It’s 4:45am and we are on our way to Machu Picchu!
These pre– 5 am wake up calls are becoming pretty normal – with a traditional Bolivian / Peruvian breakfast of bread and tea, we stumble down to the buses that take us 20 minutes up the mountain to Machu Picchu.
The advantage to spending the night in Aguas Calientes rather than taking an express train from Cusco is the
multiple hour jump start we get on all the tourists coming from further away. We enter the park just before dawn and well before the majority of other folks, thus
snapping a few pictures without a single person in the background!
This ancient Incan city is guarded on all sides by towering mountains which force the sun to rise very high before its rays touch the ruins. Thus dawn in Machu Picchu gives us the impression of someone flipping a light switch and suddenly bathing us all in fierce light.
Very little is known about Machu Picchu’s original purpose or even exactly how it was constructed. Here is an archaeologist’s best guess as to how Incans split such huge rocks; by driving wooden wedges into the boulders along natural seams.
Our guide also points out multiple alters assumed to be used for llama sacrifice
which incredibly are aligned perfectly with the sun to show the start of winter and summer solstice (to the minute!).
For the most important structures the Incans smoothed the stones (supposedly using other stones) to ensure greater uniformity and to this day they feel almost soft to the touch. This is considered the “Inca’s” house, or where the supreme
ruler would have slept in his visits here; it is also the only structure in the city with a private bathroom.
Incan construction is extremely impressive.
They fit stones together so tightly it is said you can not fit a knife blade between them - and all without mortar of any kind!
There are also a few shaped boulders which appear to mirror the mountains
behind them –
archaeologists suggest this was to pay tribute to the great power of the mountains surrounding Machu Picchu.
In fact the Spanish Conquistadors had
such a hard time attempting to destroy Incan buildings they had to settle for building churches on top of Incan constructions – we can still see the results today (especially in Cusco).
Every step brings a new sense of wonder – water canals run throughout
the city (ancient pipelines) and about 70% of the city has remained intact over the last 500 years.
Stairs take us up and down
and soon we come to the flat grassy area separating the city into two parts: religious and residential.
This grassy middle ground is thought to be warrior practice grounds but again, this is all conjecture.
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