Day 5 - Machu Picchu and Geocaching

After Boris finished our guided tour, we had the rest of the day to ourselves to continue exploring on our own as our passes for Machu Picchu were good for the rest of the day and we could stick around and re-enter the area as much as we wanted.

Lorry and Tucker wanted to take more pictures, so we all kinda separated and agreed to meet at the main entrance. Having done some research, I knew there was a geocache at Machu Picchu. I figured it wouldn't actually be in Machu Picchu, but outside the main entrance, so Sharon and I headed towards the entrance; I don't have any South American maps loaded in my GPS (well and Garmin doesn't make S.American maps anyway), so I was just staring at a blank GPS screen.

At the main entrance, I was about 300 feet away from the cache location according to my GPS. I then saw a trail leading down a hill where the arrow was pointing, so I followed it. It was a windy trail with more steps, oh boy, my legs were tired, but this was a geocache and I had to find it. That got my adrenaline going. Sharon followed me part of the way, but stairs down meant stairs back up, so I told her she didn't have to go if she didn't want to, so she just hung around near the top of the trail. Well, that last 300 feet was hell on my legs, but I couldn't come all the way to Peru and not look for it. I took the windy path for what seemed like forever (because I had it in my mind that I would have to climb back up all those dang steps!) and finally was within 30 feet of the cache. It took me awhile to find it, but I did, it was a little container hidden in a rock wall. But darn it, I didn't have a pen to sign the log, then I heard some people coming up the trail, so I put it away really fast and snapped a few pictures. I'm going to log it on the geocaching.com website as a "find" even though I didn't sign the log. It turns out my picture of the actual cache didn't come out as I think I was in such a hurry that I didn't hit the button on the camera correctly. Darn....hopefully, they will still let me log it.

This was a hut that was near the cache...it turns out this picture was actually on the cache page, so I'm going to post it to prove I was there and not delete my log...

My legs were just drained and it seemed like it took me forever to climb back up that trail of stairs, but I was stoked, my first geocache in a foreign country! Woo hoo! By the time I climbed back up the hill, the others were back and were waiting for the bus that would take us to Aguas Calientes where we would be staying for the night...