Macchupicchu
Trip Start
Nov 03, 2004
1
43
165
Trip End
Nov 23, 2006
Cusco,
Peru
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
having slogged four days to Machupicchu, the event of the arrival was
somewhat anticlimactic. For most people, as they arrived at the Gate
of the Sun, with Machupicchu laid out before them, their reaction was
something like, "Cool - buildings, nice mountains - can I have a
shower now?". After all the effort of getting there it was a bit
of a letdown. Machupicchu is built on a three pointed site in a
bowl of breathtaking mountains - the site alone, without the city,
should give you pause, and it does, but your first response is to
collapse to the ground panting, stare at your feet and rummage for a
chocolate bar, then you stare as the sunrise turns the city to gold
0722 sunrise
.We had arranged a night in Aquas Calientes (the town that exists
solely to service Machupicchu tourists at the foot of the hill) to
allow us to return to the city much refreshed the following day.
We had chiseled the dirt from our abused bodies, consumed cold beer,
eaten while sitting on proper chairs and soaked protesting (if not
actually striking) muscles in the thermal baths. We sank into proper
mattresses, construction site and disco be damned, and slept the
sleep of the righteously weary.
Thank heavens. Our return day was June 20th: the day before Winter
Solstice. We were up at 5:00am to be on the first bus to the site.
We were the first to arrive above the Temple of the Sun and had a
prime position for the spectacle of the day
Eerie coincidence
. At exactly 7:22am thefirst rays of the sun crested the valley top and arrowed through the
Temple window to strike the almost exact center of the altar.
Tomorrow at 7:20am it will be the exact center and a thanksgiving for
the renewal of the cycle of the year will be given in honour of the
Inca tradition.
Cusco was the capital of the Inca empire. Machupicchu was the most
sacred site of the people, fulfilling limited functions, mostly
religious. There was a permanent population and they were mostly
self-sufficient. The slopes around the city are terraced for
agriculture (and to strengthen the site), they mined the stone for
the buildings on the site, had workshops to weave and produce their
own ceramics, the other main buildings in the city were religious and
a military barracks (although, because of location and only one road
(broken by a withdrawable drawbridge) the site is almost
impenetrable)
From the gatekeepers house
. The Inca attended at Machupicchu only for religiousfestivals. Information is frustratingly limited and confusing. We
had had a brief tour with our trail guide yesterday, listened to
various guides around the site today and bought a simple guide book
for our own tour today. After a while the completely conflicting
information stopped being frustrating and became amusing.
For example, under theTemple of the Sun is a room called the Royal
Tomb. According to our guide there were never any human remains
found in this room and its orientation suggests it was used for
additional religious ceremonies. According to our guidebook Hiram
Bingham found the remains of "the most important personage" of
Machupicchu in this room.
Sunrise hits the altar
/Juanita revisited: in the Royal Tomb there were niches in the walls
which according to our guide were used to hold the mummies used in
the various religious rituals carried out in this underground
chamber. After the ceremony they were returned to the storehouses of
mummies. Here various mummies were kept and used, as appropriate to
their status, in the various rituals. If the Incas stored their
mummies and dragged them out on high days and holidays, maybe Juanita
on display in Arequippa isn?t as inappropriate as I first thought./
After a while we began formulating our own theories about the functions of
the buildings. There are two types of wall construction
used by the Inca: Rustic, which is just rocks held together with adobe
and Imperial, which are dressed stones fitted together with no mortar
showing. Rustic was used for everyday buildings and houses and
Imperial for temples and buildings with a royal function (house of
the high priest, house of the Inca, etc). There is a very large
complex on the western slope of Machupicchu which is generally
referred to as the industrial complex because Hiram Bingham thought
that it was a serious of interconnected workshops. The name, and
various thoughts on possible craft functions, have stuck. The entire
complex is surrounded by a wall in Imperial stonework. Why would
royal stonework be used for an area where the pots and arrowheads
were made?
Before the first train from Cusco arrived the site was practically
deserted. Just those of us who could get up to catch the first buses
and then, a little later, the dazed, leaden footed, trail walkers
arriving from the Gate of the Sun. Before that first train we
happily wandered the site, drinking in the magnificent location,
enjoying the lush greenery and the peace, marveling at the stonework
and technical competence of builders (boulders too large to be moved
were simply incorporated into the design of the complexes or used in
the walls or as supports for the balconies jutting out over terraced
fields feed by sacred fountains). We climbed and scrambled. We
visited the sundial (used to predict the arrival of the solstices)
and the sacred stone (apparently mirroring the mountain peak directly
behind it, although the only similarity we could find was they both
had a point).
It's not really a place where you hit the high points though. It's
more of a place you find yourself a quiet corner and try and drink in
the total experience, the awesome location, the determination to
build here, the faith to abandon their most sacred site to protect it
from desecration, a culture 500 years lost.
