Monday April 14 - Machu Picchu visit

The price we paid for having a nice room and stay at Villa Urambamba was that we had to get up at 4:15 for a 4:45 breakfast and a 5:10 pickup.  It was a 30 minute ride in a 12 passenger van to the Ollantaytempo train station.  Perurail requires that you arrive 30 minutes prior to your train departure, which we did.  We caught the 6:10 train to Aguas Caliente.  Our tour info indicated an option of riding in a vista dome car for an extra $75.  We did not choose that option, but all ten of us did ride in the vista dome car, with windows in the roof.  The train follows the Vilconata River and the cliffs are so steep that it is hard to see the top of the cliffs even with the windows in the ceiling of our train car.  It was a very comfortable ride – plenty of leg room.  They provided free non-alcoholic drinks and muffins or cookies.  They also had Andean handcrafts for sale and a book on Peru for 50 PS – I bought one and found it very helpful.  Had I read such materials before our trip, I would not have understood it.  But seeing the things in the book makes much of it more understandable.  

Ninety minutes later we arrived in Aguas Caliente and were met by our tour guide Richard.  He made arrangements for our bags to be taken to the Santaurio Hotel.  So we only need to bring our jackets, cameras and water bottles.  There are only two ways to get up to Machu Picchu – walk or take a bus.  Our tour included the bus – it is a thirty minute ride to the top.  We spent the next three plus hours exploring Machu Picchu (Old Mountain) and also looking at Huayna Picchu (Young Mountain).

We learned about how the Incas deserted Machu Picchu and how it was rediscovered by Yale archeologist Hiram Bingham in 1911 with a couple of families of farmers living there.

It was a cloudy day, with the clouds and mist coming and going during our visit.  It is difficult to put into words the size and scope of Machu Picchu.   

From the agricultural side looking at the residential area.

Looking down on some of the terraces that were used for farming

Looking across the valley

The mist was coming and going, and it gave a surreal appearance at times

This is where we entered into the residential section

From the residential section looking back at the agricultural section

There is an agricultural sector and a residential sector.  There are multiple temples.  There is a large plaza with amazing acoustics – a leader could speak from the raised platform and be heard by thousands of his subjects.  There were work areas, educational areas and places for exploration.  There were shadow rocks (rocks cut in the shape of important mountains).

These walls were different.  Most were just one rock thick, but these had greater thickness with different rocks on each side.

There were many terraces used for growing crops

Most of the other sites we visited, the Incas used quarries and brought rocks in.  At Machu Picchu, they took the rocks that were there and used them.  Here is a rock that was going to become a stairway, but was not completed.  They had cut most of the stairs and had started smoothing them, but never moved them into place.

The current government keepers had put in a demonstration garden to give modern day visitors an idea of the plants that would have been present when the Incas were at Machu Picchu.

Among other plants, the demonstration garden even had coca plants growing there (if you look closely at the sign, you can see the name.  While coca plants can be used to make cocaine, the leaves can also be used to make coca tea - most of us had it at several hotels and none of us got high.

There was a large plaza next to the residential section - the acoustics were excellent.  Our guide clapped his hands so that you could hear across the plaza.

Shadow rocks were cut to mimic the outline of mountains that had significance for the Incans.

On the lower side of the residential area, there was an area where the Incans had workshops and which is sometime referred to as an educational area.

 Patty and I joined five others and took the bus down – the other three stayed a bit longer and then walked down – about 90 minutes of stairs down the mountain.  We met Julie and Joe as we were leaving (their train had broke down and they were delayed).  When got to our hotel room, the towels were folded in the shape of elephants and flowers.

We had a lunch included in our tour.  At 2:00, we met at a “chifa” restaurant.  “Chifa” is a Peruvian adaptation of Chinese food.  We had a pleasant buffet lunch and then retired to our hotel.  Joe and Julie joined us around 6:00 – they had signed on to our tour late and so they had different hotels, trains and buses than we did.  Their train was supposed to be about an hour later than ours, but their train broke down.  So they got to Machu Picchu just as we were leaving.  Our group was sitting in the lobby enjoying happy hour drinks, including “Machu Picchus” – this is a layered drink with grenadine on the bottom, a middle layer of mixed crème de menthe and pisco, and I forget what the top layer was.  I was in the group that stayed with Cusqueña cerveza. No one wanted to go out for dinner and no one was overly hungry.  So we had the hotel desk order two pizzas for us.  We sat around and enjoyed the time with drinks and pizza and went to bed at a reasonable hour.

Our hotel was across the street from the Rio Vilcoñata – it is a constant roar, even with the doors and windows closed.  The nice part of this was that it was much like a white noise machine which made for good sleeping – except for the bed.  While we had a bed that was wider than a king size bed the night before at Villa Urambamba, the bed here at Santaurio was narrower than a queen size bed.