City in the Sky - Peru Days 4 and 5

Here We Are, originally uploaded by kardinalsin.

Days 4 and 5 are best combined, seeing as we spent most of our 4th day either in transit or holed up in our hotel, resting. The train ride itself - which some might call mundane - was anything but, as the vistadome was the perfect way to see the Cuzco valley without destroying our lungs and legs along the Inca trail. At some point, with more training and more motivation, the trail would be amazing, but the train ride is a great way for anyone at all to transport themselves to Machu Picchu.

There we were, dropped off in Aguas Calientes with a day to explore and admire the city. Aguas Calientes is very much a tourist town, quite small, but bustling and perpetually under construction. The main attraction is the ruins, of course, but the eponymous hot springs also draw as many weary travelers as it can. According to our tour guide, they weren't much to look at, so we decided to skip the springs and instead take a mini-hike to the base of Machu Picchu and learn a bit about the ruins prior to our visit at the site museum. Let it be said that the museum may be small, but the content is extensive enough to be worth the 30-minute walk. Extensive, but in all reality, it didn't prepare us one bit for the awesome sight of the ruins themselves.

We woke up before the sun the next morning and dragged our zombified carcasses to the bus depot in anticipation of the tourist rush. 5 am is an ungodly hour to be awake. Your eyes barely function and the faint thought of hunger barely resonates, but it's cool enough to keep you awake. A few citizens drifted amongst the tourists with platters of bread and hot coca tea for a few soles. It was a 30-minute ride up the mountain across numerous switchbacks and our meager breakfast of bread was less than adequate, but we were too tired, and excited, to care. At the top of the mountain, the throng of tourists assaulted the front gate to sub-Disney proportions, it was then we knew we'd arrived.

Walking up the granite steps, hewn from who knows what type of ancient technology, we caught our initial glimpse of the ruins. In all honesty, there are no words that can adequately describe the emotions you feel when one's eyes first alight on Machu Picchu, so I can only attempt to ruminate a bit. It was simultaneously amazing, awe-inspiring, incredible, and inexplicable. All the photographs in the world cannot convey the entirety of emotions one feels in a single visit. It is massive. It is mysterious. It is everything it is billed to be. If it were built in a flat basin at sea level, it would be just as incredible. The fact that it lies between two massive mountains only makes this ruin more stunning than it already is.

There we were, walking around this ancient relic, in shock of its size and its engineering. The architecture is ingenious for its age and the purpose behind it is somewhat unknown, but for all the enigmas that surround it, it is a testament to the hardiness of the Inca people. It is speculated that the city took hundreds of years to build, but no one really knows why it was abandoned. There are several more curious aspects surrounding Machu Picchu, but they are all too numerous to mention here.

Our guided tour after exploring the ruins on our own was well worth it as we learned quite a bit more, applying our personal knowledge of the ruins we had visited before and what we had seen at the site museum. While it was educational, it deeply enlivened the structures around us, placing people amongst its buildings, crops in its terraces, and brought us through each season of Machu Picchu. We were left there with ample time to explore yet again, but we chose to relax and absorb as much of the experience as we could. People talk of an energy that surrounds the ruins, as if you can feel it in each stone, but for us it was enlightening; as if you wanted to image what the city were like when it was full of life, but sad with the knowledge that time had stripped all that away.