From Cusco, the trip to Machu Picchu starts before dawn with a ride in a van a couple hours over the mountains until you reach this train station. You are now on the Urubamba River which eventually flows into the Amazon and the terrain will slowly transform into rainforest.
On the train we hooked up with a couple adventurers from Pennsylvania. DJ’s that got married and love to travel. They hopped off the train early so they could take a grueling trek to Machu Picchu. We stayed with the train. Thank you.
The Urubamba cuts deeper and deeper into the mountains.00000
After an hour or two on the train we reach Agua Caliente which is a small town along the river and almost directly below Mach Picchu.
Almost totally tourist based, Agua Caliente still has some charm.
They do trash sorting and recycling.
And a pretty nice market.
The restaurant where we had breakfast, had some nice photos on the wall
Now the final phase of the trip to Machu Picchu is to catch the bus that zigs and zags to the top of the steep mountain. At peak times a bus leaves to go up that mountain every five minutes!
One of the rules at Machu Picchu is that everyone, or group, must have a guide. It’s not a real big deal as the guide cuts everyone loose after an hour or so. You are only suppose to stay four hours, but there is no way to enforce that. At this altitude, crawling on big rocks for four hours is plenty.
One of the fascinating things about Pachu Picchu is that it was left untouched basically for about four hundred years and even with several major earthquakes in that period, 80% of the city was still intact.
i’m going to show you way too many pictures. Can’t help it, I like piled up rocks.
Although the Incas worked on this city for around forty years, the city never got completed. First the workforce got depleted from a North Inca vs South Inca war. Then the Spanish arrived and wiped out everyone who didn’t flee into the Amazon jungle.
The city was designed to be self sustaining. It had large agricultural areas, which included composing. It had a public section and it had a residential section.
The left section is public, the far right is residential.
Pretty cool wall making. All the walls are slightly leaning in the direction that would fall away from people in the event of an earthquake.
There are over 600 major walls
That’s the Urubamba River way down there.
This is the actual gateway going from the public to the private part of the city. This is a good example of the two designs of wall building. That lower section is super concise. A credit card can’t even slide between these rocks and there is no mortar anywhere. The higher rocks, although pretty cleverly placed, do not have the same precision as the lower stones. This makes some speculate that Machu Picchu was built in two different eras with the more precise stone cutters much earlier.
The camera was at an angle here. In the background is a section dedicated to agriculture.
Lots of crop area here.
The curved wall area has some designs that show it was built based on equinox and solstice demarcation.
No Incas around to make repairs after a few centuries of earthquakes.
I try to imagine who put this wall together. Don’t understand the development of this level of precision at this point in history.
Looking down the “back side” of Machu Picchu. More agricultural levels.
Could you have lived here? No internet. No TV. No swimming pools. No grocery store. Not much oxygen. Lots of rocks.
When my mom knitted that hat, we thought it would go well with Machu Picchu. And it does.
I guess this is the good life – for llamas.
Charlotte with a high llama.
Were there arguments and disagreements about which stone goes where and is the fit good enough or does it need more trimming?
Why such a big rock among smaller ones?
Looking through a window.
Closer look out the window.
There is an unknown story about how this space was once used.
Carved from one piece of stone
We were told this mounted stone was an exact replication of the skyline.
Another big rock, little rocks mystery.
Lots of walls
The largest agricultural area. The compost went out here and kept the soil from losing its fertility.
Earlier you saw a picture or two of this wall from the other side.
A restored roof on one of the buildings
One web site said these stones were carried up from the river bed below. It is a very, long, steep trek up to the city from the river. It would be a bit mind-blowing if that were really true. I think it more likely many of these stones were scattered more nearby, or chipped/cut from larger stones nearby.
This is the beginning/end of the trail that goes pretty much straight up/down the mountain.
Back down at the Urubamba River
Taking the train on the way back toward Cusco
It’s summer here in Peru (December) but there are still retreating glaciers at the high altitudes.
The Andes