On our bookshelf at home is Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travel, a list of 500 places on Earth worth traveling to ranked 1 through 500. At number 3 in that guide is Peru's Machu Picchu. The description of this awe-inspiring wonder in that book is accompanied by a picture of a smiling Andean woman and the classic view of the old Incan citadel looking along its entire length with the high mountain called Huayna Picchu in the back. If you've ever seen a picture of Machu Picchu, I know you've seen this shot. If you haven't or can't recall it at the moment, just go back two posts on this blog and you'll find it taken by yours truly.
I'm not exactly sure I can recall seeing any other picture of this site in a book or magazine or on line other than that view. It is so classic and iconic that it seems no other photograph is even necessary. It's really all you need. Done. End of story. Don't even need to visit there.
Except not for me. One of my biggest thrills in visiting Machu Picchu was that I would finally get to see more than that. I'd get to see up close how the town was laid out and to understand which functions of the citadel were in which spot and how the Incans put the whole thing together. This post is all about just that: what I got out of my visit to the top of the mountain that isn't that one picture. So with no disrespect to that view of the site, I'm only posting pictures other than that on this blog post. And I'm limiting my discussion of my visit to the details and to what I learned about that most fascinated me from my five or so hours roaming around the old city.
But first...some context.
But first...some context.
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| Llamas at Machu Picchu. |
At the turn of the 19th century, Machu Picchu was unknown to most people outside of Peru. No, that's not really right; it was unknown to most people inside Peru also. In fact, it might have really been unknown to about everyone on the entire planet except for a few native Andeans living around the site itself who used the old Incan terraces sometimes to raise crops. It was these people who in 1911 led the American explorer Hiram Bingham up to the top of the mountain to take a look. Bingham became famous and was credited with the "discovery" of the site when he published photographs and descriptions of the place in National Geographic Magazine two years later. You could argue all he did was discover someone's vegetable garden. He was even led there by the garden owner's son. Fame is like that I guess.
Almost 400 years earlier, in 1526, Francisco Pizarro of Spain "discovered" the Incas. Pizarro was the illiterate, illegitimate son of a Spanish infantry colonel from Trujillo, a Spanish town just east of the Portuguese border. He had come to the new world for one purpose: to get rich and powerful, something he could never do from his station in life in Trujillo. Five years after first contact, he'd start his conquest of the Incan empire by traveling to Cajamarca in present day Peru where he bumped into the emperor Atahualpa on the road to the Incan capital of Cusco. It was about as fortunate an encounter as Pizarro could have wished for: the emperor was on the road in the midst of a civil war with absolutely no idea a group of 150 or so men with strange beasts (horses) were on their way to take charge of his empire. Pretty quickly, Pizarro made sure he did whatever he needed to do to take the emperor hostage.
Two years after Atahualpa's capture, Pizarro executed him and then captured Cusco. But that wasn't the end. It would take 39 more years and a lot of focus on a very small number of settlements for the Spanish to completely conquer the Incan empire. In the meantime, parts of the empire's territory were reclaimed by the jungle and the mountains and hidden from the Spanish invaders, including the citadel later known as Machu Picchu, or "old peak" in the native Quechua language.
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| More llama. In front of the granaries. |
There is a good deal of debate about the history of Machu Picchu. It is believed to be a sort of royal retreat built by the emperor Pachacuti (Atahualpa's great-grandfather) who ruled from 1438 to 1472. But nobody really knows for sure. Incan history was primarily oral and it does not appear that anyone who actually lived or worked at Machu Picchu passed that history on to anyone who chose to write it down. The evaluation of the history of this place is still going on today as more and more parts of the city are unearthed slowly. There's even some thought to some of the stonework being pre-Inca in origin.
If Machu Picchu was built by Pachucuti, it is likely that the city was abandoned during the Incan civil war less than 100 years after its founding. With no supplies being delivered and no emperors coming to retreat for the weekend, it's likely all the people living and working probably just went home and left the place as it was.
