How to see Machu Picchu

Book a cruise that offers Machu Picchu as an excursion. Bite the bullet and pay the $$. You only live once.

Get a prescription for altitude sickness medication. Don’t forget to pack it.

Fail to get into shape. On the cruise, reality hits and you eschew all the elevators and only take the stairs. Walk between 500-800 stair steps per day for 18 days. Decide this is adequate. It is not.

Break your sunglasses.

Despite all suggestions to pack lightly for the excursion, go ahead and pack too much stuff. Live to regret that decision.

Learn that motion sickness medication and altitude sickness medication are incompatible. Decide whether to be carsick on the switchback roads or altitude sick for three days. Opt for the altitude medication. You will be right.

Get an eye infection the day you leave.

Get up at 4:30 am on the date of departure from the ship. Eat breakfast, meet Jennifer, the tour coordinator and board a motor coach in the dark from General San Martin port to Lima, 4.5 hours on the road.

Eat lunch at a very nice place.

Take a plane to Cusco, 11,152 feet above where you started at sea level.

Take a bus to the nice Hilton Garden Inn. Notice a big bowl of coca leaves on the counter. It is supposed to help with altitude sickness. Pass on the coca leaves. Try to eat, despite no appetite and a little woozy from the altitude. Long tiring day of travel. Enjoy the dinner show.

Try IncaKola. The CocaCola company doesn’t miss a trick.

Fall into bed. Notice that the eye infection is now in both eyes.

Breakfast at 4am, still no appetite. Choke down some granola anyway. Notice the big bowl of powdered coca leaves on the buffet. Pass on the coca leaves.

Transfer on a small bus of twelve people to the Ollantaytambo Train Station.

Realize that you forgot to bring your sunscreen. Buy more at the train station.

Board RailPeru for a 1.5 hour ride to Aguas Calientes. Nice, vista dome train. They give you coca candy. Give it away.

Get on another small bus to Machu Picchu.

Bless all the Incan gods that you got a tour guide like Miguel.

Buy snacks at the first potty stop. They will become very important.

Gaze with wonder and astonishment as you pass through the Sacred Valley of the Incas, with the Andes towering above you. It is indescribable, and the whole reason for this trip.

Arrive in Machu Picchu, 7972 feet. Put total trust in Miguel and start climbing the uneven stone steps (no handrails), some of which are about 20” risers, not the easy 8” things on the cruise ship. Be grateful that Miguel understands that not every tourist is a mountain goat (or an alpaca, as the case may be), and he stops frequently so everyone can catch their breath.

Curse the fact that you brought hiking poles on the trip and for some inexplicable reason, decided not to bring them.

Climb for 1.5 hours. 600 vertical feet (55+stories). Curse your lack of stairmaster work.

Arrive at the top to see llamas grazing and relaxing and an astonishing, postcard-perfect view of Machu Picchu. Learn about all the mysteries of the place: how it was built, why it was built, why it was abandoned.

Suddenly realize it is noon and nobody has eaten since 4am. Bring out the trail mix you bought at that potty stop and watch your new best friends circle like the condors that they are. Share it all.

After you are saturated by the brilliance of the achingly beautiful day and the scenery that is out of some kind of a fantasy movie, begin the hike down on wobbly legs.

Appreciate being back on the bus.

Determine never to eat a guinea pig, even if offered. It won’t be.

Repeat the entire sequence in reverse, back to the hotel with a 2pm stop for a buffet lunch.

Skip dinner and fall into bed in Cusco, full with the knowledge that sometimes the hard things are the most important.

Enjoy the next day, as many unexpected things may come by, such as a compassionate English-speaking pharmacist who asks all the right questions and sells you eye drops for $10 that provide instant relief. You could find yourself on Peruvian television, and maybe almost get arrested. Visit an alpaca farm and feed the alpacas. Buy yarn.

Don’t be like Captain Coca Tea, who drank too much of it and talked nonstop to maybe nobody, for five hours straight.

Go back to the ship, feeling grateful for all the people who helped to make this astonishing experience possible.