Sunrise on Huandoy and Huascarán
Teo, our taxi driver, picked us up at the crack of dawn to drive us from the Lazy Dog Inn outside of Huaraz to the airport at Anta. He was a half hour late because someone before him had tried to pass in a bad spot and wrecked, and one of the cars was crosswise blocking the road and he had to wait for it to be removed. It's only about 23km to the airport, but it took an hour or so to get there due to traffic and the horrible condition of the road. We got all checked in and then stepped back outside to watch the sunrise light up Huandoy and Huascarán. We were flying to Cusco to visit Machu Picchu, but because it's a small country we had to fly back to Lima and then to Cusco.
We had started reading a book by Mark Adams, Turn Right at Machu Picchu, which I highly recommend one read before setting up a trip to Machu Picchu. It's a great, fun way to learn more about the early exploration and discovery of the many Inca sites. Unfortunately, we didn't, and were only reading it during our trip. If we had read it before-hand, we might well have arranged our trip to take time to explore around more and visit some of the many other Inca sites.
The plane was a little job, and we had great views of the Cordillera Blanca out the window. Unfortunately, we didn't have window seats so couldn't take much in the way of pictures.
We had a little food we had stuffed in our bags at the last minute for a snack while we were waiting to change planes in Lima. The tangerine didn't fare too well in the baggage compartment...
Our hotel in Cusco, the Niños, had a nice courtyard; the outdoor hallways were lighted with candles.
We had the rest of the day to ourselves in Cusco. Dona wasn't feeling great, so we took it easy; we wandered around taking in some of the sights.
The Koricancha, or Temple of the Sun, was the most holy of Inca sites in Cusco. Unfortunately, the Spanish pillage of Peru destroyed most of it, stripping it of its gold and building a church on top. From the outside it looked like there wasn't much of the actual Inca structure left to see, and we didn't feel like exploring a Spanish church, so we didn't pay to go inside. It turns out there is worthwhile stuff to see (see the above reference), and I wish we had gone inside.
We found a local artisans' shop where we purchased some nice woolen goods, and watched a demonstration of traditional Peruvian weaving. I was particularly fascinated by how they spun wool into yarn with just their hands.
There was a really cool mural depicting some of the struggles of Peru on one of the walls.
Because Dona wasn't feeling great we opted for pumpkin-carrot soup in the hotel cafe. Best of all, they had strawberry juice as well!
We were taking the train from Cusco up to Agua Calientes ("Hot Waters"), the now tourist-overrun village in the bottom of the valley below Machu Picchu. We would spend the night there so we could get an early start up to Machu Picchu and hopefully avoid the worst of the crowds.
The train takes about three and a half hours to go 97 km, and travels 30-45 km/hr. It makes one stop along the way, at the town of Ollantaytambo. The train follows the Urubamba River downstream to Agua Calientes; the Urubamba eventually merges with the Amazon and flows into the South Atlantic. It has some pretty crazy whitewater along the way, which would be fun to run.
We were served Pisco, a brandy that is the national drink of Peru, along the way.
The valley where Cusco is situated starts out relatively open, with farms in the bottomland; but soon it narrows and then there is room for nothing but the river. The train goes through a number a tunnels along the way, not surprising given the steepness of the valley it is going down.
One of the coolest things about this trip was that the train makes a switchback. There is a place where it needs to gain elevation at a rate faster than the train can handle, so the track does two zigzags. The train drives onto a piece of track that is the stem of a "Y", stops, the switch at the fork in the Y is switched, the train backs up onto the stem of another Y, stops, another switch is switched, and then it carries on, substantially higher (or lower, depending on direction of travel) from where it started. It would be a cool feature to incorporate in someone's model railroad of Peru. The track looks something like this:
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Along the way, everywhere there was a flat spot near the river crops were planted. Occasionally we saw an old building on a steep hillside.
Whenever there was a break in the surrounding canyon, you could look up the valley that came in and see high mountains beyond.
As we got closer to Aguas Calientes we saw pieces of the Inca Trail. Some locals were just setting out hauling baggage for people doing the hike.
We saw numerous terraces on the hillsides. I suspect many of them are ancient, probably constructed by the Inca. It is a hard place to eke out a living. No wonder they have hundreds of different kinds of potatoes bred for specific micro-climates.
There is a hydro plant on the Urubamba River just before Agua Calientes, and at least at the time of year we were there they suck the river almost dry.
Once we got to Agua Calientes and checked into our room, we wandered over to the ticket place to get our tickets for the bus ride up to Machu Picchu and entry to the site. Then we wandered down the road along the river to check out a butterfly garden and look for birds and flowers. The butterfly garden was a bit of a disappointment, as it only had a few different butterflies. However, one was really cool — the pattern on its wings immitated a snake.
The first bus up to Machu Picchu leaves at 05:30; our hotel, the Panorama Bed and Breakfast, would serve breakfast as early as 04:30. The Panorama is located across the street from the bus station, which is convenient, but the downside is that people start lining up out there in the wee hours to get the first bus up, and the noise outside your window is really disturbing. We opted to not try for the first bus, but got one around 06:15.
