Machu Picchu

The Classic Photograph

From the hydropower plant it is an amazing two hours walk along a railway track in the valley of the river Urubamba to the village of Machu Picchu. The path leads through dense jungle of huge trees with parrots sitting on it, banana plants, lianas and we even saw an intensely green coloured snake. Climate here is very different from the highlands of Cusco already reminding you of the not so far amazon rainforest. It is warm and humid. During the walk you have lovely views of the river, sometimes flowing silently besides you, other times roaring down heavy, steep rapids breaking the calmness of the place with its noise. All is embedded in between steep mountains covered by that evergreen forest. That way you are almost surrounding the ruins of Machu Picchu, which are enthrowned majestically on the mountains in a sinuosity of the valley. During the walk you have first visits of ancient agricultural terraces and houses high up on the hills which already give you an imagination of the uniqueness of that place. It is a really divine and magic way to approach that unbelievable place.

Finally we reached the village at dusk quite exhausted but happy after the long, crazy bus ride and the following walk. Machu Picchu Village or Aguas Calientes as it is called due to the existing thermal baths is one of the the most touristy spots I have ever seen. It is a small village pinched in between the steeply rising mountains of the valley Urubamba. There are a post office, the railway station, a handicrafts market, the mentioned hot springs and apart from that nothing more than hotels, hostels and restaurants. There does not seem to exist a single building which does not serve for touristy purposes. Although it is quite weird and the village obviously just exists because of the close ruins it is not really an unfriendly place. Maybe because there are no big blocks of hotels existing just because there would be no place for building them. Besides there is no motorized traffic in the village apart from the transfer buses to the ruins which run on the only road to which Machu Picchu is connected. The only way to get there if not walking from the hydropower plant is by train. For lack of place the railway runs right through the village so that tourists in the outdoor dining areas of the restaurants are dining on the railway platform. So all in all it is a funny, lively settlement where you are reminded of the ruins and the Inca culture everywhere. The walls of all restaurants and hostels are full  with pictures of Machu Picchu, on the small main square is a fountain with a huge statue of Pachacútec, the ninth Inca, and the small steep alleys have all Quechua names.

We moved into our hostel, had dinner in a restaurant where we were informed about the next day´s tour to the ruins and soon went to bed to find a very uneasy sleep because the whole night a TV was running at full volume somewhere in the hostel.

The next day we stood up at 5 am to take the first bus up to the ruins which leaves the village at 5:30 am. We preferred to take the bus compared to walking up over more than 2500 steps which is the other possibility to get to the ruins from the village. At dawn we entered the site and already the first sight of it took our breath. We had a very informative and interesting guided tour for about two hours and then had the rest of the day to explore the ruins on our own. Well what can I tell you? The magnificence, uniqueness, powerfulness and magic of the place is beyond words. The whole complex is widespread on a mountain ridge in between the mountains of Machu Picchu (old mountain) and Huayna Picchu (young mountain). During the guided tour the sun was rising and submerged first the mountains and then the whole site in golden morning light. Deep down in the valley the river Urubamba is roaring and to all cardinal points you have breathtaking views of the Andes. The town itself was divided in two parts: the agricultural one with all the terraces and the habitational one with a huge central square, living quarters, temples, granaries and an observatory for astronomic research in which the Incas were quite experts. The whole town is connected to an incredibly elaborated system of irrigation and drinking water channels, that collect the water for the whole city at the base of mountain Machu Picchu. Unfortunately we could not climb none of the two mountains what for you would have to buy an extra ticket which were already sold out. But I made a small walk to the so called “Inca Bridge” a small bridge that is part of a path leading south from the ruins crossing the vertical western escarpment of mountain Machu Picchu in a breathtaking way. Over this bridge the town, whose construction then not had been terminated, was evacuated when the news of the conquest of Cusco by the Spanish reached the area. The Inca did not want the town to be conquested as well. That is why it is so well preserved, with the centuries was overgrown by the jungle and not rediscovered until 1911.

Now I could write pages about the magnificence of the place and all the impressions I had but none of it could reflect the deep admiration I felt. I just can tell you that Machu Picchu definitely is one of the places one should have seen in his life. Although it is so touristy and visited by thousands of tourists everyday it did not loose any of its magic. If you want to know more about it you will simply have to come here and see it with your own eyes.

Anyway after having spent hours in the ruins, including almost getting lost a few times, we went back to the village by bus, took a rest and went to the hot springs to relax our tired extremities. I do neither know how many kilometres we had walked nor how many difference in altitude we had covered during the day but our muscles definitely could use a relaxation. The hot springs of Aguas Calientes are at the edge of town in a small creek surrounded by jungle just a ten minutes walk from the centre. They have some 70´s style tiled pools and a nice cafeteria and bar, where from you can order drinks just beconning to the waiter by raising your hand. He brings the drinks to the pool where you can enjoy them soaking in the warm water. That was a perfect ending of that incredible day. We just had dinner after it and fell to bed where again we could not sleep that well this time because people were shouting the whole night all over the building.

