Today is the day! The Llactapacta team (our new team name by Javier) woke up dark and early. We stood in line for the bus to Machu Picchu at 4:30am. Half an hour bus ride and another round of “Baño break” later, we are in Machu Picchu at 6am!
Excitement rose as we made our way into the ancient city. “Let’s head up,” Javier said. “I think the cloud is opening,” said the man with 100% accuracy on his 10-minute weather forecast. As we made our way up through what is said to be one of the two major points at Machu Picchu where people physically faint because of the altitude, we felt the wind.
We started the day with something like this..
Then there was light.
There were mountains we could see through the departing clouds. And, at last, the mysterious Machu Picchu.
Suns out phones out. Javier and Jose worked hard to make sure we had enough time to capture EVERYTHING, so I scored something like below. Well, with my new fancy pants too.
I was utterly in awe of what I was seeing. How on earth did they build all of this? People of the past must be a lot more patient than we are now. Javier followed up on this question and asked us: “why do you think people would or could build this?” and “what is love?” “They could build these buildings not only because of the coco leaves you have heard about but also because of the love of each other.” He explained further that people believed in helping each other because of something like Karma. People trusted that what goes around comes around. Hence, people had the love for each other. Such belief was even part of the famous Inca symbol: the Chakana (later fact check, this is indeed one of the theories that explain the meaning of Chakana. There many others.) I can see through Javier that such way of living is still at the core of Peruvian people’s belief today.
Impressive architectural feat.
Hand worked stone by stone.
Looks good with or without the sun.
As I continue to ponder the Inca philosophy and way of life, we ran into the ever so photogenic llamas.
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- Look that way please..
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- Thank you!
After 3 hours, we completed round 1 of our Machu Picchu tour. With the Machu Picchu ticket, you are allowed to tour the site twice in a day before certain time. The size of this archeological site is tremendous. Everyone can only head in one direction with workers moving the tourists along. With round 2, part of our group decided to head to the entrance of Huayna Picchu inside the Machu Picchu for the magnificent aerial view. The hike to Huayna Picchu is no joke. A steep verticle ascent of 850 feet; all on slippery wet stairs.
Our team made our way down the narrow and infamous “Stairs of Death.”
Figured that this might be my last serious altitude trek of the season, I ran ahead of the group. After half an hour of huffing and puffing, we reached the summit. But the clouds have already moved in. No view of Machu Picchu what so ever.
At least I made it to the top!
Slightly discouraged by the cloudy day, we headed down. At one of the narrow pinch points, we had to get down on our knees to craw.
This is very very narrow.
As we slowly moved out of the narrow passage, for the second time today, the light came back in. We could see Machu Picchu again. For the brief 5 minutes, we all scrambled to get as many pictures and took as much view in as we could. Now we can truly say we have seen it from the heights of Huayna Picchu.
Hard earned views!
Now it’s time to leave this beautiful place. We headed back to Agus Calientes and ate with the guides one last time (with plenty of alcohol of course). Jumping on the scenic train ride to Ollantaytambo, we ended the long day with a private bus ride back to Cusco.
A final fair well as the clouds moved back in.
It was truly sad for me to leave this wonderful group of people. However, the ever so festive Cusco reminded me that there are no goodbyes but see you later. Hope I do get to meet them again sometime in the not so distant future.
One last group photo