Machu Picchu

We’re sitting at the breakfast bar of our little hotel. Below me is a garden of boulders that have been carved and polished, over incomprehensible eons, by the swirling waters of the Urubamba River. Rock walls climb almost vertically, clad in thick jungle. Orchids, wild begonia and other flowers I can only guess at, add flashes of colour to the rich pallet of greens. The dense jungle growth hints at the immense womb of the Amazon that lies just beyond, but there is no doubt that we are still in the heart of the Andes.

It is not so much a river valley as a canyon. I can’t remember ever being in a place so steep and narrow. It’s as if nature had decided to erase the third dimension of breadth, and sculpt this land with height and length alone. But mostly height.

The town is only possible because this is the junction of three rivers. The valleys merge, giving a little more space. Formerly known as Aguas Calientes, the town is now better known as Machu Picchu Pueblo, the commercial namesake of the famous Inca community that once nestled on the mountain ledge above. There is barely enough room here below, for a couple of steep narrow streets where the rivers join. God help this place when the next big earthquake hits. But that’s a worry for another day. There is another river, the 5,000 people a day that visit Machu Picchu. The place feels like a ski town. It exists for no other reason than what lies in the mountains above. Every square inch is lined with restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops.

And that’s fine. Though I like to think of myself as different – as a ” traveler” rather than a tourist, the truth is I am, at least in the economic sense, a tourist. And perhaps others. Tourism brings wealth to this area, and Peru as a whole. Done right, tourism can be a tremendous boon, bringing not only prosperity, but fostering greater global awareness, cultural appreciation, tolerance and everything that goes along with it. Marrying capitalism and altruism is a tricky business, but the Peruvians are doing their best.

The steep green slopes above me disappear into a bank of cloud flowing through the valley. A river in the air. Or something more spectral; something wraith-like crawling upside-down along the sky. Dave is somewhere up there. He left at dawn with our guide, Bryan, to climb Huayna Picchu one of the peaks that rises above the ruins. It’s only been a day since I got the stitches out of the sole of my foot, so I claim discretion as the better part of valour. Anyway, I suspect the cloud deck may spoil the view. Indeed Dave tells me later that was so. But Dave has a streak of mountain goat in his DNA and for him it’s all about the climb. The journey is more important than the destination.

After breakfast Liz, Anne and I board the bus that will take us to the entrance to the site, where we will rendezvous with Bryan and Dave. The bus winds back and forth along narrow switch backs, climbing up the mountain. There are a few heart stopping moments as we meet other buses coming back down. There’s only inches to spare and sometimes one of us has to back up to find a wider spot in the road.

Even with the bus ride to the entrance, it’s still a strenuous climb to the site. At one point, Anne slips and falls on the steep stone steps. It’s a bad fall and her shoulder pops out. Fortunately, it pops back in, but it’s still incredibly painful. Anne cradles her wounded arm, rocking slowly with the pain. Her suffering is obvious.

At the same time, the thought running through my head is, ‘No! I can’t turn around when we’re so close.’ I feel both helpless and ashamed of my selfishness in the face of an obvious moral imperative.

But Anne is trooper. Dave improvises a sling by turning a light nylon pack around to the front. After a couple of minutes to catch her breath, we’re off again pain or no pain. The unspoken agreement is we’ve all come too far and been through too much to quit now.

And then, there it is.

There are certain places in the world where a photograph, no matter how well composed and presented, can never fully capture the experience. Machu Picchu is such a place.

I hate the overuse of superlatives – “fabulous”, “incredible”… I think they diminish their subject, gilding the lily. Machu Picchu is a place of great beauty and reverence – indisputable and sufficient. It is impossible to be there and not feel a sense of awe on many levels.

There have been entire libraries written about the place, so I will not duplicate that here. And as our guide Bryan pointed out, a lot of it is wrong – western ideas grafted on to Incan culture. It continues today with New Age mysticism retrofitting itself onto the Inca and other Andean cultures, and the Revisionist tide that seeks to make the past conform to our twenty-first century sensibilities. I’m not sure that the Inca would either approve of or appreciate our view of what remains of their world. It is presumptive to say the least.

What we do know is that Machu Picchu was a place a place of learning for young nobles, a sort of Prep school and Ivy League college together. And it was also a place of great spiritual significance. Because astronomy, architecture, agriculture, justice, medicine, sociology, economics and religion were not separately siloed disciplines. They were an integrally interwoven whole that supported the world.

There is no need to invoke space aliens to explain how people with only bronze tools could build such fine stone architecture. The Inca had the two strongest tools there are – human ingenuity and the will to do so. They learned what worked and what didn’t work, and applied themselves to perfecting the craft with determination. Would that we had that same determination today to apply to our most pressing issues.

I tried to distill my many senses and impressions of Machu Picchu, as we walked it’s streets, and gazed over it terraces and temples. There was enduring beauty, marvel, wonder… and underlying it all, a certain melancholy, tristesse as the French would say.

Machu Picchu was never finished. I suppose that no city is every finished, but there is evidence throughout of what was to come next – markings on rocks where new foundations were to be laid, and so on. The people of Tawantinsuyu as the Inca called themselves remain, but they have been indelibly marked by the Spanish conquest and the Catholic church. One cannot help but wonder what might have been.

 

National Geographic does it better, but you can check out our photo’s of Machu Picchu here.

A final shout out to our guide in Machu Picchu and Cusco, Bryan Wilbert Q. Huaman. His company is terrificperutours.com If you’re thinking of visiting the Machu Picchu/Cusco area, we cannot recommend Bryan highly enough.