Week 2, Part 3: Machu Picchu

Early Saturday morning (technically still Friday evening), way before sunrise, our Rockhurst group met on the stairs of the cathedral on the Plaza de Armas to catch our tour bus to Machu Picchu.  Little did I realize at the time how extensive our journey to one of the Seven Wonders of the World was going to be.  The tour bus took us on a four hour drive to a van station, where we waited in line for a van to take us to the train station.  Then we took a half-hour train ride to Aguas Calientes, the closest town to Machu Picchu and a popular tourist resting place.  We checked into a hotel in Aguas Calientes and slept through a good portion of the afternoon.  For many in our group, the hotel offered the first warm shower in a week (many households in Cusco don't have water heaters, which many of us learned of first-hand).  The whole journey to Machu Picchu had taken nearly 12 hours total thus far. 

 The next morning we woke up at 3 a.m. and walked to the Machu Picchu ticket station.  There we waited in line for two hours for a tour bus to take us to the entrance of Machu Picchu.  We also managed to claim tickets to climb Huayna Picchu, the large mountain Machu Picchu rests beneath.  Each day only 400 visitors are allowed to climb Huayna Picchu mountain to preserve the steep mountain trail carved out by the Incans hundreds of years ago. 

It was still before sunrise when we walked through the entrance of Machu Picchu.  We stood on a cliff overlooking the Incan ruins, but we were hardly able to make them out in the darkness.  It was there that we waited for the sun to peek over the mountains and shed sunlight on the ruins.  Once the sun was up, we were given a short tour and then we were set free amongst the ruins. 

Jennie and I wait for the sun to rise.

The sun begins to rise over the mountains.

The Machu Picchu ruins in the early morning sunlight.

The reason why Machu Picchu was built by the Incans is a mystery.  Throughout the years, people have speculated that Machu Picchu was an agricultural village, or a vacation retreat for the Incan emperor, or a sun temple.  Machu Picchu was completely overlooked by the Spaniards in the 1500's, as they were diverted by a false tip on the whereabouts of gold.  So as the rest of the Incan empire was overtaken by the Spaniards, Machu Picchu sat alone for four hundred years, hidden in the jungle-ridden mountains of Peru.  It wasn't until 1911 that American historian, Hiram Bingham, discovered and excavated the ruins.  Bingham had originally been on the search for the mythological city of gold - El Dorado - but instead he found a historical masterpiece and highly intact cultural site. 

Huayna Picchu mountain rests in the background.

After the tour, the first thing most of us did was go to the mountain path entrance at the bottom of Huayna Picchu.  Huayna Picchu, which means "Young Peak," holds several sacred temples, created by the Incans.  The mountain path is very steep, and oftentimes we had to rely on ropes to climb up particularly steep points.  The peak of Huayna Picchu is about 8,000 feet high!  Sometimes the climb seemed impossible, and it was so tempting to give up, but after an hour we made it to the top.  The view was incredible!  I will never be able to forget the feeling of looking down at the Machu Picchu ruins and the valleys below and feeling like I was on top of the world. 

The view of Machu Picchu from the top of Huayna Picchu mountain.

Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley trail in the background.

Looking out over the valleys and rivers from the top of Huayna Picchu.

 Surprisingly, the hike down the mountain was almost more difficult than climbing up.  By that time we were exhausted from all the physical exertion, and hungry and thirsty.  Once we made it down to the bottom of the mountain, we sunbathed on the terraces of Machu Picchu until it was time for our group to take the bus back to Aguas Calientes for the night.