A Peruvian Adventure: Machu Picchu

Everyone goes to Peru for Machu Picchu.

Each time I meet someone new, they always ask the same questions:

1. Is this your first time in Peru?

2. What did you think of Machu Picchu?

And it is an amazing place - but part of it is amazing for reasons we don't really know.

The place was discovered by Hiram Bingham in 1911. He wasn't really looking for Machu Picchu, per se, but he sort of lucked into it.

Notwithstanding that Pizarro probably never made it to Machu Picchu, this was a remarkable thing.

And I have been to Machu Picchu three times. Remember that scene in The Godfather? Just when you think you are you, they drag you back in! I was trying to tell Doreen that it is a spiritual thing. That the Inca are pulling on me inexorably so that I can complete my vision quest.

But she doesn't believe me.

So here we are again, at the top of the mountain of Machu Picchu.

And we do what everyone does - we take a photo of the train station from where the buses drop you off:

That is the train station WAY down there!

I should have taken a photo of the line waiting to take the bus back down. It must have been about 300 people! This made me a little anxious about our return, but I had decided early in this trip to live in the moment. (not something I am always good at) and just pushed it out of my mind. And that worked, mostly.

There is about a 1,600' climb from the train station to the park. You can walk down in about an hour, so that was going to be my backup plan. Not a good plan, but plan none the less.

On the way up we saw plenty of people walking down. None of them looked happy.

Machu Picchu is incredibly photogenic. And there must be millions and millions of this shot around the web:

but there is a good reason for that. It is simply spectacular. And until you see it for the third time, you really don't know how spectacular it can be.

We had a guide for a couple of hours, and I think it was worth it. He was able to take our photo:

and tell us stories about Machu Picchu. I don't think all of them are true, and because the city was abandoned before the Spanish controlled all of Peru, and because the Quechua didn't have a written language, all we know about Machu Picchu is from inference. So we will probably NOT know definitively that the virgins lived on one side of the central green and that the warriors lived on the other. It was a tad too much "Vestal Virgins" for me. But I don't have a better idea. (give me time, just give me time...)

Doreen loves these two photos because we were standing on a ledge (you had to wait in line for this shot) and you can see my fear of heights coming through.

You can also see the rain in the background.

Machu Picchu is funny, because it can get quite warm in the day there (notice our short sleeve shirts) but at night it is COLD. And you can see the thunderstorms about to rake Wayna Picchu (the nearest tall peak) behind us.

I had an opportunity to climb Wayna Picchu for free back in 1976. I didn't do it then, and I didn't do it in 1994, and we didn't do it this year. Wayna didn't call me.

The terrain there is just a sight to see. The relief is incredible.

Here is another funny thing about Machu Picchu, and indeed all the Inca ruins we saw. Everyone wants to have their picture taken under a lintel. So we figured that we should, too.

I found it interesting that they build in hooks and eyelets for construction of roofs and things:

and I don't think that these were added later.

But I do know that one of the astronomical observatory stones was knocked off by a camera crew filming a commercial. That sort of makes you sick.

Like a lot of the ancient Inca works, agriculture is very important. So much of the site is terraced for growing potatoes. The Quechua grew thousands of types of potatoes, many of them designed, or probably chosen, for specific micro-climates. There were very specific rules about when to plant at each elevation. That way you always had potatoes ready to harvest, and you never risked the loss of an entire drop due to the failure of a specific varietal.

Those techniques were not used in Ireland in the 1840s

This is a baby llama that was there for show. We were told that there are only llamas, no alpacas in Machu Picchu. Also, we were told that you never eat llama, only alpaca. (Though one of my abiding memories of the first time I was in Cuzco is that I had just bought an anticucho skewer from street vendor, when an old Quechua lady laughed and me and pointed at what I was eating and said (in Spanish) "That's not beef heart, that is llama heart!")

Here we are with the storms rolling in behind us.

This is an interesting stone, but I don't really but the story.

if you put a compass on the edge of of the stone between those feet, it allegedly will track N-S-E-W. I put my compass on the stone, and it sort of did that, but the stone is not square! And it looks like it was moved. I wasn't buying what the guide was selling.

This complex carving, on the other hand, is used to determine the solstice. This one I believe, since it is quite complicated, and seems to be in the right direction.

This poor joker must have forgot his phone. And his camera. But he had his computer so he was making the best of it.

Maybe he was skyping to an old friend who was drawn to Machu Picchu but couldn't get there in person.

Here you can see how the stones are used to attach the roofing.

The roof is not original.

The guides are crazy about these rocks that are supposed to look like the surrounding mountains.

And I suppose they do:

This particular rock is supposed to have a lot of quartz crystal in it, and of course, that comes with a lot of healing energy.

This girl was trying to capture that energy:

I hope she did.

Here is an old stairway that was only recently discovered: I would not want to walk up it.

The houses that looked like residences were very cleverly made. Since it is a sloping site, you got into both stories by just walking in off the roads. It is hard to see, but there is a ledge that allows for flooring to be laid and create two completely independent housing units.