Machu Picchu

This was my dad's one "must see" ticket item for our vacation- Machu Picchu. I think that he watched enough videos in preparation to be the tour guide himself. Thus, we didn't hire a guide, and we went at the adventure solo. We bought tickets for the morning entrance to the park and the Machu Picchu Mountain hike.
One of the easiest ways to get to Aguas Caliente, the town surrounding Machu Picchu, is to take a train. We took a taxi for 100 Peruvian Pesos from Cuzco to Ollantaytambo, and then the train from there. Our taxi driver stopped in a small town on the way and we listened to a teenage girl and her family describe the wool dying and weaving process. Then, onward to Ollantaytambo we went. The town was very small, but had a set of ruins to explore as well. Instead, we went to a panoramic view restaurants, and we were the only family there for an hour. I had an alpaca ravioli, which I liked better than the thick cut of alpaca meat because it was easier to few and eat. We also explored down by the river to the railroad tracks and a small neighboring village. Finally, it was night time and our train arrived.
By time that we arrived in Aguas Caliente it was almost 9 pm. The town was intriguing in the fact that the train tracks ran straight through a majority of the town. We had to asked a local market where our hostel was, and when we got there our hostel person instructed to first go to the bus ticket booth before it closed. He advised that in the mornings, the line for the bus to get to Machu Picchu begins at 4 am and the bus leaves at 5:30 am, but that there would be a long line to buy bus tickets and board the bus. The office to buy bus tickets closed at 9, but they still accepted everyone in line even after that time. We waited about 25 families for our turn, and I'm glad we bought them the night before because he wasn't exaggerating about the line for boarding the bus.
The next morning we got up around 5 am to prepare for the day, and our hostel made us eggs to order, which was a nice surprise. We bundled up, more than we had to unfortunately, and made our way to the 3 block length line for the bus. Although it was a long line, they had multiple buses going at once and he boarded quicker than I expected. The drive was five minutes to the outskirts of town and fifteen minutes of switchbacks up the hills, which led directly to the entrance of the park.
We partially wandered around the park, even though you're supposed to stay on the circuit trail. One of our first turn offs led us to alpacas, whom we took selfies with for a solid thirty minutes. Afterwards, my dad gave us the tour of the ruins, which he knew from all of his youtube research on the ruins. The ruins were by far larger than any we had seen in Peru, during any part of our trip, and it was incredible to think of the city nestled between the mountains and left undiscovered until fairly recently. We circled our way through the park, we were ushered out, and then reentered the park because we had tickets to climb Machu Picchu Mountain. The line waited outside of the trail entrance until our 9 am entrance period, and the clump of people quickly dispersed along the trail as we made the quickly ascent step path. For two hours of so we battled the altitude and climbed our way up. Luckily, there were look out points that we could stop and breath all along the way. That altitude was no joke. It turned what might have been a tiring, but easy, hike into a gasping for air and breaking breaks journey. We made it up and enjoyed the panoramic view for about 30 minutes, and then made our descent. Our second loop through the park wasn't as slow paced, but we still stopped to admire some views.
The line for the bus ride home was longer than the line to get to the park. The line went on for at least a football field, and it felt almost like a sport to find the ending point of the line. That night we took it easy, and after getting dinner in town we called it a night.