Sacred Valley (2) - Machu Picchu

Why not take the bus when you can walk like the Inkas?! Step by step by step - it felt like endless steps. Strictly speaking, it was about 1.700 steps to the ruin and another 100hm to the Wayna Picchu.

10 interesting facts about Machu Picchu:

TEMPLE OF THE SUN
The semicircular Temple of the Sun, constructed around a large boulder, offers commanding views of the Sacred Valley below. During the summer solstice, the sun shines through a temple window and aligns with both the boulder within and the tip of a nearby mountain peak.

TIME TRAVEL
A 15th-century stone city tucked into a mountain-ringed valley high in the Andes, Machu Picchu is about 50 miles from Cusco, the Inca capital. It's reached today by a four-hour train ride, then a few miles of winding mountain road, or by a three- to six-day hike along the famed Inca Trail.

TERRACES
The 700-plus ancient terraces at Machu Picchu preserved soil, promoted agriculture, and served as part of an extensive water-distribution system that conserved water and limited erosion on the steep slopes.

INCA INFRASTRUCTURE
A path leads along the outside of Machu Picchu, which is formed of buildings, plazas, and platforms connected by narrow lanes. One sector is cordoned off to itself by walls, ditches, and, perhaps, a moat.

ANCIENT ARCHITECTS
Landscape engineering skills are in strong evidence at Machu Picchu. The site’s buildings, walls, terraces, and ramps reclaim the steep mountainous terrain and make the city blend naturally into the rock escarpments on which it is situated.

STARGAZING
Archaeologists believe that these shallow stone dishes were filled with water and served an astronomical observatory function.

ABOVE THE URUBAMBA
The Inca ruins lie on a high ridge, surrounded on three sides by the windy, turbulent Urubamba River some 2,000 feet below. When Hiram Bingham first saw the maze of terraces and walls rising out of the thick undergrowth in 1911, he found himself in a ghost town that had been hidden from the outside world for nearly 400 years. "It seemed like an unbelievable dream," he later wrote. "What could this place be?"Read more