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netGallery > Jon and Sarah > World_Tour_2006 > Peru > Inca Trail Day 04 to Machu Picchu

Inca Trail Day 04 to Machu Picchu

Peru

December 2006
1 days

Day 04: Wiñay Wayna to Machu Picchu (5km), Return to Cusco:

Pre Text: On the day we visited Macchu Picchu is was quite hazy and with a small digital camera and displaying our photos at a small size on the website really doesn't do this marvellous place justice. We suggest that after reading our BLOG and viewing our pictures you may want to search for images on Google for Macchu Pichu where you should see it in all its glory.

The last day arrives after three very tough days of hiking, by our standards, and we know today should just be an hour or two of walking to our final destination..... the wonderful and world famous Macchu Pichu, the city in the sky..... so will it live up to the hype??

We woke early at 3.30am and it was absolutely pouring down with rain. Not just a bit or a lot.....absolutely tipping it down, and still dark! We all went for our last breakfast in the big tent and although it was so early we were all geared up and ready to get going. Just down the trail was a check point that was not opened to hikers until 5am and we wanted to be there waiting first, so we started walking around 4:30am. We hit the gate just before 4:45am and stood there in the rain like eager horses at the start of the Grand National waiting for the firing pistol!

At 5am on the nose the gate was opened and we followed each other in single file due to the path being so narrow. The trail contours a mountainside and was high up with a drop to our right. The path is uneven, sort of crazy paved but in squares only, all of different sizes, heights and some more slippery than others. The rain was making it worse so we kept to a safe pace as injury now would be foolish.

By now the sticks of thick bamboo we'd purchased at the start to help us walk were our new best friends..... we loved them dearly as they were life savers when you needed that extra bit of stability or extra push up that high step. We simply didn't care if the sticks made us look like Yoda... .. 'steep and treacherous the path is...' he heee

Now our aim was to reach a place called the sungate before 6am as apparently this is the most beautiful place from which to watch the sun rise over Macchu Picchu. We were walking as fast as we could but we were still slipping around and handling the bends like an old lady on on a frosty morning. Furthermore it was raining and very cloudy so we doubted very much whether we could even see the sun when it rose, so we didn't push it.

The path was beautiful and you had to admire the fact that this was built so long ago and the workforce involved must have been huge. They had to transport thousands upon thousands of large rocks and grind each down in to squares and fit them all together like a jigsaw..... not just one layer but these were built up along the mountain edge and stood over 50 metres high. The odd one was loose but most were just as they had been painstakingly laid all that time ago.

The path lead us down into more cloud forest before coming to an almost vertical flight of 50 very tall steps leading up to the final pass at Intipunku (Sun Gate). This vertical staircase was almost like climbing a wall and was tricky in the wet with a heavy bag on your back but you just knew that the second you got over the top then Macchu Pichu would be in full view in all its amazing glory, ready for you to take the perfect postcard photo that we had already seen many times before in all the shops in Cusco.

So we heaved ourselves up the stairs, not daring to look down and slip. Step by step closer and closer to the beautiful view.... anticipation building and mild excitement of reaching our goal after three days of what can only be described of at times as sheer hell on earth and I pulled myself up over the final step and looked up and opened my eyes ready to be stunned..... and........ well it was cloudy wasn't it and we couldn't see a sausage! In the words of Victor Meldrew.... 'I don't believe it!' ha haaaaa... oh well.

So here we were over almost a hundred hikers standing around with our cameras fired up and ready to be snapping the photo of the year but we could barely see a hundred metres in front and couldn´t see any of Macchu Pichu. We all laughed about it as we knew we would get photos once inside the site but this was the one great vantage point that everyone talks about. We stopped long enough for a group photo and to take on board more chocolate and water then continued along the final half hours worth of Inca Trail.

I ducked off the trail for a quick pee (due to the rain) and thankfully that was all and marked the end of my dicky tummy. When we arrived at the ruins of Machu Picchu the place was tourist free, being 7am, and nobody else would be there until the first train at 11am... superb! Too right too! We'd earned this view and we fully deserved to have a few hours to walk around and admire it in peace. We knew the train from Cusco would bring fresh smelling people, who'd simply hopped onboard to come and see this national treasure. We knew they would have slept overnight in a comfy hotel bed, and had the luxury of a warm shower and hot breakfast and maybe even spruced up with a wee dab over perfume/aftershave!!! You make us sick....!!! You don't deserve this .... you can't just expect to be whisked up in to the beautiful hills in an instant and be allowed to enjoy this most tranquil and awesome of places..... EVERYONE should have to endure what we had to.... you so so so appreciate its beauty all the more when you've thought about nothing else 24 hours a day for the last four 4 days... which were probably the longest days of your lives.... damn you! he heeee....

