Tuesday August 6 – Machu Picchu Peru

We began today by driving to Ollantaytambo which is a village that still contains Incan houses that people live in.  Here we saw a sign outside a restaurant advertising the specialties of the day: guinea pig and alpaca.  We walked the streets and saw the ancient water troughs that the Incas had built.  They were talented engineers.  The stone houses are still standing even though there is no mortar to hold the stones together. We then drove to Aguas Calientes to catch the train to Machu Picchu.  This is only 2430 m high so I felt a lot better and was able to enjoy the experience.  We waited on a very narrow platform with hundreds of other people. A very flash two carriage train arrived called The Bingham named after the American explorer Hiram Bingham who made public the existence of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in 1911. This was not our train so we waited holding our passports since we had been told that we would need them to board the train. This turned out to be not true but it had implications! As we waited to depart, Barbara decided to locate her passport. It could not be found in her backpack after an extensive search. Yani was about to put an emergency plan into action when one of our travelling companions saw it on the floor of the carriage. A great sigh of relief.

The train trip was exciting with a river on one side of the train and mountains on both sides, some covered with snow and glaciers.  Lunch on board was very classy with a three course meal and wines flowing. At the terminus of the train a young boy was playing the Pan Pipe which was just the sound needed as we entered this magical region. Then a short walk through the market place brought us to the bus for the journey up the serpentine mountain route to Machu Picchu. No guard rails on the road and sheer drops of hundreds of metres just beside us.

There were huge crowds waiting at the entrance to Machu Picchu when we arrived but our tour had a booking and walked straight through the entrance. Another advantage of being on a Princess Tour from the ship. When we entered Machu Picchu it was unbelievable.  It is even more impressive than the pyramids.  The Incas had built terraces of different shapes and depths to create different micro climates to grow their various vegetables.  We saw many alpacas grazing on the grass here.  The storage area had been built in the coolest part of the complex.  Very clever.  They thought of everything.  They had a counting system and a calendar for which they used different coloured wool and different numbers of knots in the woolen cords. 

The mountains around this valley were sacred to the Incas and one particular  mountain had been copied in a smaller rock that was positioned in front of the mountain.  This was their sacred rock. The shape of the rock is the same as shape of the mountains you can see behind. They also had the southern cross cut into another rock.  We saw the path where the Incas would have come into Machu Picchu and where walkers today enter in the same way on a four day overland hike from Cusco reaching a maximum altitude of 4,215 metres (13,828 feet). We had definitely done it the easy way. There were look out towers here used for protection and burial sites. We had a comprehensive three hour tour of the site with our lovely and knowledgeable guide Yani. There was another section of the Inca site with an optional morning climb to the top of a mountain but this was closed when we arrived and looked far too difficult for most of our group anyway. There were also signs of Inca trails as yet unexplored by Archeologists. “Why did the Incas build Machu Picchu?”, our guide asked us. Defence, religion, astronomy – yes but mainly because there had been a massive rock slide there and the building materials (the rocks) were there on the site to be used.

The train ride back to Aguas Calientes was a happy time with food and wine flowing.  After a couple of Pisco sours (40% something!) the noise level in the train increased.  At the terminus we had an hour to spare but walking around the market was the last thing we wanted to do after walking and climbing through Machu Picchu. Yani guided the two of us to a restaurant where Bill had a local beer and I had a coffee. It was great to get off our feet. Our lovely Miguel then picked us up and drove us back to our hotel.  We arrived back at 10 pm and the wake up call was to be at 3 am the next morning!

Machu Picchu is not to be missed.