Macchu Picchu

Arriving high up in the mountain, green lushness on all sides and whisping cloud rising around, it's a spectacular place even before you figure in the large Inca site built ontop of a flatspot between rock faces.

What is Macchu Picchu? I dunno. Sounds cool though. Really, I don't know. Neither, it seems, does anybody else. No-one can agree. Some say it's an Inca place of worship to the Sun god, others say it's a royal palace or an Inca fortress. Most seem happy with the village description saying that around 1000 people lived high up here on the mountain. What ever it's purpose it's out of this world. It looks stunning but it's also one of the greatest feats of all time to build such a place soo high up in such difficult conditions.
Arriving around 7am the place is practically empty, the day tourist train arrives with throngs of happy snappers is at about 11am.

The classic Macchu Picchu photograph that you see everywhere in South America, and probably the first picture that will come up in a Google search, can be had within 5 minutes of arriving with very little effort or climbing involved. With the large curved shaped Waynu Picchu looming behind the site and the clouds constantly changing the picture we stay in awe for awhile. Okay we didn't struggle for 4 days walking the Inca trail but it's not the most accessible tourist attraction, the Peruvian government want to keep it that way because it's a great money earner.

Before Hiram Bingham was lead to this place by a local boy only one other record of a non South American visit here existed. This was from a Spaniard in 1532, although no book we read backed this up. We read it in a museum in Cusco. Bingham is the one noted down in history as discovering the place and his name adorns the plaque at the entrance. He was actually looking for a different lost city but must've been happy to have arrived here. Access to the place was ropey and hidden. The Spaniards never found their way up here, totally, and therefore didn't destroy it. When Bingham arrived in the early 20th Century it was vastly overgrown and a totally different prospect to the well kept area we see before us. A lot of the walls and even some thatched roofs have now been restored and are still in the process, how far they will go to restore it I'm not sure. You can certainly see the difference between some of the immaculate Inca work and the slap dash modern efforts. Who'd have thought that a civilisation over 500 years ago could still rule the roost in stone masonry terms.


We take a path leading away from the site along the narrow cliff edge. Arriving at a small drawbridge and part of the old Inca trail. The narrow trail is cut about half a metre into shear rock face and has now partly collapsed. Coming here seemed a dangerous and risky affair even back when the paths leading to it were new.


I was reminded of an American mother and daughter combo that we chatted to briefly on the way to Cusco. They looked at me in disgust when I said I wasn't doing any trekking in Peru. Why should I? A lot of tours are based around trekking but to be honest I can live with missing out. Again, these type of people aren't happy until they've caught malaria somewhere deep in the jungle three days walk away from the nearest village. They will probably say that their experience is better than yours and that you're not seeing the country fully. These are the exact same buffoons who say they have been to England and have only been to London. Get real.


Still, it must annoy the trekkers that after 4 days of high altitude walking they arrive at Macchu Picchu and my lazy ass beat them to it. What a shame.


Llamas and Alpacas keep the grass in check up here and it all looks very neat and tidy as a result. There are many passageways and stone buildings that take hours to walk around and investigate. Instead of hiring guides we often opt for the cheaper option of hanging around a place until a tour group arrive with a guide who fills us in. It works pretty well I must say.


Some stonework is tremendous but it's mainly less impressive than what we've seen on the outskirts of Cusco. It's the location that's the big draw here and rightly so. Previously we'd read and heard that the most impressive Inca stonework was reserved for places of vast importance so it must say something that only a few buildings here have immaculate craftsmanship.


A small carved tomb is the near the only place any bodies were found here, no bodies in the actual tomb itself. For such a large site only to have found a couple of bodies is quite odd and adds to the mystery of what really went on here. A guide said that one of the bodies was a tall female, very odd for Peru, so was possibly from the Amazon. But no-one is certain. It does add to the mystery.


