Indiana Jones meets Machu Picchu

As our parents asked us to not do anything stupid and to preserve everything we had accomplished in our lives, we generally try to avoid extremely dangerous activities. This stopped us from jumping of a 15 meter cliff in Galapagos, just like we decided not to bike down the most dangerous road in the world. That's right parents, we have taken your words into serious consideration. Admittedly that didn't prevent us from visiting Colombia, diving with sharks, and riding on horses, and so on.

But we really thought about it. As all the financial experts know, an extra risk often brings an extra reward. The most unforgettable moments are sometimes the unexpected, unprepared and adrenaline-pumped moments we never dreamed would happen. Being attacked by a huge sea lion. Getting robbed by armed gangsters. Traveling in a 600 horsepower boat. Horse-riding at full speed through the wild mountains. Crazy treks next to cliffs. Those are the best moments.

But it is nothing compared to what happened to us when we were heading to the Machu Pichu. What perspired there forced us to expand the upper limit of our perceived "danger scale" from 10 to 20 and will no doubt require countless hours of therapy in order to regain our sanity. Forget about sharks and armed robbers, read on for some of the most shocking revelations of our trip.

Seasoned travelers that we are, we decided to avoid the crowded tourist trails and trains leading to Machu Picchu. Our source in the tourist information office assured us it was a smooth and easygoing trip: 6 hours of bus to reach Hydro Electrica and a 2-hour walking trip from there. The first 4 hours of bus were without incidents.  Until suddenly our collectivo was forced to stop as a major mudslide was blocking the road. We made a quick calculation: the road was relatively highly-frequented and we were the second van to be blocked by the mudslide. We estimated we had missed it by no more than 15 minutes. Big tractors came to clear up the road and several hours later our driver attempted a crazy acceleration through the mud that was still flowing down and we were finally on our way again. Little did we know that we had seen nothing yet...

This time we were the fourth van in the row. Not sure what was going on, we descended to take a look around the corner. To our horror we were greeted by a major rock avalanche. Flows of rocks came tumbling down and covered the road. Locals were taking pictures as if they had never seen anything like it. We suddenly found ourselves in somewhat of a crisis situation: no vehicles could pass, the way back was still blocked by a mudslide and we were running out of time if we wanted to be able to visit Machu Picchu the next day at our assigned hour, early in the morning. Our bus driver explained it quite simply to us: our only option was to run through the rock avalanche and carry on by foot.

We would like to point out to our parents that we would never consider such a reckless stunt unless we felt like we had no other option. That being said, it took us a while to summon the guts to run. Also, since the lonely planet doesn't seem to offer any advice in this type of situation we put together a small how-to in case any of our readers ever find themselves in the same situation, God forbid.

If you did it right, it should look something like this:

Avalanche runner in action.

Thinking that we had passed the worst was our next mistake. For the sake of brevity let us summarize: 1. we passed two more rock avalanches, 2. the taxi we found afterwards couldn't pass the bridge in the valley because the water level had risen above it, 3. we found a pedestrian bridge further up, 4. however we were still forced to wade through a part of the river because it had more than breached its benches, 5. we had to walk for two hours in the dark over train tracks as it was considered safer than the mountain pass. The locals who told us that no more trains were driving at that hour were proved wrong but thankfully we heard it approach behind us on time. If some of you are having trouble visualizing this crazy day, we made a small reconstruction in the video below of some of the more impressive events.

All the emotion would almost make us forget to mention the amazing Machu Picchu site we visited early the next morning. Amazing views, Inca ruins in impeccable condition, impressive pre-Colonial engineering and some nice hiking up Huaynapicchu and the adjoining mountain. We won't bore you any longer, enjoy the pictures!