The Real Deal Brazil Reaches New Heights

Real Deal Brazil owner Jeff Walters, from Atlantic Beach, Fla., but now based in Costa Rica, last year set out on one of the greatest, most intense, vacation treks you can take -- and he was nice enough to send us some pictures of his favorite hat and him, up there in the sky! As in the great sky city of the lost Inca empire. The heights of Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu is, in fact, both the name of a peak in the Andes Mountains, and of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the abandoned Inca city that holds some of the most impressive ruins on the planet, a 15th-century fortress 7,970 feet above sea level. Way up there where the thin air can make you fall-down sick if you're not used to it.

The two photos that follow show Jeff reaching the end of his journey. It's day four along the fabled Inca Trail, which takes ambitious travelers through everything from cloud forest to alpine tundra, passing through settlements and even tunnels, and offering views of a number of Incan ruins along the way up, up, up, before ending at the fabled Sun Gate on Machu Picchu Mountain.

The photo below is during a day tour through plateau tundra on horseback.

We're damn pleased to have made the journey with you, Jeff! So very, very cool.