Once we got to the site of Machu Picchu, we opted to first head to the Inca drawbridge. The trail is uphill from the main ruins and affords a nice view of the ruins in the early morning light, and we wanted to see it before it was too crowded.
It is hard to imagine building a city up on top of a mountain ridge, but that is what the Incas did. Despite all the crowds, it is absolutely worth visiting. It is a monument to the industriousness and tenacity of mankind and an engineering marvel.
The trail to the drawbridge winds around out of sight, clinging to the side of a steep mountain. If it were the only access to Machu Picchu, the place would have been impenetrable, but unfortunately, it is not the only access. The trail is carved out along a ledge in places, and in other places it sits atop a carefully constructed wall built out from the cliffs.
There are a few terraces on the early part of the trail, and the rock walls supporting the terraces have stone "shelves" sticking out from them in places. It's not clear what those were for; to contain ceremonial offerings?
The drawbridge itself is simple — four small logs spanning a big gap. But what a gap it is! The Inca made superb use of the terrain. The trail is built up along a sheer cliff wall, with a steep climb along the wall leading from the bridge to the city. One could lose a lot of soldiers trying to assault the city from this direction.
We returned from the drawbridge to the main site. Along the trail you can look down into the bottom of the valley.
As we descended to the city of Machu Micchu itself it's hard to have anything but respect for the people who lived here and built this place. There are expansive agricultural terraces along the outskirts, with guard houses / watch-towers along the way. There were llamas grazing on some of the terraces; whether they were put there for tourism ambiance or to take advantage of limited feed it's hard to say. There is a dry moat surrounding much of the city which would make a conventional assault somewhat more difficult.
There's not much about Machu Picchu I can say that hasn't already been said. There is an excellent dicussion and guide here.
There are few gardens, at least within the currently reconstructed city. But I imagine the place overflowed with flowers in its time. There were eyeball-searing red flowers growing out of a lot of the walls.
I was impressed by the ways the Incas attached roofs to all of these stone structures. They made cylindrical boss stones and embedded them in the ends of gables, or made special rock rings with holes bored through; these could then be used to secure rafters. A great discussion of Inca architecture and building techniques can be found here.
The Inca are renowned for their fine-fitting stonework, and everywhere you look at Machu Picchu you are confronted with it. I could do nothing but marvel at how much time they must have spent shaping stones to fit so perfectly. Dona said "See if you can do that well with the fireplace." Right.
Half-way through our exploration, we stopped for a snack. We got some corn-nuts which I had high hopes for, thinking of some snacks a friend of mine in Boston had gotten from Trader Joe's which were from Peru. Unfortunately, they were not the same beast. I described them in my notes as "salted cardboard".
The condor temple is a large rock embellished to look like the wings of a condor; at the base of the rock is a set of stones arranged to look like the condor's head. There is speculation that the head served as a sacrificial site; there are human-sized prison cells in a prison area behind the temple.
Machu Picchu is located in an area that gets a lot of moisture, in big chunks. The site is full of drainage passages.
Any way you look at it, it you lived here, you had a room with a view.
One of the things we really disliked about the way the park was run was that there is a fixed way you have to move through it, and you cannot go back. We skirted a few things by mistake on the way through, and could not go back to see them. At one point we tried to walk across the central plaza (on a cobbled walkway) and one of the guards started blowing his whistle and yelling at us. I can see wanting to move traffic in a given direction, but refusing to let people go around and see something they missed is crazy. Make sure you have a good reference guide before you go, take it with you, and consult it often.
So we ended up back at the starting point. It was late enough in the day, and we had seen most of what we wanted. We caught a bus back down to town and spent a little time wandering around by the riverbed looking for wildlife.
When the time came, we retrieved our bags and headed for the train station for the trip back to Cusco. It started to pour rain and everyone (including us) scrambled from the outdoor restaurant into the station. While there some local dancers showed up and encouraged everyone to join in.
Back in Cusco, we had one heck of a time finding the accomodations we had booked at the Hosteria de Maria. Our taxi driver did numerous circles but the address didn't seem to exist. We finally located it up some steep steps to a back alley; the alley ran at right angles to the steps and opened up on a side street. The address, Alabado 525, was a "door" on the side street which appeared abandoned, with a locked gate; it looked like the entrance to a dungeon. The alley going to the actual entrance was a few meters up the street. The place was nice though; there was birdsong in the courtyard at 05:00 in the morning.
We were exhausted, so for dinner we walked to a small place nearby, the Pankracie. Unfortunately, Dona took off her hat which she really liked and set it down while eating, and we walked out without it. While there a deaf guy approached us and we tried to have a conversation writing Spanish on my notepad, but it was not very successful. We ended up buying a couple of key-fobs from him.
The next morning our taxi got stuck in traffic and was late, but we finally made it to the airport for our flight to the Tambopata River in the Amazon Basin.