2009 PERU: MACHUU PICCHU

This is one of five blogs about my recent trip to Peru. Each corresponds to an album of pictures on my Picasa Web site.
www.picasaweb.com/hytenjr


Machuu Picchu is the reason you go to Peru. Peruvian people are nice; Colca Canyon’s terraces are interesting: the Inca sites around Cuzco are great; but Machuu Picchu is why you go to Peru. Sometimes your destination lets you down ... it’s not what you had envisioned. Machuu Picchu, on the other hand, is all you could ever hope for. It is beautiful, complex, historical, and downright unbelievable.
The Machuu Picchu experience begins one of two ways. You can hike the Inca Trail for two or four days ... If you are very fit and like rough adventure ... or you can take the train out from Cuzco. I chose the latter. Starting in the wide and fertile Cuzco valley ... a thirty minute bus ride outside of town ... you wind through the ever narrowing canyon whose vertical side seem to tower over the narrow gauge tracks. At one point you actually back down a siding to continue on a track lower in the canyon. The three hour trip to Agua Calientes, which is just outside Machuu Picchu park, is an ever changing panorama of the Peruvian mountains.
Agua Calientes may be the world’s largest tourist trap. Actually it isn’t very big but well over 50% of the village is devoted to gathering the tourist dollar. While things may be fairly cheap by American standards, it does get any more expensive in Peru. I arrived there at 11:00 AM and found very little to do the rest of the day. The up side was that I would get maximum time ... over six hours ... at the Park the next day. The usual trip is arriving on that train and going immediately to Machuu Picchu for a three or four hour stay. I would recommend taking a later train out from Cuzco ... A couple hours more sleep in Cuzco is more of a vacation than a few hours wandering around Agua Calientes.
It takes about an hour from the time you board a bus in Agua, travel up the mountain, go thru the ticket line, and hike up to the first view of the ruins. And what a view it is. Even with clouds below obscuring some of the view, it was breathtaking. (Don’t worry about the clouds ... they come and go all day long as my picture show.)

I am really at a loss for using words to describe Machuu Picchu. It is art and beauty with almost unbelievable architecture and history. Almost every view can be composed into a great picture. As an architect, I am amazed at every aspect of the construction. Even a huge computer program attached to the most modern stone grinding machines would have difficulty matching the precision of of the stone walls of Machuu Picchu’s temples. The short history (1400-1550)of the Inca civilization makes it all that more improbable.
Our group of ten or so English speakers had a great guide for a two hour tour of the site. I then spent the next four plus ours with a really nice girl, Olivia, soaking in the whole site from higher altitudes. We climbed upwards in altitude a thousand feet or so to the Sun Gate which is the last pass on the Inca Trail prior to reaching Machuu Picchu. We sat on a ledge over a two hundred foot drop and pondered the sight and the world. What a memorable time.
People often ask me if I get lonely living by myself. I always say I am only lonely when I stand looking at a great view of the world around me and have no one to turn to and say ‘Would you look at that!’. I am thankful that on that day I had someone to share the experience with.
You have to take this trip ... the Cuzco-Machuu Picchu part. Do it while you are strong enough to survive the climbs. You will not regret a breath lost.