Between the time of Pachacuti and 1911, there is not much recorded history of the old peak. Like pretty much none, actually. Presumably when the Incas abandoned the mountaintop, the city was richly appointed with gold and silver temple walls but any precious metals were long gone by the time Bingham got there, as they were nine years earlier when Augustin Lizarraga partially cleared the site for the first time in centuries (and wrote his name on the walls of the temple of the three windows). Maybe it was there when Diego Rodriguez visited and wrote about the citadel way back in 1565. "Who got the gold?" was my number one unanswered question and I don't suppose it will be answered any time soon. My money's on Rodriguez.
We arrived at Machu Picchu for the first time after our seven and a half hour hike from Chachabamba. And promptly went right back to our hotel in Aguas Calientes exhausted after a very quick walk around. The next morning we went back determined to see this place beyond the signature photograph we'd seen in every book and on every website. This is my five hour take on what I found fascinating about the site.
The Quarry
One of my first questions (after "who got the gold?", that is) about Machu Picchu was where did they get the stone from to build all these buildings? There are some ancient sites (see: Stonehenge) where people a long time ago dragged some massive stones an awfully long way for some reason to put them where they are famously today. Surely the Incas didn't drag a whole bunch of hunks of stone up a mountain, did they?
I have no idea why I asked this question. My first impression of the site from the Sun Gate when I first laid eyes on this place was that it was like someone shaved off the top of a mountain. They had to put the stone they removed somewhere, right? I guess they could have tossed it down the slope and brought a whole new batch up but no, they did not. Want to build a city out of stone on top of a mountain peak? One of the best ways to do that is to use the stone at the top to do it. The Incans just turned the top of the peak into their very own quarry.
I always had the impression that Machu Picchu was fully constructed way back when the Incas were making full use of the place. Clearly by the very large boulders that we saw just sitting around the site, it was not. There is still plenty of raw material in what is surely one of the strangest quarries I have ever seen in my life ready to be cut and put to use. I think of quarries as excavated pits. Machu Picchu's is more a pile of loose rocks on a hill.
It's difficult to imagine where the remaining buildings at Machu Picchu would go that the Incas might have intended to build, although a great space for a build out would be where the stones themselves are currently piled. It certainly would have cleaned up that part of the site where loose rocks sit feet from completed, precisely laid walls.
The Incas are famous for having laid very large, very precisely cut pieces of stone on top of one another and just how they cut, carved and shaped these rocks into the shapes they did and then moved them into place is one of the great mysteries about this culture. I guess in addition to nobody passing down what life was like at Machu Picchu, they remaining silent about their masonry skills. People today can't even figure it out for sure.
While gazing in wonder at the quarry, we were told by our guide that the boulders were broken down into more reasonably sized pieces by creating small holes or slots in the granite using hematite tools into which dry wood shims or wedges were placed. The masons would then saturate the joints with water causing the wood to swell and split the rock. I don't know if that's true or not. We'd be told later in our trip (by a different guide) that it was not. I'm not going to debate it in this post. Suffice it to say we didn't expect to find a quarry on the top of a mountain.
I have no idea why I asked this question. My first impression of the site from the Sun Gate when I first laid eyes on this place was that it was like someone shaved off the top of a mountain. They had to put the stone they removed somewhere, right? I guess they could have tossed it down the slope and brought a whole new batch up but no, they did not. Want to build a city out of stone on top of a mountain peak? One of the best ways to do that is to use the stone at the top to do it. The Incans just turned the top of the peak into their very own quarry.
I always had the impression that Machu Picchu was fully constructed way back when the Incas were making full use of the place. Clearly by the very large boulders that we saw just sitting around the site, it was not. There is still plenty of raw material in what is surely one of the strangest quarries I have ever seen in my life ready to be cut and put to use. I think of quarries as excavated pits. Machu Picchu's is more a pile of loose rocks on a hill.
