Machu Picchu

Hyped as one of the modern ’Seven Wonders of the World’ and the ‘Premier Attraction in South America’, Machu Picchu has a lot to live up to! The most famous Inca Citadel of all is situated in the midst of the Andes north of Cusco, at the lower end of the Sacred Valley. Due to all the hype we deliberately left visiting until the end of our time in the area… it seemed only appropriate to keep the most spectacular Inca structure for the grand finale.

Getting to Machu Picchu is interesting - below Ollantaytambo the Sacred Valley becomes too narrow for a road to be built, meaning that you can only arrive on foot (by hiking the Inca Trail) or by train along the narrow track squeezed in by the side of the turbulent River Urambamba. We opted to visit by train as we wouldn’t have had the time to see all the interesting places in the Sacred Valley otherwise - and as the Inca trail is closed in February we didn’t have much choice anyway! We were pleased to find that booking tickets a few days in advance at the main Cusco train station was simple (all staff even spoke perfect English), if a tad expensive $92 US return for the basic ‘backpacker ticket’. Booking everything was so easy that when we turned up at a painfully early 6.30 am to board the train from Cusco’s San Pedro Station, we were slightly taken aback to find that most people were being guided aboard the rickety old train in Tour Groups. Groan.

Fortunately, we soon forgot about the groups as the train left Cusco. The line was obviously built a long time ago on a tight budget which didn’t stretch to simple things like bridges and tunnels! In order to ascend the mountain on the north edge of Cusco the train had to wind back and forth upwards in a series of zigzags. The slope was too steep for hair-pin bends in the track, so instead every few hundred yards the track would stop and reverse on itself in a switch-back, meaning the train would have to change direction for every zig and zag... After meandering back and forth upwards for nearly an hour we finally left Cusco, and the train picked up slightly more speed. Well, not much more speed – it was just as well that the scenery en route was stunning as the trip lasted 4 hours and 20 minutes!

Once we finally jumped off at Machu Picchu Pueblo (the small town that has sprung up to cater for the Inca Complex), we had to run the gauntlet past a hoard of guides and touts brandishing signs for Tour Groups and on right through a huge craft market that forms the only exit to the train station! After deftly dodging numerous sellers of woolly jumpers, shawls, woven things, silver jewellery, paintings and pan-pipes we dashed over the raging River Urambamba and swiftly caught a bus up to the Temple Complex… where of course the lovely sunny weather we had watched with delight all morning through the train windows vanished, and it started to pour down!

We weren’t exactly surprised – every picture of Machu Picchu we’ve ever seen has either had fierce clouds outlining the mountains or has been digitally manipulated to show blue sky! This Inca Temple may have been a place of Sun Worship, but it seems much more effective at summoning clouds! To be honest, the rain wasn’t necessarily a bad thing – the clouds and drizzle certainly gave a bleak sinister edge to the incredibly dramatic and beautiful Complex. And the rain brought another bonus - when we first started to wander around with our umbrellas out there were lots of Tour Groups around the place forming very obvious colourful clusters of mostly middle aged people in bright waterproof jackets or plastic ponchos. The site of the Machu Picchu is so extensive that it could easily cater for the numbers of people, but every now and then you’d get caught behind one of these very slow moving groups, and have to put up with the loud voice of the Guide ruining the tranquil beauty… until you finally escaped past! Fortunately the rain seemed to scare most of these away, so that by early afternoon when the sun emerged from the clouds we more or less had the stunning place to ourselves.

Why is Machu Picchu so beautiful? As an estate agent might tell you – it’s all about location. To be brutally honest, the buildings and temples littered throughout the site may form an extensive and well preserved town, thankfully free of the ravishings of Colonial Spain, but they really aren’t that wonderfully constructed. The Temple of the Sun at Pisac and the fabulous fortifications of Sachsayhumuam actually have far better stone-work. The extensive network of agricultural terraces that flank the sides of Machu Picchu cling to the mountain spectacularly, but no more so than in many of the other sites we’ve seen in the Sacred Valley. No, what makes Machu Picchu stand out as one of the most spectacular places we’ve ever seen is it’s positioning on a dramatic saddle of a high sheer-sided mountain surrounded by a U-turn in the raging River Urambamba hundreds of meters below, only just visible through the drifting clouds. Add into the mix the impressively steep mountain of Huayna Picchu towering vertically behind the hillock of the Sun Temple and you have one of the most memorable scenes you’ll find anywhere on Earth. You have to admire the Incas for building here – very beautiful, but completely impractical! They must have been mad (or at least hyperactive)! Just think of all the climbing they had to do to get up out of the river valley, or even worse, to scale the peak of Huayna Picchu.

We didn’t realise before we arrived at the site that you could climb Huayna Picchu, the almost vertical mount immediately behind Machu Picchu. Once we discovered this we made a bee-line for the entrance, and were very lucky to be one of the last few people let through that day. Of course it rained heavily during the entire exhausting climb up hundreds of large stone steps hewn from the sheer rock cliff face – which were made nicely slippery by all the water! It did make you think about the vertical drop down to the river hundreds of meters below… But when we eventually reached the Inca Citadel at the top we were very pleased to have persisted, if only for the spectacular views down over Machu Picchu. We were also rewarded by the chance to explore a wonderful vertical maze-like town where you had to climb sheer walls of rock and crawl through tight caves to reach the summit. As we arrived at the very top the rain magically stopped, and we were even treated to a few rays of sunshine! It couldn’t last – Machu Picchu generated more clouds over the course of the afternoon and only let the sun show the Temple’s full glory for the occasional moment. But those moments were beautiful!

So does Machu Picchu deserve all the hype? It is a nice well preserved Inca Complex in possibly the most dramatic site we’ve ever seen anywhere. The buildings can’t compare with Angkor Wat or the Taj Mahal, but on the other hand neither of these were dangled off the top of a narrow, vertically sided mountain! Machu Picchu is truly spectacular – and well worth a trip to Peru. Try and see it before the Peruvian Government starts taking things like ‘Health and Safety’ seriously, or I doubt you’ll be able to climb the rock cliff of Huayna Picchu, whose crazy citadel and views down over Machu Picchu are possibly the highlight of the whole place – if you don’t mind heights and slippery steps above long cliff drops that is…