Machu Picchu

Yay! My first geocache found in a foreign country - Peru! In March 2008, I took the trip of a lifetime (for me, anyways!) to Peru with my cousin. We completed an amazing 4-day hike along the Inca Trail which ended at Machu Picchu. It was a breathtaking place, made all the more special because of the hike.

I took my GPS on the hike mostly to keep track of how far we hiked and thought it would be fun to track our altitude gains. Of course, before leaving, I did my research and found that there was a geocache hidden in Machu Picchu. Actually, there was another geocache in Machu Picchu somewhere, but it had gotten muggled, so I didn't bother looking for that one.

I didn't want to pressure myself to find the cache as I wasn't sure if we would have time to look for it depending on what our schedule was like. The last day of our hike started in the dark at 5am, and we arrived in Machu Picchu at around 8am. Our guide gave us a tour of Machu Picchu for a couple of hours after we arrived and then we had the rest of the day free to explore it on our own before catching the bus to Aguas Calientes where we would be staying for the night. Woohoo, I had time to look for it!

Without any maps loaded on my GPS (Garmin doesn't make maps for South America), I had no idea where it was, but was able to tell how far away it was, in feet. I figured it wouldn't actually be INSIDE of Machu Picchu, but somewhere close. We headed to the entrance and my GPS told me I was closer (~300 feet). As we got to the main entrance, the arrow on my GPS pointed towards a trail of steps going downhill. As I followed the trail, I was definitely getting closer to the cache, although I had to keep climbing down trail quite a bit. Finally, I reached a little hut (see picture) that I remember seeing on the cache description, so I knew I was close. I also remembered seeing a "spoiler" picture on the cache page so I kinda knew what I was looking for. It still took me several minutes to find and was a bit off the trail. But finally I found the "tube" (like a drainage tube) in the spoiler picture and found the cache shortly after that. It was then that I realized I didn't have a pen to sign the log, RATS! I also heard some hikers coming up the trail, so I put the container back in its place rather quickly since I couldn't sign the log anyways.

After I got home, I saw that someone had actually dropped a geocoin in the cache. Darn, I would have taken it if I wasn't so rushed. Bummer...

I was totally stoked that I had found the cache, my first one outside the US. My adrenaline was going when I was climbing down the trail to find it. The climb back up the stairs was hard as my legs were hurting a bit from the past four days of hiking, but I didn't care, it was worth it to find the cache. By the time I reached the top of the trail, the others in our group were there as this was where we would catch the bus to Aguas Calientes, where a hotel and a hot shower were awaiting us. I was sweating like a pig on the bus ride into town, but excited that I had found the geocache!