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| Machu Picchu's quarry, feet from completed walls. With a trail of some of the 4,000 tourists per day on site. |
The Incas are famous for having laid very large, very precisely cut pieces of stone on top of one another and just how they cut, carved and shaped these rocks into the shapes they did and then moved them into place is one of the great mysteries about this culture. I guess in addition to nobody passing down what life was like at Machu Picchu, they remaining silent about their masonry skills. People today can't even figure it out for sure.
While gazing in wonder at the quarry, we were told by our guide that the boulders were broken down into more reasonably sized pieces by creating small holes or slots in the granite using hematite tools into which dry wood shims or wedges were placed. The masons would then saturate the joints with water causing the wood to swell and split the rock. I don't know if that's true or not. We'd be told later in our trip (by a different guide) that it was not. I'm not going to debate it in this post. Suffice it to say we didn't expect to find a quarry on the top of a mountain.
God Is In The Details
OK so it was the German architect Mies van der Rohe who famously uttered the words "God is in the details" but it might well have been the Incas. There are probably many many blog posts I could write about the way the Incas built. I won't. I'll just pick one detail that fascinated me more than the others. And, yes, you'll have to forgive my architect nerdiness on this one.
In all three of the Inca towns we visited (Chachabamba and Wiñaywayna on our hike to Machu Picchu and then Machu Picchu itself) while we were in Peru, we found complete, still standing stone walls from Incan times. How many of these had been standing for centuries I can't say because at least 30% of Machu Picchu today has been rebuilt. But for sure, some at least had to be real.
In Chachabamba and Wiñaywayna, we noticed the same types of construction, parallel gable end walls (meaning with a sloped triangular roof profile) which must have had roofing materials of some kind spanning between them, likely less permanent than stone, which are now long gone, having probably been destroyed by rain and wind since the towns were abandoned for good. Along the sloped edge of the end walls, we found stones fashioned as pegs of some sort, sticking out of the wall at uniform intervals. What on Earth were these for?
Machu Picchu provided the answer.
In all three of the Inca towns we visited (Chachabamba and Wiñaywayna on our hike to Machu Picchu and then Machu Picchu itself) while we were in Peru, we found complete, still standing stone walls from Incan times. How many of these had been standing for centuries I can't say because at least 30% of Machu Picchu today has been rebuilt. But for sure, some at least had to be real.
In Chachabamba and Wiñaywayna, we noticed the same types of construction, parallel gable end walls (meaning with a sloped triangular roof profile) which must have had roofing materials of some kind spanning between them, likely less permanent than stone, which are now long gone, having probably been destroyed by rain and wind since the towns were abandoned for good. Along the sloped edge of the end walls, we found stones fashioned as pegs of some sort, sticking out of the wall at uniform intervals. What on Earth were these for?
Machu Picchu provided the answer.
They are pegs. And they are designed to hold the roof on.
There are a few reconstructed buildings at Machu Picchu. Some of these have had roofing resembling something close to the original bamboo and grass roofs added back on to show just how the Incas might have protected their structures from the weather, although they are using eucalyptus trunks in lieu of bamboo. The roof structure consists (based on the photograph above) of three separate progressively smaller wooden spanning members with a final layer of grass as a waterproofing membrane.
The grass is likely q'eswachaka, a grass the Incas have been harvesting for use in rope suspension bridges for centuries and known for its water resistance. The only issue with this material is it won't last long, which means that there are no Inca empire-era roofs left and that the roofing was probably replaced every couple of years or so.
The bamboo and grass likely formed a fairly secure enclosure and the whole assembly was strapped to the stone walls with alpaca leather, just like it is in the reconstructed version in Machu Picchu. This is one of the clearest and coolest architectural details I've seen in my travels.
There are a few reconstructed buildings at Machu Picchu. Some of these have had roofing resembling something close to the original bamboo and grass roofs added back on to show just how the Incas might have protected their structures from the weather, although they are using eucalyptus trunks in lieu of bamboo. The roof structure consists (based on the photograph above) of three separate progressively smaller wooden spanning members with a final layer of grass as a waterproofing membrane.
