We got up at 4:00 so we could catch the early bus to Machu Picchu. There was already a long line and we were probably on bus number 7 or 8. We did get there early enough to get one of the limited tickets to Wayna Picchu. This is the steep mountain right next to the ruins. Climbing to the top gives you a great view down onto the ruins. The mountain looks so steep it should be impossible to get up, but there were steep stairs, ropes, and terraces and ruins at the tops.
Machu Picchu is located in the cloud forest. It is much lower in elevation than Cusco, moister, and the plants are larger-leaved, orchids, bromeliads, dense vegetation. The ruins were in fog when we arrived but it burned off quickly.
The ruins were amazing. It is so much bigger than it looks in the pictures and very intricately laid out. They had multiple temples for the priests of different sacred objects, such as moon, sun, earth. Many of their buildings were aligned as calendars so that the light would shine through exactly on the first day of one of the seasons. They also had rock shaped like the Southern Cross in which the four corner exactly aligned with N, S, E, W and it exactly aligned with the constellations at a certain time of the year. Some of the buildings were multiple stories. The priest’s buildings were made of a special white rock, intricately pieced together. Below the sun temple was a place for making mummies and preparing and drying the bodies. They believed that death was a third stage of life and it was important to keep the body intact and with its important things. The other important buildings were also intricately pieced together, with no mortar. The housing and terraces were not as intricate. But they have withstood over 500 years of earthquakes and weather. There are llamas running around the ruins loose. We couldn’t decide if that was a natural form of grass-mowing and fertilizing or if it was to impress the tourists. We wanted to make it to the Incan bridge, but ran out of time. It is a bridge across the face of a cliff with a small walking path made by piling up rocks into a flat path. On the way out we saw a wild chinchilla.
The Incan Empire only lasted for about 150 years, but it stretched 2500 miles over the mountains and encompassed 10 million people. There was a vast system of roads and wayhouses throughout the moutains and runners could deliver messages quickly acting in relay. They didn’t have writing but used a series of knots on a string to record census and other data. They had domesticated llamas and guinea pigs and were excellent farmers, using terraces, irrigation and experimenting and breeading plants. The ruler had a system of taxing all of the peasants by requiring 3 months of work to be for the king. This allowed them to storehouse vast quantities of food, tools, treasures, textiles. These were allotted back to the peasants in case of drought or other problem, but it also made the empire very rich.
After we saw the ruins, we took the bus back to Aguas Calientes, had dinner with out group, caught the train back to near Cusco, then found our minvan back to Cusco, then got our luggage from the school, then took a taxi to our hostel. Finally at 11:00 we got to bed.
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