The Sacred Valley of the Incas

On the Way to Urubamba

After a few days in Cusco we started to the highlight of our journey: the forgotten Inca town of Machu Picchu. To honour the mystic and uniqueness of the place we took our time for it. The first day we started with Luchin and his girlfriend Susan to the Valley of the Urubamba river, generally known as the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Already the sixty something kilometres journey to the small town of the same name as the river is an adventure. You start from Cusco already at an altitude of about 3300 meters climbing up on the altiplano at about 4000 m.a.s.l. The tremendously scenic road winds in uncountable curves over the rugged high plateau which is covered by meadows, maize fields, eucalypt trees and lagoons in between which small villages with clay houses tiled with red bricks are dotted. Eventually a huge Andes range of impressive glacier covered peaks appears on the horizon covering it in its entity when coming closer. Just before you think to crash into the enormous peaks the plateau suddenly steeply falls down to the sacred valley and the town of Urubamba. From there we went a few kilometres on until we reached the small village where Luchin´s family run a small, nice restaurant which is specialized in guinea pigs and chicha the maize beer of the Incas which nowadays is Peru´s most famous drink, apart from pisco and Inca Kola. The latter is a bright yellow lemonade with an incredibly chemical taste of bubblegum. Nevertheless it is one of the few local drinks in the world which in it´s country sells even better than Coca Cola. (Which is why Coca Cola bought half of the company decades ago.)

So here in the lovely garden of that restaurant we were hearty welcomed by Luchin´s mother as well as numerous aunts, uncles and cousins. And it was time to try one of Peru´s best known delicacy: guinea pig. It was accompanied by potatoes (for sure), a noodle casserole and home made chicha with strawberries. It is definitely a good meat, low fat, tasty, just many bones for that amount of meat. We also were introduced into the secrets of chicha production and guinea pig breeding. After this tasty, hearty and interesting visit we went on to the village of Ollantaytambo half an hour downriver. This is an ancient Inca settlement what for the streets are narrow and cobbled. Small one floored clay houses are built on the fundament of Inca walls and in the village itself and on the steep slopes of the surrounding mountains everything is full with Inca ruins. You can find a bridge, an archway, a castle, temples, granaries and the impressive rests of many more buildings. We walked around the village a while before Luchin and Susan went back to Luchin´s family. Inés and I searched for a hostel and then kept on exploring town. As it came out the whole village was at a bull fight on a field at the edge of the settlement. There was an atmosphere like at a folk festival with musicians playing, traditionally dressed women selling food, children playing around and people exchanging news of the day or discussing about the bull fights. All around the place there may have been about thirty bulls awaiting their turn while always two of them did a fight inside a circle of people. It occurred that some now and then an escaping bull run straight through the crowd causing fleeing people all over the field.

When the spectacle turned to an end Inés and I took some drinks on the roof terrace of a friendly bar. While wondering about all the great things we had lived today people and bulls started to go home from the arena. Crowds of people came by, the bands playing and mainly young boys of up to not more than 15 years leading the immense bulls each one of may have weighed almost a ton through the narrow streets of the village in between cars, tourists, handicraft shops and street cafes as if the animals were small dogs. Full of impressions I fell into a deep dreamless sleep this night.

Early the next morning I stood up to walk to some of the close ruins. I climbed the steep path and enjoyed the perfectly constructed buildings, amazing views of the village and the surrounding mountains and the sunrise with a morning joint. Sitting there below some ancient granaries overlooking the sacred valley I felt a deep admiration for that incredible mountain people of the Inca.