The grass is likely q'eswachaka, a grass the Incas have been harvesting for use in rope suspension bridges for centuries and known for its water resistance. The only issue with this material is it won't last long, which means that there are no Inca empire-era roofs left and that the roofing was probably replaced every couple of years or so.
The bamboo and grass likely formed a fairly secure enclosure and the whole assembly was strapped to the stone walls with alpaca leather, just like it is in the reconstructed version in Machu Picchu. This is one of the clearest and coolest architectural details I've seen in my travels.
The Inca Bridge
After a full day of walking up and down the sides of mountains, the last thing I wanted to do in our day at Machu Picchu itself was take a hike. But the only way to get to the Inca Bridge is to do just that. So aching knees and calves and all, I agreed to make one more walk along the side of a cliff to take a look. I'd heard this was something you had to see.
What we found ourselves looking at after a 30 minute or so trek while clinging to the rock faces on our left like it would really do any good was the view above. A sheer cliff face with a teeny tiny path running along a very narrow ledge of the same cliff face. But along part of its length was a gap spanned by a very flimsy looking plank of wood. A closer look revealed that this wasn't, in fact, a plank of wood but five tree trunks. Ladies and gentleman...the Inca Bridge.
What we found ourselves looking at after a 30 minute or so trek while clinging to the rock faces on our left like it would really do any good was the view above. A sheer cliff face with a teeny tiny path running along a very narrow ledge of the same cliff face. But along part of its length was a gap spanned by a very flimsy looking plank of wood. A closer look revealed that this wasn't, in fact, a plank of wood but five tree trunks. Ladies and gentleman...the Inca Bridge.
Go ahead and think it. I did. If the Incas were such great engineers (and they were), why is this impressive in any way? I could have come up with this as a small child.
The answer, of course, is this is not the bridge the Incas built. Remember the grass they made their roofs out of? Come on, sure you do, it was like four paragraphs ago. I also wrote way back there that they used the same grass for ropes in their suspension bridges. And every year they would build a new one. So...no Incas, no bridge. Gotta fill it in with something.
The caretakers of Machu Picchu are not renewing this bridge on an annual basis so it remains a bridge of five tree trunks. I'm sure after visiting the Inca Bridge that I don't totally understand what would be there in place of this thing. There are a series of rocks protruding from the Incan wall below the bridge location. Perhaps these had something to do with it way back when? It's unlikely that this path, which represented a sort of back door into the property, will be back in use any time soon with the current bridge or any other one.
The answer, of course, is this is not the bridge the Incas built. Remember the grass they made their roofs out of? Come on, sure you do, it was like four paragraphs ago. I also wrote way back there that they used the same grass for ropes in their suspension bridges. And every year they would build a new one. So...no Incas, no bridge. Gotta fill it in with something.
The caretakers of Machu Picchu are not renewing this bridge on an annual basis so it remains a bridge of five tree trunks. I'm sure after visiting the Inca Bridge that I don't totally understand what would be there in place of this thing. There are a series of rocks protruding from the Incan wall below the bridge location. Perhaps these had something to do with it way back when? It's unlikely that this path, which represented a sort of back door into the property, will be back in use any time soon with the current bridge or any other one.
The Temple of the Condor
Machu Picchu is a city of temples. We passed by or through at least four in our brief walk around the old citadel. The most famous is perhaps the Temple of the Sun, which is oriented towards the Sun Gate at the pass of Machu Picchu mountain that we passed through the day before on our Inca Trail hike. At sunrise on June 21 (the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere), there is a magical alignment of the two structures connected by the sun's rays.
We passed by the Temple of the Sun briefly in addition to lingering by the main temple near the quarry for a few minutes to admire the mortarless stonework. We were also able to check out the Temple of the Three Windows, which featured maybe the most incredible masonry work we saw in our week in Peru.
