Macchu Picchu, Peru - Hike Day 4

The Final Day
We rose at 3am and waited in our tent for the usual hand delivered tea and coffee service.  We waited and waited.  None ever came.  Guess we know what the chaskis thought of our tips from the night before.  I peeked out of the tent and saw them running around in the dark, getting water, making breakfast.  They had to hurry since this was the end of the road for them.  After packing up all the gear, they had to run straight down the side of the mountain to catch a 5:30am train.  If they missed it they'd have to wait all day for the next one.

In a funny dance, we tried to get organized and eat breakfast as fast as we could.  The hikers around us were pouring out of their camps like ants and we were all racing to be the first in line to get to Macchu Picchu.  If you've been paying attention to these last few posts, you know who was champing at the bit to wolf down her food and run in the dark.  Yes, the Ringleader and her minions ran off ahead of us.  They didn't get very far - only a 100 yards or so.  We were stacked up behind hundreds of other hikers, standing on a dirt path, in the pitch dark in the jungle.  Thunder rang out followed by a light drizzle. Dodo and I quickly put on our rain ponchos.  We waited there for an hour.

Around 5am the line began to move.  The drizzle continued and was joined by a stubborn wind which pushed the clouds on top of us.  The Ringleader and company charged ahead, practically elbowing a group of elderly Swiss hikers off the side of a cliff.  Nilton shook his head and told us that a few years back a large guy fell off this same ledge trying to play hopscotch.  He rolled down twenty feet into a tangle of trees and bushes.  The guides had to take off their pants, tie them together and pull him back up.  After two hours along mostly stone paths, we scaled an impossibly sharp set of stairs that let out onto the Sun Gate.  Intipunku, as it is known in Quechua, is the place from which you get your first glimpse of Macchu Picchu, weather permitting.  It was 1,000 feet below us but could have been 1,000 miles for all we could see.  We got nothing but a face full of wet wind.  We stood there stubbornly, waiting for the clouds to lift while many more came up behind us, pushing into our backs, nudging us closed and closer to the edge of the stairs.

We continued along the ledge that leads to Macchu Picchu, still an hour away.  Once in a while the clouds would let up and we would catch a glimpse of two.

Some in our crew, in a display of optimism, remarked that it made it all the more mysterious, the way the clouds swirled and wrapped around the mountains.

I was hoping for Dodo's sake that we'd get a classic view, the one you see on all the postcards.  I've seen it before, those many years ago, when the weather played along and lit everything up in bright sunshine.

We made our way down closer and waited for the clouds to lift.  We waited more than ten minutes and got nothing but short bursts of clarity.  Dodo joined a bunch of the ladies on a trip to the restroom.  As soon as she left, so did the clouds.  I scrambled to get find my phone, buried in my pack, to get some shots.

Just as beautiful as I remember, if not a bit overcrowded with gawkers.

We formed a line behind Manny who was leading us to a quiet corner to give us an overview of the site.

Maccu Picchu is divided into four quadrants: an agricultural side and a residential side which are further divided in two - the upper "noble" and the lower "working class" sections.  The agricultural section is composed of hundreds of terraces, each layered with large stone at the bottom, smaller stone on top, then a layer of sand and topsoil.  I wish they'd grow crops on them so we could see how it might have looked.

All of the 14 temples are situated in the upper noble section, as you would expect.  There is a temple for the sun, one for the moon and many others.

During the first three days of the trip, Manny played the joker, quick to smile, jumping in to diffuse tensions in the group.  Once inside Macchu Picchu, he turned serious.  To become a guide in Peru you have to attend a college for five years and learn a second language.  Manny had started out twenty years ago as a chaski, lugging 100 pound packs up and down mountains.  He saved his money, went to school, learned English and moved up.  He was now lecturing us on a topic that was clearly dear to him.  His intensity picked up as he told us how Hiram Bingham had plundered most of the treasure he found here in 1914 and brought it back to Yale University, who to this day refuse to return it.

He explained how to deduce the importance of a building by paying attention to the construction.  The walls with rough stone and mortar were of little importance, most likely to house the workers.  The temple walls were made with much more care - smooth stone on stone, fit together like a 3D jigsaw, with no mortar.  They also leaned in exactly 5 degrees because this is the optimal structure for stability.  

Sadly, one of the changes made by the government was to limit each visit to 4 hours.  We had from 8am to noon.  There was also now a roped out path you had to follow, taking you around the site.  Twenty years ago you could stay all day and roam wherever you liked.  Given the increase in visitors I understood, but still, it seems silly to hike for three and a half days and be limited to the same amount of time as somebody who took a three and a half hour bus ride from Cusco.

There were people jostling for position, racing past, yelling (Chinese), singing songs (Brazilians), walking outside the roped in area and hitting you in the head with their umbrellas (Koreans.)  None of these people would have made it across Dead Woman's Pass.  If it were up to me, I would make this special site only available to those who do the hike.  I might make an exception for the elderly and infirm.

These are the famous three windows, dedicated to the Sun god.  On just one day a year, June 21st, the sun peeks over a cut in the distant mountains and shines through the middle window onto a rock about 8 feet away, which casts a perfectly formed shadow to mark the winter solstice.  In the adjacent temple of the moon, the same situation plays out on December 21st, the summer solstice here in the southern hemisphere.

Nobody knows exactly why Macchu Picchu was created.  They know it was created around 1450 and abandoned approximately 100 years later.  Theories abound - perhaps smallpox carried by the Spanish wiped everyone out.  Perhaps it was abandoned in the hopes the Spanish would never find it and destroy it - which, thankfully they never did.  Manny had some tough words for the Spanish, the destroyers of his culture, his history.  He was Inca after all, born in Cusco.  Though, he said, laughing while stroking his stubble "I am clearly more Spanish than Inca.  Did you see the chaskis?  Did you notice they had no facial hair at all?  They are true Inca."

Manny offered us as good an explanation as any I've heard about its creation.    He said the Inca king, Pachacutec, literally thought of as a god on earth would come here to be near all the other gods - the sun, the moon, all the important constellations, as well as both glaciers.  At Macchu Picchu you can see all of them from a single spot.

He then let us continue through the site on our own.  He told me I was very lucky to have seen it two times and I agreed.  "Ho-sway (as he called me) tell me what you think?  Still wonderful?"  Yes, for sure, I answered, but a bit sad too.  There are way too many people now.  "Yes, I know what you mean Ho-sway, I do."  He looked down and patted me on the back.

Dodo asked Manny a great question.  "Do you ever have Spanish hikers in the group?  Do you give your speech the same way?"  He laughed and quickly responded "I try to tone it down a bit, but just a bit.  They know what they did."

Our four hours went by very quickly.  We gathered back together as a group at the exit, waiting for a bus that would take us down to the nearby town of Aguas Calientes.  I looked everyone in their eyes and I could see it.  We were all moved.  It is a struggle to get here and when you finally see Macchu Picchu, it touches you deeply.  Nilton gave each of us our entrance tickets as a souvenir.  On the back were the stamps showing the checkpoints we'd passed.

We had lunch together in Aguas Calientes and were presented with a certificate of survival.  Beers and pico sours were flowing and everyone was in a great mood.  This would be our last time together.

After lunch, six of us went to a massage parlor where we showered for the first time in four days, changed, soaked our feet and got an hour of massage.  I felt like a new person.  At 6pm we boarded a train, which was delayed an hour by a rockslide, then got onto our bus to Cusco.  We arrived at our AirBnB at 1:00am and set our alarm for 5:30am.  We had to wake early to catch a 6:45am bus to Lake Titicaca.  Onwards we go.  No rest for the weary.