The original plan was to walk the entire Inca Trail. All 42 kilometers. Or 26 miles, if you prefer. Four straight days of trekking from Ollantaytambo towards the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu which would be the ultimate payoff after miles and miles of walking at extreme elevations. Nights spent in tents under the stars after a meal cooked over a campfire. Just us and nature and the heavens and however many people were with us on our trek. Sounds good, yes?
We didn't do it.
There were two problems here.
First, I don't camp. My idea of roughing it goes about as far as staying in some kind of RV. Tents? Probably not going there. It was close here. Like really close. If there was any experience that could have got me into a tent for three nights in a row, it would have been this one.
Second, it's too long. I don't mean that in the sense that I couldn't walk 42 kilometers in four days because I believe I could. I mean that for the limited amount of time we were planning to be in Peru, it would have consumed too much of that time I wanted to do other stuff.
So we pivoted. And walked for just one day. And it was incredible.
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| Our itinerary for the day. Maybe. Maybe the distance was a little further than advertised. |
Perhaps a couple of disclaimers are in order. First off, I realize I have no right to state that I could have done the full, four day hike since we opted not to do it. No offense is intended to those who have done it. One day is certainly not four and the morning of our one day was one of the most physically challenging things I have undertaken in recent memory. It was tough. No question about it. But we also got through it and spent a ton of time walking the very next day. I may have been slow but I believe I could have done it. I'm not that old. Yet.
Second, there is no one Inca Trail. Sure, when people use those two words together they usually mean the 26 miles to get from Ollantaytambo to Machu Picchu but that doesn't mean that's all there is. There are literally thousands of miles of trails in what used to be the Inca Empire. At one time, they controlled territory from what today is western Colombia all the way down to about the midpoint of Chile. That's some 4,000 or 5,000 miles or so just north to south. There are main trails and secondary trails and side paths and shortcuts and all sorts of ways to get from point A to point B. The term "spiderwebs" was used by our guide to describe just how many paths existed for the Incas to get around.
That means there are other paths to walk than just the 26 miles. And some of them also end up at Machu Picchu. One of those other trails is where we started out.
Well, actually more accurately we started out our day of walking on a train. Which stopped about an hour into its journey to Aguas Calientes at kilometer 104 for us to scramble off. Or maybe jump off is a better word. No station. No platform. Just a drop of about two feet to the dirt at the side of the tracks. Then down a stepped path and across the Urubamba River to the first checkpoint. There was no turning back then. The train had gone and left us. The only way to get to where we need to get to was on foot. One step after the other. And there would be a lot of steps.
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| Everyone off the train! |
We started our day for real at a place called Chachabamba in the woods. According to the sign located just after the entrance gate to the trail, our route that day would take us 10.5 kilometers in three sections: 6 kilometers to a place called Wiñaywayna, a further 3.5 to the Sun Gate (or Intipunku) and then a final 1 kilometer down to the citadel itself. Later on, about half a kilometer past Wiñaywayna, we'd find a sign to Machu Picchu with a distance of 6 kilometers. That's right: the two signs didn't say the same thing. When we got to that spot our guide also told us we were halfway done. That math didn't quite work either. I believe we walked closer to 12 kilometers, but I couldn't be truly sure. That's the story I'm sticking with.
Sunscreen. Insect repellant. Extra water. Bathroom break. Picture in front of the sign with the map of Ruta 05 on it. Ready to go. The two of us, our new friends Erzsebet and Balazs from Hungary and our guide, José. All of us ready. Let's go!
Or haku! as they say in Quechua.
About five minutes later, we found our first Incan ruin.
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| Chachabamba. |
I can almost imagine the early explorers of South America coming across the ruins of Chachabamba, a small jewel nestled in the jungle of Peru, albeit covered in vines and undergrowth and trees but all still there. There are so many Incan sites scattered about the country that these kinds of unexpected and chance encounters must have happened pretty regularly once quests for sites made by the Incas started in earnest in the late 19th or early 20th century. It's quite likely that people native to the area were living in and around these ruins with full knowledge of where and what they were but the process of unearthing these places must have been spectacularly exciting.
Today, of course, Chachabamba is fully excavated and visible, the stone walls pretty much fully intact with the wood and grass roof structure long gone and taken by the jungle. The buildings were likely a way station, a stopping point for travelers on the trail that we were about to walk and a resting point for the chaskis, Incan messengers that would run coded documents from wherever they were stationed to the next waiting runner typically about 20 kilometers away. These men were the Incan pony express, using their feet to get from one spot to the next, instead of riding a horse (which didn't exist in South America at that time).
It was the first glimpse we got close up of how gorgeous these ruins in the Andes are. The stonework looks like it has never been touched, standing intact for the better part of a millennium with the backdrop of the mountains behind and in front and on all sides. Under the morning, and later mid-day and afternoon, sun it seemed we couldn't take a picture that wasn't just gorgeous.
