Well, it felt a bit like running from Cusco or running out of money, but I could hardly leave without having seen Machu Picchu, could I? I got myself on a Sacred Valley tour, maybe a bit too much of a tourist shock after returning from the remote ManuNationalPark. The first place we stopped at was a town called Pisac-althrough it was sunday, there was not much left of the traditional market- the tourist market had taken over completely many years ago...well from Cusco I've been used to people dressed up in traditional clothing with lamas behind them, their first word not being "Hola", but "Do you want a picture with a lama?" - but here on the market  I saw a mother dressing up her little girl- ohh sooo cute in traditional clothing with a nice hat - , then putting a lama baby up to the girls chest, slapping the lama to get it in the right position - the expression on the girls face certainly put me off taking pictures of any of those kids. And while the kid was send off for tourist snapshots ( she was barely around the corner when the first tourists couldn't resist), the mother was dressing up her second, even younger daughter. Another woman asked me if I want to take a pic of her baby - I just felt the urge to run from this place......the Inka- ruins were impressive though, even more the ones at the beautyful town of Ollantaytambo, although the weather started to get nasty, and when I got off the train in Aqua Caliente ( the place near MachuPicchu ) that evening, all that I could do was put up my wet clothes to dry and hope for better weather for the next day. I made it to the bus station shortly before 4:30 the next morning and got one of the last seats on the first bus up to MachuPicchu at 5:30 - getting up that windy zig-zag-road revealed the stunning surrounding with every turn of the road, finally I arrived at MachuPicchu, and as there were only about 40 people who hiked up to the entrance that morning, it wasn't a problem to get one of those 400 stamps that allow you to climb Huaynapicchu, the mountain you see in the typical MachuPicchu-snapshot. Beeing at the ruins quite early, I enjoyed the view before the huge touristgroups arrived - and I can't say anything but that it's a magnificent, stunning, impressive, magic place, also I was lucky with the weather- blue skies and pure sunshine. Around noon I hiked up that mountain to enjoy the breathtaking view down on the town that indeed has the shape of a condor. I returned to Cusco and went on to Puno at the Lake Titicaca, I explored some of the islands on the lake, like the floating islands of the Uros people, the Taquile Island and the "Isla de la sol" on the bolivian side of the lake. Obviously I made it to Bolivia, from Lake Titicaca I went on to LaPaz, didn't stay tooo long in that big city before I went on to the town of Cochabamba.