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Published: December 18th 2014
LLamas in the mist
...looking down on Machu PicchuJohn read a review recently, written by a couple from New Zealand, who visited Macho Picchu a few months ago with their teenage children. Their verdict was that Machu Picchu was “over-priced and over-rated”. Surely not! Machu Picchu was to be the highlight of our South American trip, we thought. Everyone raves about it! People claim to “feel the mysticism” when walking around it, as though it is hallowed ground. Or are they just saying what they think they should feel, indoctrinated by the hype? Ok, we know that as Europeans we are spoilt. After all, we have castles and cathedrals older than any Inca building. A fifteenth century Inca town isn´t exactly Pompeii, or Hadrian´s Wall, but it should still fill one with some awe. Well, it doesn´t, because 90 percent of it isn´t Inca at all. Most of it is a reconstruction built in 1948. Where is the “mysticism” in that? It is also very expensive to get to Machu Picchu. People pay a few thousand dollars to hike the so-called Inca Trail, for five days, others pay huge amounts to stay nearby, so that they can be there at dawn and “feel” the aura. They pay double fees
First view of Machu Picchu
Not quite picture/postcard weather! for hostels and outrageous prices in restaurants, to stay in the tatty town of Aguas Calientes, and look down their noses at the day-trippers who come in by train (the cheapest way, but still a ludicrous price). Well, we went as day-trippers and our one day cost us a lot more than we are paying for hotel, food and drink for a week here in Cuzco. It cost us over $500, and we did it in the cheapest way possible. Why did we pay this? No idea! Maybe the Inca gods know! Maybe, it is because, although we thought the price was outrageous, having come so far to see the place, we went ahead and paid for our tickets, as follows…
Return train fares, on the cheapest train, $141 each,
Entrance fees to Machu Picchu, $45 each
Return bus fare up the mountain, $38 each
Guide $20 each (which we were told was obligatory)
Taxi fares to the railway station and return $25, making a total of $513 (£329 or 415€).
Machu Picchu is a 15
th century Inca site, 2,430 metres above sea level. It is incorrectly called the “Lost
Main gateway to the Inca Sanctuary
Pity that above the lintel, the stones were put there in1948! City of the Incas”. It was well-known to locals and a few families were living and farming there when it was “discovered” by the American historian Hiram Bingham in 1911. It was built around 1450 and abandoned a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Most of the buildings are reconstructed to give the tourist “a better idea of what it looked like”. Only a tiny amount of it is original, most has been built since 1912, mostly in 1948.
There isn´t a suitable road connecting Machu Picchu to the outside world, one either does the hike up the Inca Trail, or goes by train, to Aguqs Calientes and then gets a bus up the mountain. It is a dangerous journey, especially now in the rainy season, between November and March, and we saw several landslides from the train. UNESCO has been heavily criticised in recent years for allowing tourists to go up there, due to high risks of landslides, earthquakes, flooding and injury due to decaying structures. There are a few deaths each year with hikers suffering from altitude sickness. In 2010 for example, 2000 of then had to be airlifted out because heavy rain buried
tracks and washed away part of the railway line. We were a bit anxious because it rained all night and poured down as our little bus made its way up the mountainside. We didn´t see the iconic view of Macho Picchu, it was shrouded in mist and rain. This, however, was not why we felt so disappointed and under-whelmed by it all. We have visited many places in torrential rain before and still been thrilled to do so; we have enough imagination to see the glory of a place despite the weather. Neither was it the expense. We had hoped to say, at the end of the day, that it didn´t matter what it cost because it was worth it: a once in a lifetime experience. No, it was the falseness of it all. If you look online at a photo of Machu Picchu in 1912, you can see the original ruins before modern reconstruction began. Had we looked at these photos beforehand and compared them to pictures of the place today, we would never have visited. What we have today, is a “Disney-style” Inca estate. We didn´t travel over 9,000 kilometres to see a “pretend” Machu Picchu. All of
the hype about Machu Picchu is based on a lie. The world has been led to believe that here, high in the Andes, there is a city, which was “lost” to the world and therefore left more or less intact, rather than being destroyed by the Spanish conquistadores. The latter, have been historically condemned for building on top of Inca constructions, for example, the beautiful Spanish colonial buildings here in Cuzco, built on Inca foundations, with some of the lower Inca walls remaining. However, it seems it is OK to build “re-constructed” 1940s “ruins” on top of genuine Inca ruins, so that tourists can see what an Inca city looked like! Some of it is also poorly done; there are wooden lintels instead of stone ones above some doorways. Several walls are cemented together! When we asked the guide why this had been done, he said “so they don´t fall down”. He also said, “but it isn´t cement, it is only a mixture of mud and plaster”. We asked whether the Incas used mud and plaster and he said no, all the Inca walls were dry stone walls. Only the bottom two metres or less, of some buildings, are Inca
They wanted $5 for a plastic poncho...
...so we decided to just get our sunhats wet! and the rest are modern. A couple of llamas graze around the ruins for nice photos for the tourists as well. Pure Disney! It has no historical aura whatsoever. One doesn´t touch the stones and feel any connection with the past. One doesn´t walk in Inca footsteps because all the pathways are modern. It isn´t Pompeii!
The only really good thing about the day was the spectacular scenery on the train journey. It must be noted, however, that once this railway served the sparse indigenous and poor community along the Urubamba Valley. Now it is just an expensive tourist train that rides these tracks.
So that was Machu Picchu! The most disappointing day of our trip so far and hopefully, it will remain the most disappointing day of the trip and the rest will measure up to expectations, as this hasn´t. Can´t win ém all! We would much rather be swimming with sea lions!
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