Blog 7: Machu Picchu, The Wonder of the World

17th November 2023

On 17th November 2023 I visited the ancient citadel of Machu Picchu, the fabled city of the Incas that was lost to the world (but not to Incan descendents) for two centuries and is now one of the wonders of the world. In fact in Peru, they go further and say it is THE wonder of the world, in other words, nothing compares.

It's hard to argue with them. It is an extraordinary place. Also now an extraordinarily popular place; 6000 people can be found at the site on any given day, any time of the year except February, when it is closed for maintenance.

I'm not going to say anything about Machu Picchu's significance or even much about what's there - there's nothing I can say that can't be looked up on Google or read about elsewhere. It's also impossible to take a photo of Machu Picchu that hasn't been taken before.

But visiting it is still a personal experience, and the effect of the place, its site, its sheer impossibility, its light, its poignancy and its mystery are personally felt. It is a sacred place to the Incan descendents, and it feels sacred, however differently we might interpret 'sacredness'. It is also an exotic place, despite being one of the worlds most popular tourist attractions.

Getting there

My daystarted in Ollantaytambo. I checked out of the Hotel Intitambo and strolled down past the town square to the station, arriving about 15 minutes later. A few whisps of cloud were hanging around, and over the river I could make out the trail from the quarry, the final part of my descent from inti punku the day before.

The whole process of getting train tickets coordinated with bus tickets coordinated with Machu Picchu visitor permits had taken months to organise. Confirmation messages had flown back and forth; it was all finely managed to tight schedules. Why? Because it has to be, given the numbers that visit the site daily.

I was catching a Peru Rail Vistadome at 8.10am (essentially a train with a glass roof) which would take me through the Sacred Valley to Aguas Caliente, the town at the foot of Machu Picchu. There I would catch a bus at 2.00pm and be taken up to Machu Picchu to meet my personal guide, 'Edy' who would show me through the citadel. From the moment of arrival at Machu Picchu my permit specified I would have exactly 2 hours to tour the site and come back down.

I was way too early, so I bought a coffee and watched the crowds descending on the station for the various services to Aguas Caliente. Some people in large tour groups were paraded down to the station by a band and squads of dancers performing (presumably) some version of ancient Incan dance-moves. It was all pretty cheesey, but the oldies were loving it. OK, the oldies older than me.

Several trains departed as I waited, then finally I was able to board mine. I had an allocated seat next to some fairly surly New York girls who were way too cool to talk to me. No matter, I wasn't there to see them.

The train pulled out of Ollantaytambo on time, and fairly soon after we were in a wonderland of steep slopes, raging rivers and soaring snow clad peaks . Occasionally a waterfall would cascade down beside us from the melted snow above. The train was deliberately slow, we were told, to protect wildlife in the narrow valley. I snapped some pics through the window:

After a while we passed a bridge leading over to a trail that took off up the mountainside on the opposite bank of the river. An announcement told us that this was the start of the fabled 'Inca Trail', the 4 day trek into Machu Picchu. I could make out a group of people who had just started the trail; they stopped and waved to the train as it went past, and the train tooted back at them.

Aguas Caliente

Eventually the valley narrowed dramatically. The vegetation became verdant and tropical, we were entering rainforest. And not long after that, we pulled into Aguas Caliente, a town straddling a cascading river in the middle of dense tropical vegetation, surrounded on all sides by vertical mountainsides soaring to impossible heights. Somewhere, high above in the mists above me, was Machu Picchu.

I checked into my hotel the Machu Picchu Adventurer, and was very impressed with the room I was given. It was high up, in a corner, with a kind of turret arrangement next to the bathroom that offered a sensational view of the rainforest to the west. The receptionist explained that this was all Amazonian rainforest; it reaches up into the tributaries feeding the Amazon, and Aguas Caliente was located on one of those tributaries. The town was also located near hot springs which explained its name (Aguas = water, Caliente = hot).

The view from my bathroom turret. The train line into town was directly below me

Catching the Machu Picchu bus

I grabbed a soup from a cafe near the hotel and finally the hour arrived for my bus. I checked the instructions, gathered my permit and tickets and took off for the bus stop. I expected by now the bus would be waiting for me there.

I approached the bridge and there before me, gathered along the opposite bank, was a queue of possibly a thousand people stretched along the length of the town. All of them waiting for the 2.00pm bus.

A small section of the queue

No matter, everyone had bookings so once I was in the queue, getting up to Machu Picchu was someone else's problem. It turns out a fleet of 24 buses run a continual service up the mountain all day, so in fact the queue moved quite quickly. Scouts came along looking for solo travellers to fill gaps, and I was able to skip quite a few people and grab a seat quickly. I was next to a lady from Brazil who wanted her photo taken almost immediately (see below). At about 2.15 pm I was finally off.

Very quickly the bus began to climb. I'd seen the hairpin turns in heaps of photos, so knew we were in for a steep and precipitous ride. I was right.

Action shot of a hairpin turn on the steep and precipitous ride

We climbed and climbed, each turn revealling more and more mountains. Eventually I heard a collective gasp behind me, craned my neck to look up to the right, and there it was. My first glimpse of Machu Picchu.

Beyond wow.

The site

The next two hours would be two of the most fascinating of my life. For me, the standouts were:

• The site itself and the ever-changing light on the ruins and the surrounding mountains. Beyond awesome.

• The window in the temple that received the beam of light once a year from the Sun Gate at Inti Punku

• The housing and how it worked - how the Incans kept themselves watered and warm, in particular

• The plant life on the site, including some remarkable orchids

• The royal history of the site

• The despicable history of its 'rediscovery' and the arrogance of the man who excavated it, without permission from the Incans, destroying all of the frescoes on the walls; now lost forever.

The natural setting

The light and shade on the surrounding mountains, bright green with rainforest. It was like nature putting on a show the whole time I was up there.

Touring the citadel

This is where you first enter the site on 'Circuit 2' (the circuit I was doing) In recent years some of the thatching has been added back on to the rooves, to show what the houses would have looked like. Essentially they had high windows to let out smoke from fires which were maintained in huge ceramic pots, and doorways were closed off with tapestries. Earthen floors. The fires kept them warm.

You are taken first to the highest point, to take the classic photos of the citadel. It was a selfie-fest up there.

A view down over the houses on the edge. Shows how thick and insulating the walls were

The view from the very top

The site is divided into a town part and a palace part. The Incan King had a Summer Palace here in the last century of the site's use.

A depiction of the beam of light streaming down from Mount Veronica and the Inti Punku Sun Gate at Equinox.

The temple depicted in the illustration. I couldn't see Inti Punku from here due to cloud, but the Sun Gate is still up there somewhere, which means the beam of light must still happen when conditions are right. Note you can just make out a corner of the river in the valley way down below.

Huayna Picchu (the mountain behind Machu Picchu, which has it's own citadel) from Machu Picchu. Glowing in the late afternoon sun.

Housing at Machu Picchu. Archaeologists can tell different stages of Machu Picchu's history from the stone work in the walls. For example, in the wall below, you can see where the precise stone cutting ends and more irregular stonework begins, that indicates times when the site was abandoned unfinished, then work resumed later in a hurry to get the building finished.

Being there

Edy the Guide has published books on Machu Picchu. His tour was very good. He also showed me a lot of the plants that grow at Machu Picchu, including some orhid varieties that only grow there.

The Exit.