Machu Picchu

Just getting to Machu Picchu is quite a feat. It is too complicated for us to undertake the 4 day inca trail, and its pretty well impossible to arrive by bike or road. That leaves the train. Its about a 50 km ride and takes more than 90 mins to slowly descend a narrow, extraordinarily deep, winding and scenic valley beside a fast happy river into the cloud forest. It feels a bit strange as although Machu Picchu is on a mountain, it is on route to the amazonian jungle and is considerably lower (2430m) than the sacred valley area (3000m) we have been exploring.

We descend from the train into a small touristy town that sits just below the Machu Picchu site. We are up before 5am the next morning to catch a 6 am bus for our 7 am entry. It is absolutely pouring it down. Once at the top we manage to find ourselves a guide. We will tour the main site for a couple of hours with him, then climb the Waynu Picchu mountain behind the far end of the site, and finally return through the ruins to the exit. The tour with the guide is damp and whilst we can see the ruins, everywhere else is in the cloud.

Machu Picchu was built in the 15th Century. It was never discovered by the Spaniards and was not fully completed. It may even have been abandoned before the Spanish invasion. The site includes agricultural, urban and ceremonial areas and was almost certainly selected because of its amazing position in the mountains. Mountains were considered to be deities, making the location very sacred. Our guide explains how the Inca was the Emperor, but the rest of the population were Quechua and not “Incas”. The site is much steeper than we had appreciated and covered with Inca terracing. We visit each of the main areas including temples, the Inca house (where the visiting Inca lived) and residential areas. There are temples in close proximity for each of the four sacred elements: the sun, the moon, water and the winds.

The 200m mountain climb is crazily steep, at the top it is terraced and more like a ladder than steps. From the top we get occasional magical windows of view through the cloud and bide our time in the hope it will clear. In fact, it marvellously clears as we are descending. By the time we are back on the main site we can really appreciate just what a wonderful setting it is. The river, steeply below, hairpins around. There are almost vertically steep mountains in all directions, with huge slab cliffs. And misty green jungly vegetation. If it weren’t for all the tourists, it would be a splendid place to live.Leggi altro