My journey to Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu, Peru - a place my wife and I have been wanting to go desperately for the past 8 years. Yet every year we kept on postponing it due to the fear of getting sick from the high altitudes, especially when all our friends that went came back telling us how sick they got.

This spring Tony, a good friend of ours was planning a trip to Patagonia and offered after his trip to meet us in Peru and guide us to Machu Picchu. He's not only been to Central America numerous times but has been to Machu Picchu 4 times. We knew we were in good hands with him so we jumped on this opportunity right away.

The journey to Machu Picchu was a long one.
A full day travel from from Boston to Panama City then a night in Lima.
Next early morning a flight from Lima to Cusco.
Then from Cusco a long bus, car or train ride to the village of Machu Picchu.
Being able to climb to the top of Machu Picchu finally took place on the 4th day from departure!
I guess the difficulty in getting there is also what makes this trip so memorable too.

9 days in total - I was able to fill up an entire Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook.
Here are some from during the trip to Machu Picchu.

Moray.
There were numerous places to see during our trip from Cusco to Machu Picchu.
Moray was an enormous site with circular depressions created at different heights. It is said that the the Inca's created this site as an agricultural experimentation site to see what crops grow better at which altitudes.

Here we walked down to the site and back up and I started getting a huge headache.
It was 3,500M at this location and the first time in my life that I experienced a slight altitude sickness.
I'm so glad it wasn't too bad though.
It's said that coca tea helps with altitude sickness so I drank a lot of this. Real tasty too.

Awana Kancha
At a place called Awana Kancha, they had a number of naturally made color pigments on display. These colors were used mostly to color their hand woven textiles but for me it was a great opportunity to try painting on the Alpaca's that I had just drawn at the same place.

 

Later at Piscac, a neighboring town, a street vendor was selling powdered colors and demonstrating on how its used. This was the only souvenir I regretted later on in not purchasing!

On our 4th day after leaving home, we finally made it to the Machu Picchu mountain top.
It's early in the morning and there were already lots of people patiently waiting for the fog to clear up.

 

The fog then started to clear up and Bam!! The world famous view finally appeared!!

A IIlama even sat in front of me just just long to capture her before she got up and walked away.

Later we climbed the taller mountain seen in the background called the Huayna Picchu Mountain.
Over an hour of climbing and was Exhausting! but was well worth the hard work.

 

The number call outs shows areas that I wanted to remember later on. #4 is the location where I sketched the previous scene and #10 is Me.

Here I'm totally exhausted from climbing and excited from sketching at the same time.
What an amazing place!

My 5th book: Urban Sketching (My Journey to) Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu - One of the New Seven Wonders of the World is an unbelievable place - a place you almost have to see for yourself to truly believe. I still remember the first time seeing a photo of the 15th century Inca site located high up in the mountain ridge not being able to believe such a place existed in this world.

For 8 years my wife and I kept on doing research in wanting to go but and kept on postponing the trip since it seemed quite difficult to get there and the altitude sickness seemed to be common with travelers not being able to enjoy the trip. In spring of 2015, we finally made it out there guided by our good friend and travel expert helping us safely get there and not get sick!

All I could say is that the trip was just amazing. Our initial expectations were high to begin with but it even exceeded those high expectations.

This 74 page book captures the exact route we took, what transportation methods we used, what hotels we stayed in, what altitudes were in each location and how we avoided getting altitude sickness. All this information along with all the on-location sketches I did (along with some photos) are bundled into this one book. I truly hope there is something fun or informational in this book for everyone!