We have seen some amazing sites in the Sacred Valley of the Peruvian Andes, but let’s be honest, the main reason people head to Peru is to see Machu Picchu. The Incan mountaintop citadel is high on a lot of travelers’ bucket lists, including ours, so we finally decided to scratch that itch on our 40th anniversary tour.

The question is how to go about visiting the site. The easy way is to take a train to the town of Aguas Calientes, which sits on the valley floor below Machu Picchu, from which you can take a bus up to the site and traverse one of six walking tour routes. That’s how the majority of visitors do it.

The tougher option is to hike the Inca Trail to the site. We of course opted for the harder option. Now, there is one hike from the beginning of the trail that takes four days to complete. It involves porters carrying cooking and camping gear, sleeping in tents, cold showers, etc.; not our cup of tea but people do it.

We instead opted for a one day hike that is about 10 kilometers in length and takes around six hours to complete, but it does afford views you can’t see otherwise. It starts with a pleasant train ride along the Urubamba River that leaves from the picturesque town of Ollantaytambo and lasts a little over an hour. Hikers get off at KM 104, where the hiking fun begins. You start out at around 7000 feet, top out at around 9000 feet when reaching the Sun Gate, then descend to Machu Picchu which sits at around 8000 feet. (All of which is well below the 11,000 to 12,000 feet we’ve been operating at for much of this trip.)

I don’t want to get into too much detail, but it is a strenuous hike, with plenty of climbs, uneven steps and switchbacks. Travel agents will tell you the first half of the hike is the toughest, but I can attest that the second half is no stroll in Central Park. But once you make the final climb up to the Sun Gate, the high point from which you can first see the citadel, you are rewarded with an amazing view most other visitors don’t get to see,

And as I sit writing this I do so with a profound sense of accomplishment. As I often joke, we aren’t that new anymore so having done this feels very satisfying