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Published: November 27th 2007
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Machu Picchu
at first glance. Got up at 4:30 in the morning and walked over to the bus stop, still very sleepy but very excited at the same time. We are waiting for the bus to take us to Machu Picchu (the place I had read volumes about but never seen or imagined I would see). We leave at 5:30am. Arrive there we line up at the gates, cannot see anything yet of Macch Picchu, the scenery high up in the Andes peak is still so beautiful. Entry is US$40!!! What a rip off - but I dont really care as I hope quite that it will be worth it. There is a larger banner stating that Machu Picchu has won a place in the new 7 wonders of the world. We pay and enter, we walk a bit and then turn a corner - there is Machu Picchu. So large, serene, mystical and beautiful and yes, covered by hordes of tourist. WOW. We had (well I had) read so much about it but was not prepared for the hugeness of the entire complex. Also I had no idea the the mountain top the show in the background with machu picchu in the fore, was also
Closer look
at the courtyard covered in ruins. Had no idea what which complex was was so did a sneaky thing by hanging around each area until a English speaking tour guide came by and started explaining to his group what each thing signified. We sure learnt a lot about the complex that did not know about.
Brief history lesson on Macchu Picchu (extracted from Scared Earth by Martin Gray) - The ruins of Machu Picchu, rediscovered in 1911 by Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham, are one of the most beautiful and enigmatic ancient sites in the world. While the Inca people certainly used the Andean mountain top (9060 feet elevation), erecting many hundreds of stone structures from the early 1400's, legends and myths indicate that Machu Picchu (meaning 'Old Peak' in the Quechua language) was revered as a sacred place from a far earlier time. Whatever its origins, the Inca turned the site into a small (5 square miles) but extraordinary city. Invisible from below and completely self-contained, surrounded by agricultural terraces sufficient to feed the population, and watered by natural springs, Machu Picchu seems to have been utilized by the Inca as a secret ceremonial city. Two thousand feet above the rumbling Urubamba
Anshu
estatically pointing at the view below. river, the cloud shrouded ruins have palaces, baths, temples, storage rooms and some 150 houses, all in a remarkable state of preservation. These structures, carved from the gray granite of the mountain top are wonders of both architectural and aesthetic genius. Many of the building blocks weigh 50 tons or more yet are so precisely sculpted and fitted together with such exactitude that the mortarless joints will not permit the insertion of even a thin knife blade. Little is known of the social or religious use of the site during Inca times. The skeletal remains of ten females to one male had led to the casual assumption that the site may have been a sanctuary for the training of priestesses and /or brides for the Inca nobility. However, subsequent osteological examination of the bones revealed an equal number of male bones, thereby indicating that Machu Picchu was not exclusively a temple or dwelling place of women.
We spent 6 - 7 hrs just walking, admiring and absorbing the experience. In was so beautiful and well worth the visit. Only problem we had was - we had been drinking so much water to stay hydrated and there was no toilet
Sacred Plaza
View of scared plaza below. on site, you had to walk back out use the toilet there. We needed to pee now and the walk back to the entrance would take us about an hour. We searched for a place to pee without the intrusion of other people zoom lense cameras - was there such a spot? We finally found one, what a relief that was. On the whole Machu Picchu is not a place one is liking to forget once you have been there. Anshu was a tad bit sad as she lost her gold ear-ring, present from hubby. She concluded that the Incas really loved their gold and had decided to take hers as well.
We took the bus back to Aguas Calientes, train back to Ollantaytambo, bus back to Cusco. Arriving in the evening exhausted from all that walking. I suppose we were getting fit =))
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