. But once we reached the top we could finally see the great Machu Picchu down below. The altitude at the summit is just a bit more than 10,000 feet, or 3,000 meters–and you’re climbing more than 2,000 feet from the entrance to the archeological site to the summit. If you’re not from a high altitude region–climbing up so many steps–at that altitude–is quite intense indeed.
…but after 1.5 hours of trekking up those steps….we finally made it to the summit 
Machu Picchu down below 
The requisite pic at the summit. PS I’m wearing shorts. 
With my dear friends and travel mates.
After enjoying some of our snacks, taking it all in, and snapping a few photos, we made the trek back down to Machu Picchu. It was at that point that we began our real exploration of the site.
Traveling Fern 