Later in the morning a small bus picked us up to bring us to a hydroelectric plant from where we would have to walk to Machu Picchu. The bus ride was the next incredibly impressive adventure. A few kilometres after Ollantaytambo the road leaves the Urubamba valley winding up in various hairpin turns to a mountain pass at an altitude of 4300 m.a.s.l. just to fall down on it´s other side to the Urubamba valley again which over there has an altitude of just 1200 m.a.s.l. Driving over the pass the landscape changes drastically. While going up you drive through a dry valley with mainly grass covered mountains around and trees just next to the water streams. We passed by as close as we never did before huge glaciers and rocky giants of almost 6000 metres of altitude next to the pass, just to descend after it into an evergreen valley of jungle forest where bananas, coffee and cocoa are growing. All few kilometres you can see archeological sites of Inca ruins up to the most incredible altitudes where still today people are living in lonesome settlements. When we reached the river Urubamba again at the village of Santa Maria I was already totally stunned by these truly unbelievable landscapes, but there was still more to come. From Santa Maria the bus took a single track gravel road upriver again. Soon the valley formed a deep narrow gorge where the road was adventurously constructed into the almost vertical walls of the canyon about 300 metres above the riverbed. Inés who was sitting next to the driver almost died of fear on that part of the journey. After quite some time on that suicidal road ( with an even more suicidal driver) when I already started to think where the hell we are going to, we reached the village of Santa Teresa which appeared after a curve right out of nowhere at a place where the valley suddenly broadened again. From Santa Teresa where we used the lunch break not only to fill our stomachs but even to relief from the death ride we had been through the road went on - less frightening now but not less amazing - along the river Urubamba which seems to angrily run down here in between and around rocks as high as apartment buildings maybe 15 kilometres until we finally reached the hydroelectric plant where this amazing bus ride ended.

At the Navel of the World

From Arequipa we went to Cusco the ancient capital of the Inca empire and according to their point of view the navel of the world. (Cosquo as the town is called in Quechua means navel.) The journey started with a surprise. We boarded the bus in the evening prepared for a overnight journey. Once we occupied our seats a man came and asked us for our tickets. We showed them to him but he kept insisting on a "boleto de embarque" - an embarkation card which we obviously could not show. The man got angry and we had to leave the bus again. Having no idea what is going on we followed him quite astonished and confused. As it emerged when leaving from any train, bus or air terminal in Peru you have to buy an embarkation card as kind of tax to use the transportation premises which of nobody had told us. It would be the duty of the conductor to control the payment of that which in our case was not done so we could enter the bus without having paid the embarkation card. So at the end the unkind man apologized to us but a big discussion with the responsable employees of the bus company followed which took almost an hour. Finally the bus could leave and definitely a little relieved we started our journey to the navel of the world.

We came there early at the next morning and immediately liked the place. Cusco is situated in a basin at an altitude of more than 3.300 m.a.s.l. surrounded by scenic mountains that reach more than 4.000 m and are vegetated by grass and only a few mainly eucalyptus trees. We found a nice hostel, checked in, took a rest to relax from the overnight bus ride which is not as comfortable here as in Chile because roads are partially in quite bad conditions and leading in many curves up and down over the altiplano. Then we started to explore town. Cusco is very hilly with almost no plain street or square. Because the colonial town is built on top of the ruins of the Inca town you see many typical Spanish colonial buildings constructed on basements of Inca walls. Highlight of  the latter is a huge 12-angled stone in the fundament of a wall which is that well arranged that you can't even put a needle in between it and the neighbouring stones. The roads  are very small, many of them too narrow for cars because the Incas did not know the wheel. Apart many of them are very steep or even constructed as staircases. As in any Spanish colonial town there are churches and monasteries at almost every corner. There is an artist's quarter where many painters, goldsmiths, tailors and other artisans from all over the world have their workshops and you can find a lot of cosy art cafes and stylish restaurants with fusion cuisine from all continents.

The next days we kept exploring the town and its surroundings. There is a huge market where you can find everything from restaurants with typical Peruvian kitchen, vegetables, fruits, cheese, meat, handicrafts, flowers, herbs, clothes and  even strange things like coca flour, dried lamb foetuses for ceremonial purposes or stalls where they sell tobacco, ayuhasca, san pedro cactus and other hallucinogen plants which here are legal due to their traditional use as ceremonial plants by the indigenous people. These holy ceremonies are even offered here to tourists. 

One day we did a horse ride to some close Inca ruins. It brought us to the ruins of Saqsaywaman, a kind of holiday retreat for the Inca just out of downtown and another archaeological site called Point X because it is still not known what it was used for. There are the ruins of some houses around a small hill which is burred completely by many caves and subterranean corridors which you can explore. Then we rode to a ceremonial cave where you can find images of the Inca trilogy of condor, puma and snake, representing the three worlds in which the Incas believed, caved out of the rock.

Finally we celebrated Inés' birthday in Cusco together with local friends. They showed us Cusco's nightlife which is quite entertaining. There are many bars and discotheques where are all kinds of music are played. Either live on stage or played by Djs you can here everything from rock with traditional Andean elements over salsa to nowadays chart hits. What they have in common is a very unique mixed crowd of tourists, local people, youngsters and even elderly people dancing to the salsa rhytms.

So Cusco is definitely a nice, interesting place with a mystic, historical touch on the one hand and an international one on the other hand. A place where you can breathe the spirit of tha ancient Inca empire at every corner and this spirit is still alife.