Today started bright and early, but I want to start this email almost at the end of the day as we were careening through the darkening skies of inland Peru in a little tourist van driven by a guy who was obviously trying to make up for lost time somewhere along the way. It's best not to look forwards and see what is coming at us, so I leaned back and took control of my side window........and what a view it delivered. The clouds rose high into the sky, almost wanting to become storm clouds and the sun set somewhere far enough away so that we were given only the soft and gentle hues that tipped the tops of both the mountains and the clouds and turned the rivers into molten silver. As the sun set lower, we could see many fires burning all over the hillsides and the smoke gave a lovely dimension to the photos.
And then it was dark and we were hurtling along this road with me holding on to the bottom of my seat to stop myself falling off. Frank was in the seat behind me, pretty much doing the same thing. But as I looked outside and saw the incredible towering and now pitch black mountains against a deep grey sky, I felt like the luckiest woman alive. We had just had the most incredible day and here I was in a place I never dreamed to be, watching the stars pop out, one by one, creating the milky way just for us to see! Totally amazing. We drove through the darkness, every now and again finding a spot of light gently glowing in the darkness - the single light bulb in someones home.... and then it was gone again - back into the darkness. And I thought about the day we have just been given.....
It started at 5am with the horrendous sound of a wake up call and a mere hour later found us in a bus on the way to Poroy Station happily chewing coca leaves - they say it really helps with the altitude and I was really happy to try it - I swear it works too! How much can we bring home? Anyway..... after about 30 minutes we arrived at the PeruRail Station and found our blue train with the windows in the roof - Vista Dome. We were given seats a few rows apart from each other, but Frank remedied that by simply moving next to me....... I was not moving - I had a window seat :) The horn blew and we were on our way to a three hour journey through the most incredible scenery that I have seen.
Oh wait, the inside of the train - each seat sat two people with a table in front of us, like a little resturant, and soon out came some cute little cups and glasses and plates and we were served a second breakfast of the day.. The orange juice was outstanding.
We started off through the rural areas, passing literally feet from kids and dogs playing, tied up cattle and donkies and farmlands everywhere with the mountains surrounding it all..... Then we found the grown up mountains and they were absolutely amazing - they were more peaked and darker in color - blue-ish with almost a foreboding feel to them. Only very few mountaintops had any snow on them but the views with the valleys, mountains and Urubamba River was just glorious..... the camera clicked continuously. At one point, the mountain is just too steep for the train and a switchback system has been designed to deal with this issue. So there we are, trundling along happily and see another track leading in to the rail.... our train goes a little way past the meeting of these two rails and then backs up, reverses, down the second track till it finds yet another one going in the original direction again...... think of a zigzag/switchback road - its the same idea, just very interesting to do while on the very edge of a cliff.
And further down we were taken, the scenery became very green and those Andean mountains! Well, they sort of bring tears to my eyes. And then there we were, back in the jungle again! Lush green, deep shrubbery and strange trees and plants and flowers all over the place. I saw two beautiful blue birds but was too late to catch them with the camera.. The train passed only inches from the side of the mountain on one side, our side, and on the other the river showed her glory in the early morning sun. Right then I became determined to sit on the other side on the way back.
The deeper we got into the jungle the more those mountains grew.... now they were not the 'adult mountains' anymore - now they became "The Ancients" in my mind...They seemed to peak in such a majestic way - to reach right up to the sky and shake hands and become one with it..... I thought of that movie Neverending Story and its mountains and realised that this is definitely a different kind of world.
I wonder why on earth anyone, ancient Inca or not, would even wander this far into this place..... Its miles and miles from anywhere and quite intimidating. But, obviously they did.
After the absolutely fascinating train ride, we were taken to a plush bus for the ride to the top, and Macchu Picchu... The valley we were in was beautiful and full of tourists and sellers and colors and noise and building and ..........well, it lived! And so we headed for the bus, promising ourselves time here on the way back down later in the day..... the bus ride - now that was something too! Those switchbacks, zig zag roads you see on google earth? Yup - thats the road we drove! Its a narrow, dusty, no barrier, two way path that zigged and zagged us up, sometimes only millimeters from certain death if one of the wheels went off the path. A good many times we passed other busses and all of us on the bus sucked in our hips to make space for it to pass by.. But that view! As we wound our way up that mountain, the train station became smaller and smaller and the view more spectacular. All along the mountains we could see other smaller ruin and agricultural sites and we were in awe of what the Inca's had achieved.
And then we came to Macchu Picchu and ten million people. We were terribly disappointed and we were shuffeled, elbow to elbow, butt to face, up the steps and along the path to the entrance. I could almost not bear to share this experience in such a crowd..and then we passed through the entrance way and it all opened up!
Macchu Picchu is absolutely stunning! Our guide was brilliant at keeping us away from the crowds and taking us other ways around to get to the great vistas and views without even realizing how many people were around. But - back to Macchu Picchu itself...... It's totally unbelievable that people of so many years ago created this all...... those huge steps you see in all the photos is acutally the agricultural part of the ruins...there they grew all thier crops to feed the people. There are many normal sized stairs all over the place linking the different levels, houses and worship places. It's quite a maze and it was totally fascinating to walk through there, touching those ancient stones knowing that each and every one of them was hand carved, moved, polished to fit and placed right there.... its totally wonderful.
