The only thing I could see was a wall of fog to my left and a thick jungle zooming by to my right. As I stepped out of the bus I realized how tired I really felt. It was 5:30 in the morning and I had just gotten off of an hour bus ride riding through the city of Aguas Calientes, Peru. The fog rose so thick I could barely see anything around me except for a sign that said Machu Picchu straight ahead. I followed my mom, my dad, and my two brothers in the direction the sign pointed.

We walked up a narrow path on the side of the mountain. To my left lay a wall of mountain and to my right rose a curtain of fog shielding my view as to how high we really stood. Still dazed from my sleep, I didn’t think much of what was to come. We trekked the path for about thirty minutes.

The sun began to rise but the fog still didn’t clear. As we walked up the final stretch of path we saw a crowd of people standing at the top. About one hundred people stood around and it appeared as though they were waiting for something to come. They were tourist, just like us.
My dad led us over to an area to sit and wait. At the time, this wasn’t the most exciting thing for me. To me it was just another sightseeing trip on yet another vacation. My eyelids began growing heavy and it was no longer possible for me to prevent them from shutting.

Minutes go by until I woke up from the sound of people clapping and cheering. I began to see the peak of a distant mountain appearing through the fog. The fog had begun to rise. As the fog rose more and more the people cheered louder and louder. Finally the fog completely rose like a curtain to a play.

A blanket of ruins consisting of houses, crumbling walls, temples, streets and stairways began to appear. It was built on a plateau that emerged halfway out of a mountain and we were standing directly in front of it. Everything appeared to be falling apart but at the same time it was put together so meticulously. The ancient city followed the mountains natural curves. Once the fog rose I could now see that we were much higher than I expected. We stood 2,000 feet above the valley floor. The ruins resembled an island in the sky with a sea of mountains surrounding it.
That was nine years ago. Being seventeen now I realize how amazing it actually was to see something so old and historic. Traveling brings you to so many new and exotic places that you can never appreciate from seeing them on TV or reading about it in a book. I will never forget the sight I saw when the fog finally rose.