Lost city of the Inkas

Trip Start Feb 10, 2006
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Trip End Feb 01, 2007


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Monday, September 4, 2006

Machu Pichu is perched in such a crazy, high, out of the way place that it managed to avoid the Spanish looting that was the fate of all the other major Inka sites. However, most of the artefacts from here now appear to be in Yale University rather than Peru. And now the Peruvians have to be content with looting tourist pockets instead. This month (just our luck) the entrance fee doubled and they decided to start fining any tourists caught walking along the train line to the site. The train fare alone is maybe a hundred times what the locals pay. All the hotels have visa signs in the windows and tourist junk is priced in dollars. Almost put me off going at all but luckily Allan convinced me otherwise and we were treated to the most amazing views.

To get there on the cheap involved a very long bus journey on a very out of the way route (the locals want the main road to Aguas Calientes/Machu Pichu repaired but this would mean Peru Rail losing money so they´re blocking it - Peru Rail being owned by Chile apparently!)We had to make a connection at three in the morning to arrive in a little village at dawn in order to walk a couple of hours along the river bank then a couple of hours along the railway A. Al on the pulley
A. Al on the pulley
 . Quite a nice walk but I had a bad cold so wheezed all the way. Found a sweet little hotel half an hour from the bottom of Machu Pichu mountain so got up at three thirty the next morning in order to make it in time for sunrise - we should be so lucky, the first few hours consisted of heavy fog and rain. Gave it quite a mysterious air though and the views when the fog lifted were spellbinding. To ensure complete exhaustion we headed up the very steep hill behind Machu Pichu to Huanapichu - buildings and gardens hanging even more precariously off the mountains sheer sides than you would think is possible.

The stone work made me gasp - huge, hard rocks chipped into shape to fit perfectly and to last hundreds of years. One rock in particular is quite magical - Intihuatana - the hitching post of the sun and the most sacred place on the site. It has been fashioned right where it lay - meaning there was no room for mistakes. The corners point exactly north, south, east and west and yet no Inka compasses have ever been found. The centre part casts no shadow at noon - but how did they know the exact distance from the equator? Very perplexing. As is the question of why a film crew were allowed to make a beer commercial here and dropped a camera breaking off a corner at the top of the stone? Money talks eh? These last few weeks are making me very cynical.
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