But the one that got my attention the most was the Temple of the Condor. The Incas had a spiritual connection to the Earth, mountains and sky, represented by the snake, puma and condor so I feel this temple was pretty darned important. We breezed by this place towards the end of our time in the morning timeslot we owned that day and barely had time to snap the picture above.
What struck me about this temple was how it was totally unlike the others we'd seen. The three others were geometrically regular, either circular or rectangular in plan, with carefully laid ashlar masonry stacked one block on top of the other. Not so the Temple of the Condor, which seemed to be dominated by an enormous twisting, turning central single stone surrounded and topped by more regular walls. Maybe it's a ruin of some sort and it wasn't really like this when Machu Picchu was alive back in the 1400s but it seemed way more dynamic and free than the other three temples.
Machu Picchu is a city of temples. We passed by or through at least four in our brief walk around the old citadel. The most famous is perhaps the Temple of the Sun, which is oriented towards the Sun Gate at the pass of Machu Picchu mountain that we passed through the day before on our Inca Trail hike. At sunrise on June 21 (the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere), there is a magical alignment of the two structures connected by the sun's rays.
We passed by the Temple of the Sun briefly in addition to lingering by the main temple near the quarry for a few minutes to admire the mortarless stonework. We were also able to check out the Temple of the Three Windows, which featured maybe the most incredible masonry work we saw in our week in Peru.
But the one that got my attention the most was the Temple of the Condor. The Incas had a spiritual connection to the Earth, mountains and sky, represented by the snake, puma and condor so I feel this temple was pretty darned important. We breezed by this place towards the end of our time in the morning timeslot we owned that day and barely had time to snap the picture above.
What struck me about this temple was how it was totally unlike the others we'd seen. The three others were geometrically regular, either circular or rectangular in plan, with carefully laid ashlar masonry stacked one block on top of the other. Not so the Temple of the Condor, which seemed to be dominated by an enormous twisting, turning central single stone surrounded and topped by more regular walls. Maybe it's a ruin of some sort and it wasn't really like this when Machu Picchu was alive back in the 1400s but it seemed way more dynamic and free than the other three temples.
Earthquakes
One of the more surprising facts we learned on our tour of Machu Picchu was that the trapezoidal windows you find in all sorts of Inca structures actually improve the buildings' resistance to earthquakes. Really? As an architect I was naturally skeptical of this statement so I figured I'd check it out to see if it was true.
I have to tell you I couldn't find anything on the internet (which is of course the source of all things truthful) about these windows enhancing earthquake resistance except maybe a couple of blog posts from people who sounded pretty much like me fresh off a guided tour of Machu Picchu. No calculations, no empirical evidence, no thesis papers from structural engineers. Nothing.
But I did find some other things that were interesting. Particularly the accounts of the behavior of Incan walls during earthquakes. The apparently rattle. Like they get shaken by the Earth's motion, rattle a little and then settle back into place perfectly as if nothing had ever happened.
I also found validation of one other thing that our guide told us while we were roaming around the site: that there's a fault line running right through pretty much the center of Machu Picchu just like he said. Know what the Incas built right along the fault line? Absolutely nothing. They just left a six foot wide or so grass strip as shown in the photograph above. There had to be some trial and error here right? Earthquake hit after they started building maybe?
Trapezoidal windows. Rattling stones. I'm not sure if either of these things are true. But I know one thing: there have been earthquakes in the Andes a lot since Incan times and there are a ton of buildings still standing. They must have know a thing or two about building structures that can withstand a little or maybe more ground movement every now and then.
I have to tell you I couldn't find anything on the internet (which is of course the source of all things truthful) about these windows enhancing earthquake resistance except maybe a couple of blog posts from people who sounded pretty much like me fresh off a guided tour of Machu Picchu. No calculations, no empirical evidence, no thesis papers from structural engineers. Nothing.
But I did find some other things that were interesting. Particularly the accounts of the behavior of Incan walls during earthquakes. The apparently rattle. Like they get shaken by the Earth's motion, rattle a little and then settle back into place perfectly as if nothing had ever happened.
