My first visit to Machu Picchu

This blog is predominantly about Lima, but there is no way that I can mention Lima or Peru without discussing Machu Picchu. I've been to Machu Picchu about 11 or 12 times because every time that somebody comes to vist me in Peru, that's where they want to go. And who can blame them? Getting a picture of yourself at Machu Picchu that you can put as your profile picture on facebook is great for making all your old highschool classmates jealous of how awesome a life you turned out to have.




Here I am clowning around on one of the terraces. No, it's not a drop to infinity and I'm not clutching the grass for dear life, it only looks like it's a drop to infinity. One of the coolest things about Machu Picchu is that it's huge and you're pretty much allowed to walk anywhere you want. The guards there are super casual and the amazing thing is that the vast majority of people pretty much behave themselves so no guards are needed. Occasionally somebody will get over excited and want to take a picture of themselves on top of one of the walls, but the guards kind of hiss or whistle at them to get down.

Can you imagine that kind of freedom in an American park? At Yellowstone, or wherever, everything is all corded off with ropes and boardwalks that determine exactly where you have to go. It is a million times better at Machu Picchu where you are given the freedom to explore. Sadly, every time I've gone up there, there have been a few more marked trails and prohibited areas (we all knew the desire to preserve would take precedence eventually), so you should plan your trip right away while you're still allowed to go pretty much everywhere.



Here's the central courtyard. Every time I've gone to Machu Picchu they've had every section all divided up into different "groups." I understand the necessity of it, but you also have to keep in mind that a lot of the names of the places in Machu Picchu were just thought up by Hiram Bingham as he daydreamed about what everything could be for. My recommendation is that it's better to just go there and absorb the energy of the place than it is to sit around and read a bunch of books by Yale historians who are pretty much just giving their best guess anyway.



On the top of this structure is the main temple with the sundial. Apparently the sundial was damaged during the shooting of a music video sometime back and that really annoyed everybody.

These photos are from my first trip to Machu Picchu, and I kind of felt it was disrespectful to photograph the sundail for some reason, though I think I did it on subsequent trips, so I guess you'll have to keep coming to this web page to see them when I post them later.




This is a completely inadequate photo of the temple of the condor. The big rock in the middle has all kinds of cool caves and things below it. You can spend a good fifteen minutes running around this thing and never see all the passages. Machu Picchu is like that, it really takes about 12 trips before you've seen everything.



The fountains that run through the center of the city. This is awesome, the Incas had running water.



The courtyard at the center of the city. It's my guess that the tree in the center of the courtyard is one of the most photographed trees in all the world. It just got planted in the right place I guess.



Tree/courtyard again. The Temple of the Condor is to the right of the tree. Head for that area, there's some cool stuff over there.



A slightly different vantage point for shooting Machu Picchu, but it's pretty tough to get a bad picture of the place.



I think this is the Serpent's window next to the Temple of the Sun. This is one of the places in Machu Picchu with the best stonework.



This photo is taken on the trail up to the Inca bridge. In my opinon, that's where you can get the best full shot of Machu Picchu.



Here's a photo that they used to have at the visitor's center in Aguas Calientes showing Machu Picchu back around 1915 (they hadn't planted the tree in the courtyard yet). One of the things that isn't hugely publicized is that a lot of Machu Picchu has been reconstructed. The best stonework in Machu Pichu (Temple of the Sun, three windows, etc.,) is original, but a lot of the other buildings had fallen down over time. Remember that when Hiram Bigham found the place, it was all overgrown and many of the buildings had just collapsed into rubble. You can see that the "reconstruction" is as unobtrusive as possible. It isn't as if they brought in materials, rather they've simply stacked the piles of rocks that they found and put them back in their original state to give you the best possible representation of what the city must have looked like. However, I don't think this photo is on display at the visitor's center any longer.

Anyway, there you have it. My first tour of Machu Picchu. I'll be sure to post more updates on this in the future (you can't possibly cover it in just one article).