It's almost impossible to see this place from ground level and even when you're on your way up you only see glimpses until you get really close. No wonder it was undiscovered for soo long. As there's now only a dirt road leading up to the place, on which only official buses travel, spotting the original paths would've been near impossible in the undergrowth. You may have been able to spot the steep terracing, used to grow crops on steep slopes, surrounding the place but you'd have to look hard.
The mountain overlooking Macchu Picchu is climbable, and people climb it up the Inca steps for 2 and a half hours there and back. I really didn't feel like doing this and as the rain began in the early afternoon the decision was made for me. The views are supposed to be amazing but I can live with not seeing them.
It's a great place that descends into another packed tourist destination at lunch time. Film crews, (one with a tall Japanese presenter chasing a Llama), school groups, big tour groups of Germans and French(all with Peruvian bilingual guides), all nations finishing the Inca trail and of course the obligatory Japanese and Koreans. But that's the way it has to be as this place has to be seen.
Before we leave for the bus down to Aguas Calientes a guy wants to be in a photograph with me, as I exit the toilet. Ok. I also go asked by two young Peruvian girls whilst in Machhu Picchu itself. Crazy but not as bad as China. The bus winds its way down many bends and upon each turn is greeted by a young boy frantically waving and then running like hell down to the next bend. After about 15 bends down the mountain we reach the bottom and the boy gets on the bus and emits some kind of loud painful squawk. Then he asks around the bus for tips, at least he had to work hard for his money.
That night Peru were playing Brazil and a local shop owner had put his tv in the main square so anybody could watch, until the rain started. The cheers later announced the excitement of a 1-1 draw, not bad for Peru.
The way back to Cusco was slightly easier and more direct, even if the bus had an overheating engine onto which the ticket collector was pouring water most of the way.
On the whole it was a great place to visit, expensive yes, not straight forward to get to either but still it was worth all of it and more. Even when we still didn't quite know what we were looking at.

In hot waters

A couple of days before going you have to buy tickets for the train to Macchu Picchu. This is really the only feasible ways of getting there when not doing the 4 day Inca Trek. That in itself is between $300-400. I didn't fancy it. Most people who do it don't even walk to the pub so why they feel the need to do this I don't know. Yes I do. It's because it sounds good. Balls to that, I'll get the train. Still, not easy. I did ask at the tourist office if it was possible to ride there on a hired motorbike, this would be considerably cheaper. They laughed.
There are no roads into the last town at the foot of Macchu Picchu so you have to take the tourist train. It's pretty expensive too and only an hour and half from the small village of Ollantaytambo. We wanted to take the train from there because it was considerably cheaper and we heard the village is worth a visit due to it's large Inca ruins. Ok.
To see Macchu Picchu before all the tourists arrive along with the walkers on the Inca trail you have to stop overnight at Aguas Calientes, the last town, to get an early bus to the top of the mountain. Again ok.
Right let's go. We take a taxi for half an hour to get to the bus station. Once the confusion of ticket buying is over we get on a bus to Urambamba for 2 hours. This stops randomly all over the middle of no-where to let people on an off on the rutted dirt road. Arriving in Urambamba we change immediately into a small combi mini-van with 18 other passengers crammed in. 30 more minutes on rough roads to get to Ollantaytambo. And still we've a way to go yet.
The village of Ollantaytambo is tiny but has a huge terraced set of walls rising above it in the mountainside. This is the site of an Inca victory over the Spanish. The Incas stood atop the terracing raining rocks, fire sticks and flooding the plateau below. It's an intricately carved set of terraces, mainly to enable the growing of crops on the steep cliffside, and walls which included houses and storage buildings as well as the obligatory temple thingy. A narrow path cut into the mountainside meanders precariously to a couple more huts before we take the steep steps down to the exit. It's hard work scaling hugely steep areas like this normally but we keep having to remind ourselves that it's much harder at this altitude.


You can see other buildings on an opposite mountain that have been built right on the edge of the steep cliff. It's insane that they even wanted to build this high up let alone actually achieving it.
After an excellent traditional wood-burning oven baked pizza we head to the train station. Our train is the cheaper night train so views are out of the question. We did see the incredibly expensive Hiram Bingham train, named after the first non-South American to discover Macchu Picchu as guided by a local boy in 1920 or there abouts. It's a very flash train and clearly not for the likes of us!
We also saw the comical sight of a Volkswagon campervan converted into a mini-train roll by. It seems this acts as a line clearer, a large v-shaped metal guard on front to shift debris.
Our train arrives in Aguas Calientes(Spanish for hot waters) an hour and a half later. It arrives right in the middle of a street too. People eat in restaraunts either side, it seems the main road is also the train stop. Odd.
After avoiding the typical hostel sellers trying to get you into their flea ridden hovels we end up in a nice hostel on the main plaza. Aguas Calientes gets a complete slating in Lonely Planet for being overpriced and ugly but it didn't seem too bad.
It's pitch black away from the main streets, of which there's about 3, but we walk over a footbridge arched over very loud gushing water. It's at this moment we notice we're stood at the foot of two very large dome shadows, aka mountains. One of them is Macchu Picchu mountain itself, I reckon.
Two very early starts follow, a 5am wake-up to buy entrance tickets and catch one of the first buses up the winding dirt road to Macchu Picchu through a tropical setting. Aguas Calientes in daylight was completley different. The main square is ok but with mainly unfinished rough looking buildings. Still, there are huge lush green mountains towering over the place with a smouldering early morning mist clinging to the trees as it climbs up them. It does look magical up there.
Shall we get to what we came for?