I also found validation of one other thing that our guide told us while we were roaming around the site: that there's a fault line running right through pretty much the center of Machu Picchu just like he said. Know what the Incas built right along the fault line? Absolutely nothing. They just left a six foot wide or so grass strip as shown in the photograph above. There had to be some trial and error here right? Earthquake hit after they started building maybe?
Trapezoidal windows. Rattling stones. I'm not sure if either of these things are true. But I know one thing: there have been earthquakes in the Andes a lot since Incan times and there are a ton of buildings still standing. They must have know a thing or two about building structures that can withstand a little or maybe more ground movement every now and then.
The View
My first impression of seeing Machu Picchu was something along the lines of "wow! what a view!". The siting of the city on top of a mountain plateau (albeit mostly man made) was awe inspiring and spectacular. Know what's more awe inspiring and spectacular that the view of Machu Picchu? The view of the surrounding mountains from Machu Picchu.
Machu Picchu is situated just a little ways down from the top of the mountaintop of the same name. Just before the smaller peak of Huayna Picchu the slope of the mountain flattens out a little and gave the Incas the ideal spot to place a royal retreat. And all around the place the Incas built? Gorgeous, sheer mountains with slopes higher than the spot you are standing, sometimes with views to taller peaks in the distance with glaciers visible at the very top. The view is spectacular.
You know what they say about real estate, right? Location! Location! Location! And the spot where this city was built is some kind of location. People build houses today in places like the Hollywood Hills specifically for the view. I can't imagine the Incas were thinking anything different when they picked this place. This is some kind of view. I can't imagine anything better really. It seems strange to talk about a place at 8,000 feet above sea level as being in a sunken location but that's exactly what it is. While its on a huge pedestal with steep slopes suddenly way down on all sides, the peaks around it are all up.
That's pretty much what I got about this place.
To those of you who have been to Machu Picchu already, this blog post may seem like I'm skipping way too much detail about the site. I mean how can I really boil down about a century or more of research and archaeological study of this incredible place down to some stone, a bridge (which is not really a bridge), some earthquake-proofing which is almost completely invisible, the adjacent mountains, a grass roof or two and a single structure on the site? That's not my intent. But in the limited time I was granted on the property, that's what I felt I learned most about.
I also managed to solve one of my personal frustrations about how to spell the name of the site.
For the longest time, I've been having difficult remembering which of the two words has one "c" in the middle and which has two. Is it "Machu Picchu" or "Macchu Pichu"? Maybe not now since I've written a whole blog post dedicated to the place but it was a serious problem before. It turns out the trick is in the pronunciation. I had always assumed the name was pronounced "ma-chu pih-chu". It's not. It's really "ma-chu pick-chu", which completely solves the spelling of the place. The only way one of those two words logically has a double "c" in it is the second one. Problem solved.
Visiting Machu Picchu was one of my goals in the second five years of this blog. I got it done in the first year. I'm proud that we made it all the way there, especially since the first day we made it there on our own two feet. It was definitely worth going. So was the rest of Peru that we visited. But that story is for other blog posts.
My first impression of seeing Machu Picchu was something along the lines of "wow! what a view!". The siting of the city on top of a mountain plateau (albeit mostly man made) was awe inspiring and spectacular. Know what's more awe inspiring and spectacular that the view of Machu Picchu? The view of the surrounding mountains from Machu Picchu.
Machu Picchu is situated just a little ways down from the top of the mountaintop of the same name. Just before the smaller peak of Huayna Picchu the slope of the mountain flattens out a little and gave the Incas the ideal spot to place a royal retreat. And all around the place the Incas built? Gorgeous, sheer mountains with slopes higher than the spot you are standing, sometimes with views to taller peaks in the distance with glaciers visible at the very top. The view is spectacular.
