Wake up call was at 3:45am this morning, which was a pity as it interrupted the best sleep I'd had on the trail. There were two reasons behind the early start:

  • Get up the last part of the trail and into Machu Picchu early to avoid the tourists taking the train up that morning
  • The porters needed to pack up the entire camp and be down at the train station before 6am in order to avoid paying tourist prices to get home (which seems like a bit of a rough deal)

Breakfast was surprisingly fun. Today was Adam's 30th birthday, and somehow the chef managed to create an entire birthday cake, complete with icing, halfway up a mountain at 3 in the morning - amazing!

By the time we finished breakfast/cake, the porters had dismantled the rest of the camp, and were already on their way down to the train. We started off, but soon reached a checkpoint that only opened at 5:30am - so we ended up in a queue in pitch black jungle.

Once we cleared the checkpoint, it started to lighten up. It quickly became apparent we were in for a foggy day - we could really only see about 15m in front of us.

We reached the Sun Gate at the edge of the site at about 8am, but the only sight to greet us was clouds. It was a bit of a let down, especially after 3 days of trekking, and the early start in the morning. However, 300 assured us that the fog would lift during the day, so we started down the last downhill section. Sure enough, about 15 minutes later, we started to see gaps in the cloud and caught our first glimpse of Machu Picchu.

Even after seeing other Incan ruins on the trek and earlier on the tour, it didn't quite compare with this. Seeing the city perched on top of the mountain, with a myriad of terraces running down the side was something else altogether. Add in the clouds billowing in the valley below, and looked quite a lot like it was just floating in the sky directly in front of us - definitely a good reward at the end of our trek.

It took us another 30 minutes or so to actually reach the site, but we finally turned the last corner and came face to face with the rest of the group (Manfred and Renata, Angela and Daryl, along with Jhon). It was actually quite exciting to see the others again, and there were many (slightly smelly) hugs, handshakes and swapped war stories.

We had to leave the site, and re-enter with our day pass tickets, which was a bit of a pain, but did have the major advantage of being able to stop off at the first civilised toilet we had seen for days (never to be taken for granted again!)

300 then took us back through the site, explaining the various areas as we went. It had never occurred to me that when the site was discovered it would have been overgrown with rainforest - I had always just assumed that it had been frozen in time with pristine terraces. It was only when 300 showed is some pictures from Hiram Bingham's original 1911 expedition that I realised how much work had been done. In fact, there are still lower terraces that are still overgrown, that are being carefully cleared and restored today.

(Speaking of Hiram Bingham, my new felt hat has been alternately christened the "Hiram Bingham hat" or the "Indiana Jones hat" - both of which I am ok with :-P)

Probably the part that impressed me the most was the irrigation system, which is still working today. The way that Machu Picchu is structured, the temples are at the top, followed by the housed on lower terraces, with the farming terraces on the bottom terraces. Because the water flowed right from the top, the fresh water was used in ceremonies in the temples, and by citizens in the houses, with the rest then being used for crops - none of it was wasted.

300 also mentioned another interesting fact - it's possible to see 18 different styles of stonework in Machu Picchu. When people think of Incan stonework, they tend to think of the style that has precise joins and no mortar. Although we saw quite a lot of this (and it is amazing to see up close), the Incans only used this technique for their most important buildings (I.e. Their temples). For houses and other structures, such as terraces, rougher stones and mortar were used. As a result, you can actually use the stonework to figure out how important a particular area is (in one area, the style even changes part way through a wall, where it changes from the back wall of a temple to the back wall of a priest's house).

At the very top of the site was a quarry, and a number of unfinished buildings. To create stone blocks, the Incas would use a chisel to make a hole, fill the hole with wood and then expand the wood with water. Once the block fell away, they could then polish it down to the dimensions they needed.

We had a look at two a few temples. The first was a room used to determine the summer and winter solstices - this was done simply by placing two windows in the room. When the sun shone directly through a particular window, it indicated that day was the solstice.

The next temple was for Pacha Mama (mother earth). This was a good example of the Incas incorporating existing natural features into their buildings. In this case, a large slab of granite had fallen at about a 45 degree angle, creating a natural cave. Rather than try to remove the slab, the Incas walled the sides of the cave and added an altar to turn it into a temple.

We only stayed at the site until 12:30, and then took the buses down to Aguas Calientes, a tourist town at the bottom of the mountain. We had a huge lunch with 300 and Eliasar, another birthday cake for Adam, and then had free time to look around the town before our train trip back to Cusco at 4:45pm.

This was probably the only part about the organisation of the trek that I didn't like. We spent 3.5 days walking through mountains to reach Machu Picchu, and once we got there we only had 2 hours to look around. The worst part was that we were all so tired, we didn't care. Considering that the next day is a free day in Cusco with no activities, I would probably have preferred to finish the trek, go straight down to Agua Calientes and gave a shower and sleep, and spend the next day looking around Machu Picchu properly. I just think that I probably would have gotten a not more out of it, and could have concentrated on 300's tour properly, instead of thinking about how sore my feet were and how much I needed a shower.

Still, in spite of that, it was still an amazing day, from Adam's calls of "Do the goat!" to Karl doing his Jesus impression at the Sun Gate and especially seeing that first glimpse of Machu Picchu through the clouds - definitely a fitting end to an awesome 3 days of trekking, and something I won't forget any time soon.

it’s always a pleasure to read any new posts.

sounds like you are having fun! keep enjoying it, and when you get a chance put some more pictures up.

Great to see that all is going well 😉