Machu Picchu

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What an amazing day! Early this morning, 6:30am to be exact, we got on a bus to take us up the mountain to the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu. This site was built in the 1400-1500's. They worked on it for 90 yrs. and still did not finish it. It was built as a sanctuary for the priests and nobles. The people under the control of the Inca had to pay an annual labor tax, and it was those people who did all the hard labor.

In 1911Hiram Bingham, a professor at Yale University came to Peru to find the lost city. When he arrived in Aguascalientes Calientes a local man told him about the site and guided him up to it. Restoration took many years. In 1948 it opened to tourism. Today it is considered one of the seven wonders of the world. If you haven't seen it, it is a must for your bucket list!

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Photos

Terraces- amazing engineering!
The soil for 1,200 terraces was brought up from the Sacred Valley. Lining the bottom were pebbles and sand brought up the mt. From the river below. They were fertilized with guano (bird droppings) brought from the coast 600 miles away!

Doorways
Built in a trapezoid shape to be stable in earthquakes. Stones cut exactly and smoothed for temples and palaces. This was the gate to the sun temple and at one time had a wooden door that could be locked.

SunTemple
The round building is the sun temple. It is built with the finest materials.

Top of the mountains
The site is built on natural rock and was designed to take advantage of the sun.

Perfect weather:)
It was perfect weather. It is surprising that you can be at the top of the Andes in winter in shirt sleeves.

Comments

[JoAnne Robinson]

Amazing!
Thank you for posting the pictures! That place looks so neat! I hope you are all having a great time!