You know what they say about real estate, right? Location! Location! Location! And the spot where this city was built is some kind of location. People build houses today in places like the Hollywood Hills specifically for the view. I can't imagine the Incas were thinking anything different when they picked this place. This is some kind of view. I can't imagine anything better really. It seems strange to talk about a place at 8,000 feet above sea level as being in a sunken location but that's exactly what it is. While its on a huge pedestal with steep slopes suddenly way down on all sides, the peaks around it are all up.
That's pretty much what I got about this place.
To those of you who have been to Machu Picchu already, this blog post may seem like I'm skipping way too much detail about the site. I mean how can I really boil down about a century or more of research and archaeological study of this incredible place down to some stone, a bridge (which is not really a bridge), some earthquake-proofing which is almost completely invisible, the adjacent mountains, a grass roof or two and a single structure on the site? That's not my intent. But in the limited time I was granted on the property, that's what I felt I learned most about.
I also managed to solve one of my personal frustrations about how to spell the name of the site.
For the longest time, I've been having difficult remembering which of the two words has one "c" in the middle and which has two. Is it "Machu Picchu" or "Macchu Pichu"? Maybe not now since I've written a whole blog post dedicated to the place but it was a serious problem before. It turns out the trick is in the pronunciation. I had always assumed the name was pronounced "ma-chu pih-chu". It's not. It's really "ma-chu pick-chu", which completely solves the spelling of the place. The only way one of those two words logically has a double "c" in it is the second one. Problem solved.
Visiting Machu Picchu was one of my goals in the second five years of this blog. I got it done in the first year. I'm proud that we made it all the way there, especially since the first day we made it there on our own two feet. It was definitely worth going. So was the rest of Peru that we visited. But that story is for other blog posts.
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| Couldn't leave Machu Picchu without one more llama picture. |
How We Did It
We booked our trip to Machu Picchu as part of a larger tour package in Peru with G Adventures, so I don't have a lot to offer about how we made arrangements to get to the site because they took care of everything.
I do, however, have some opinions on how to spend your time once you get into Machu Picchu. First and foremost, I would suggest you make sure you have a ticket to the site in advance of your visit. The current daily visitor limit for the site is 4,000 people which seems like a lot (especially when you are in the middle of a whole bunch of tourists) but if there are no tickets available, you are not getting in. That's a long way to go to be left at the door.
Second, Machu Picchu is a one way circuit. While I'm sure there is some limited backtracking allowed, you need to make sure you visit everywhere you want to see before moving on. When we first got there in the morning, there was hardly anyone roaming around the lower terrace of the property which is the end of the route. By the time we got down there three hours or so later, the place was packed with tourists. I'm sure there's a fine line to toe here between rushing and taking enough time to see everything carefully.
If I had enough time, I guess I'd have visited two days in a row (although I kind of did do that). It would have been nice to have done everything at the upper section of the property one day (including watching the sun rise and bathe the whole place in sunlight) and have been alone on the lower terrace the second day. There's never enough time, is there?
We booked our trip to Machu Picchu as part of a larger tour package in Peru with G Adventures, so I don't have a lot to offer about how we made arrangements to get to the site because they took care of everything.
I do, however, have some opinions on how to spend your time once you get into Machu Picchu. First and foremost, I would suggest you make sure you have a ticket to the site in advance of your visit. The current daily visitor limit for the site is 4,000 people which seems like a lot (especially when you are in the middle of a whole bunch of tourists) but if there are no tickets available, you are not getting in. That's a long way to go to be left at the door.
Second, Machu Picchu is a one way circuit. While I'm sure there is some limited backtracking allowed, you need to make sure you visit everywhere you want to see before moving on. When we first got there in the morning, there was hardly anyone roaming around the lower terrace of the property which is the end of the route. By the time we got down there three hours or so later, the place was packed with tourists. I'm sure there's a fine line to toe here between rushing and taking enough time to see everything carefully.
If I had enough time, I guess I'd have visited two days in a row (although I kind of did do that). It would have been nice to have done everything at the upper section of the property one day (including watching the sun rise and bathe the whole place in sunlight) and have been alone on the lower terrace the second day. There's never enough time, is there?
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