We staggered around the site starting from the top and being so high much of it was still covered in cloud at our level. But every so often the cloud would rise or fall to provide quick glimpses of ancient architecture and the most amazing landscape imaginable. It was like it was teasing us by mearly unveiling itself in sections.. as if it thought we simply could not handle seeing its entire being all at once without fainting. So instead we had to be patient and take our photos quickly when the chance arose.

We took group photos and photos of others with their cameras so that everyone had a decent shot, and the odd photo of llamas. We shared our email addresses so that we could also share photos at a later date. (Please note all the photos on our BLOG and netgallery are our own - except the snake eating the frog in Mexico!) We just sat in silence on our own, with the morning so still and peaceful, we just looked around and tried to take in everything and basically take the time to not just rush this and snap away, sitting quietly and absorbing all and respecting and appreciating what we were seeing....

This is hard to explain but sometimes in life we just look at things and say, yeah that's great or beautiful but do we actually stop and think... wow ... I am looking at something built in a time I cant imagine.... what must it have looked like then with hundreds or thousands working here building this massive city in the sky... and later living here, growing crops, kids playing and all watching the sun set before dinner.... no police, or laws or government and taxes...... no Internet or digital photography, or Rubix cubes, dental floss and bubble gum! In a time when the Spanish were invading their country killing their friends and relatives by murder or by unknowingly bringing with them smallpox, syphilis and measles which spread and killed off 90% of the indigenous people. And now a half century later I sit here upon this hill looking down at what they created and its still standing and is more beautiful than anything you've seen.

Today was a good day!

We were then told we had to put our backpacks in the locker rooms and go get some food before our Tour Guides walked and talked us around each section of the site. We dumped our bags and also got our final INCA TRAIL stamp in our passports completing a set of four that we'd accumulated at checkpoints en route. We headed straight for the food area and indulged in some first class junk food, burgers, chips and ice cold coca cola....! There goes all the good work we did in burning off some calories! The last slurp of cola went down and we set off on the tour and were all excited at the prospect of learning the history behind this site.

Our tour guides showed us the massive terraces for which the Incas were famous. Huge flat terraces, made up of rocks, soil and grass allowed them to transform a steep hill in to livable spaces. And then the other thing that the Inca liked to build more than anything, steps! They are everywhere and the site resides on many many levels linked together by thousands of steps that must have kept its residents fit.

We witnessed first hand how the water was channelled from the mountains above and was filtered around the site, using gravity to take it to water the crops and to provide fresh drinking or washing water to the baths and toilets. All of this was still functioning 100% perfectly and you had to admire the simplicity of it all... why do we complicate life so much nowadays.. simple is best! We were shown the famous sun dial that was a huge flat rock with a carved piece at the top. This sat adjacent to another rock carved in to the shape of the head of a Puma. Two days a year on the Equinoxs, this carved point channelled a beam of light and lit up the eye of the Puma! How clever and amazing is that! The funny thing was a year or two ago a beer commercial was being filmed right next to this sun dial with a girl in a bikini draped all over it and the camera boom swung round and took a chip out of the sun dial almost in a second destroying what had survived so many hundreds of years.... These idiots were sued for $1,000,000 for their stupidity!

From this site if you stop looking at the buildings but look beyond you see nothing but lush green forest and hills and valleys. Dotted around the landscape are three or four beautiful narrow steep and rounded mountains and its on top of one of these that the Incas also built a very narrow staircase all the way to the top leading to two palaces. Some people from our group hadn't had enough of climbing mountains and climbed Wayna Picchu (the mountain that you see in the background of the famous photos) to see these palaces. Needless to say that wasn´t for us as by now our legs were starting to feel like jelly.

As predicted the droves of tourists started to pile in to the site just after 11am and we laughed to ourselves as some of the poor old things were struggling with the stairs at this altitude that they obviously hadn't yet adjusted to.... We felt disgustingly dirty but we felt proud of our achievement and decided to leave now before the place was tainted with tourism
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We then took the bus down to Aguas Calientes, a town below, and had lunch in a predetermined restaurant where we met some of the personal porters to collect our clothes. We ate pizza and drunk cold beer (more calories!) and sat giving our bodies a well earnt rest. Some popped up to the natural springs for swim but we hadn't bought our swimmers so passed on the skinny dipping.

At 3:30 we all jumped on the one and only train back to Cusco which chugged along happily for over 5 hours before pulling in to Cusco to more pouring rain at almost 9pm. We said our goodbyes to those we had walked and camped with and in a second a new challenge was before us.... where would we sleep tonight.....? We didn't really care as long as it had hot water and a double bed. Ten minutes later within the train station a hostel tout had won us over and we were already in one of those tiny DAEWOO taxis buzzing through to tiny streets heading for a good nights sleep!!!

So......the Journey was over........ and we hope that our photos and blog have in some way conveyed to you what an amazing experience this was for us... how hard it was, but how so very worth while it was too....

We would say to anyone considering this Inca Trail.... Its not something to be taking on lightly..... but if you do you'll never regret it! Much like robbing a bank and getting away with it! Don't try this at home kids.....