The "common workers" lived in houses separate from the chosen, the rich and the upper class....and in an area closer to the crops too. Its really beyond words to describe this place.. When we see a house today, whether built from wood or brick, we can almost see the truck bringing all the building supplies right to the building site...... and its all level and cleared off and neat and tidy too. Not here - many of the structures are built around huge bolders, natural geographical faults and especially around the sun. Yes, many of the main buildings were lined up with the sun, summer and winter solstice being critical to the Incas. Other mountains, in conjunction with the sun, were used to find the right dates and the sun would shine at just the right angle through a small space and then the celebrations could begin or the planting of the new set of crops. And none of the stone or soil arrived by truck - it was all hand done.... every stone hand picked, carved, shaped, polished and made to fit exactly with its mate, with no cement of filler or anything most times.
All the steps are slightly angled sideways or down to help with the drainage during the six months of rainy season and there are natural water gathering places where the water is then directed to fountains for different uses. The Incas could not look at thier gods in the sky directly, so they had stones made round and flat in which they then poured water to use as a mirror to look at the sky and stars....Pachamamma, Mother Earth, is of absolute importance and even today, in town, when one of the Inca people open a bottle of water, the first few drops are given to Pachamamma, sprinkled on the ground.
High up on this mountain, the Inca's had incredible views and could see for miles around if anyone was approaching. The Inca trails can still be seen and a new one was just discovered just two months ago! Just a few months before Macchu Picchu was discovered, another group of people mapped out this area, the valley and the mountains, but they totally missed the fact that there were any ruins up there! It was all so totally overgrown. A little while later Hiram Bingham found this place and the cleaning began. Him and his crew took all the pottery, all the utensils, anything that could be moved - he took it all to the USA. Its all still at Yale and there are some attempts to get it back to Peru. In my opinion, this is where it belongs - in Peru! After seeing this place and feeling the spark of history interest raising its head again, I honestly feel that these treasures much come back home.
Macchu Picchu took 100 years to build and it was never finished - the Incas left before it was all done - the reason for leaving is still not clear - probably never will be. But what they did was to leave behind an incredibly special place. The design is brilliant, the agricultural trellises totally amazing and the feeling of wandering through those ruins, even with many other people, was just incredible. A good many times I would stand at one of the many windows and look at the view and wonder what those ancient Inca's thought of when looking at the view...... did they see the wonders of those towering, ancient, all knowing mountains or did they simply see them as a measure of time.... With all the building of this place, was there even time to think about the surrounding beauty?
Huge boulders hand carved and shaped, rooms with views at all angles, stones placed just so for reasons that no one really knows, but seem to each have a function of sorts. Tiny narrow rock staircases everywhere and the soil for the crops brought in from the Sacred Valley, many miles away. There are temples to the Condor and the Sun - these are huge boulders and other rocks shaped to compliment the whole effect - I will post one of the Condor - its magnificient.
People of all ages wandered over these ruins, mixing in with the llama who happily wandered just where they wanted to... Everyone carried the look of awe that this place creates and cameras never stopped clicking. There is no way to fully capture the feeling or the vision of this place.... It would be stunning to be here when there is no one else around. Occasionally we would get into a section that we could not see or hear anyone and that was so special! It must have been one glorious place in its day.
And then, all too soon, it was time to go. We had spent almost three hours wandering through the ruins, soaking in the views and total awesomeness of this place..... there is nothing quite like it and still, no photo I have seen can fully explain what it is. It was much easier to walk around here than we expected.. no harsh climbs or very long stairs - lots of resting places and always a wonderful view to admire - neither Frank nor I had much of a problem at all. There was a breeze too which helped cool everyone down too.
This is definitely somewhere to see - all the way from Cusco, the train ride, the bus and the crowing glory, literally - Macchu Picchu! I have briefly gone through some of the photos - and WOW........I cant wait to see them on a screen bigger than 10 inches!
And so off we went to lunch at the Sanctuary Lodge..... it was good but we did not stay long as we wanted to spend some time at the market at the station - we still had soles to spend.... that does sound weird. And so we headed for the bus and back down that hair raising road! We really got close to the edge at times and I could feel myself breaking out in a sweat..... but it was part of the big picture that I would not have missed for anything. I do think that swimming with the piranas was less risky though.
We stimulated the economy at the market to a goodly extent, and caught the train back home - this time with us on the river side........what a joy that was!! We only took the train half way home and all got off at Ollytaytambo station where the mini vans took us the rest of the way - I have no idea why, but hey - it was fun too. So, about 4 hours after leaving Macchu Picchu behind, and that glorious night drive back home, we were stuck in a wonderful traffic jam in the center square of Cusco, so bad that I had plenty time to hop out and take some night pictures of the two main Missions on the square... just lovely.
It was truely one of the lovliest days today... the awe started early and just never let up. We got back to the hotel with very full cameras and have just finished copying them all to the computer........ We also went through all the goodies we have bought along the way, packed our bags, showered all the Peruvian dust off and are ready to start the long road home.. Check out time here is around 11.30am but we are only getting picked up around 3.30pm for the flight back to Lima.....This gives us a lovely few hours to wander around town, gently and with no rush and see what else there is to see. We have about 5 hours in Lima airport to wait for our overnight flight back to Miami, Atlanta and then a short two hour bus ride back home again..... its going to be a long couple of days.
What a trip this has been........ I feel another email coming on, but probably only after we have landed home again... I need to wrap all of our adventures up and think about them and savor them and try to soak them up - maybe the long flights will help with that.
Its been totally amazing.... and its not over yet.
love and light
especially to U3
Annie and Frank
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