We also found an altar in Chachabamba and got our first good look at the Incas' signature trapezoidal windows, which some people feel has allowed these structures to withstand the earthquakes that must have threatened them many many times over the centuries. The Andes, after all, are formed by tectonic action, not by volcanic eruption. Heck, we even found ourselves in the middle of a very small quake the first full day in Lima when we were getting ready for bed.
But we weren't there to visit Chachabamba and we had a long way to go and stopping for a serious break just five minutes in wasn't the way to get through 12 kilometers (or whatever it really ended up being) in a single day. Besides there was a schedule we had to meet. The first milepost at Wiñaywayna had to be passed by 2 in the afternoon. Haku!!!
From our vantage point at Chachabamba, we could see a little of the route that we'd be taking. Way off in the distance below what looked like a massive set of Inca farming terraces, we could see a white rock. José told us we'd have to walk right below the rock and that it would take hours to get there. To be honest, it did look far away but these kinds of things often do. I figured one step at a time would do it. And by that I figured I'd be walking for a while over a smoothish path of varying slope. After all, at one time they had to carry the royal family along routes like these on litters. There couldn't be any actual steps, right? Meaning stairs, right? Right?
The route that we traveled was absolutely beautiful. I have walked and driven through a lot of mountain ranges in my life and I have to tell you I've never spent a day in the mountains like I spent walking in the footsteps of the Inca that day. You are in absolutely the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain on a trail bound for somewhere that you don't know exactly where yet other than you know that Machu Picchu is at the end and that it's probably a spectacular payoff. There were spots on the trail where there were no people visible in front of us or behind us. And with the cloudless sky above, most any birds that would have been out were already sheltered from the heat so the only noise we could hear was the sound of the Urubamba below and our footfalls as we took step after step after step.
Now, this is not the kind of walk where you can gaze at the scenery while you are moving along the trail. Oh no, not at all. Why is that, you may ask? Well, quite simply because the average width of the trail in the first part of the day was maybe three feet wide. Sure it was narrower in spots and wider in others, but pretty much three feet was about typical. On the left side? The upper half of a mountain with hundreds of feet to the summit. The other side? The other half of the mountain with hundreds of feet about straight down. You do not want to slip here because it's a long way down and you are not likely to stop falling, rolling or tumbling any spot close to the trail. No looking around while walking, folks. Every view I took in and every picture I snapped on the way was taken with me standing dead still. And I'm here today because I did it that way.
I hate stairs. Not so much before I visited Peru but I learned to hate these things pretty well by the end of this day. And maybe the next day after that. Our morning consisted of walking a distance of 6 kilometers horizontally and 550 meters up. That's like walking from Washington Square Park in New York City to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (about 77 city blocks, if you must know) and walking up the stairs from street level to the observation deck of the Empire State Building. And then about 50% higher. Of course there were stairs. What was I thinking?
Oh, and it was hot. Like pretty hot. Like no clouds in the sky and close to the sun hot. I already mentioned this was one of the most physically challenging things I have done in my recent past, right? Now you know why. This was some serious, serious work feet (or in some cases foot) from much falling and bodily harm. Lots of sips of water. Take it slow. Lots of stops along the way whenever we could find some shade. But not too slow or too many stops. That clock's ticking after all. Got to make those checkpoints!!!
This went on for a couple of hours. About two hours and 15 minutes into our walk under the sun, we reached our first set of monkey steps. And peeking around the corner was the old settlement known today as Wiñaywayna. Finally our first major milestone (not to mention our lunch spot and the halfway point of the whole ordeal) was in sight! I have to tell you there was some joy in this.
And monkey steps? Steps that you have to use your hands and feet to go up because just using your feet is too darned dangerous. We'd find two more sets of steps with names along our hike: a flight of gringo killers at Wiñaywayna and a ladder-like stack of oh-my-God steps closer to the Sun Gate.
Wiñaywayna is larger than Chachabamba. Much larger. It's a series of a little more than 50 terraces defined by retaining walls on a steep side of one of the Andean mountains. The Inca created terraces like this so they could raise crops and livestock literally halfway up a mountainside. It's way easier to farm on horizontal pieces of land than it is on slopes. All over the Andes you can find terraced farms like the one at Wiñaywayna even in the most unlikely places that seem absolutely unreachable. If there was a spot the Inca could create a reasonably sized shelf for farming on a mountainside, it seems that they did. This was the first one we'd be able to set foot on.
This would also be the first time we'd been in any seriously sized Incan town. We had seen the fortresses of Sacsayhuaman and Ollantaytambo earlier in the week but had not reached either on foot. And passing through the post of Chachambamba didn't really count as a visit to a town.
Arrayed on the terraces of Wiñaywayna are two sets of structures: a series of storage buildings (again with their wood and grass roofs long gone) about a third of the way up the slope and what was likely a temple of some sort closer to the top, placed higher than any other building on the site in accordance with its importance. The storage buildings or granaries are arranged parallel to the terraces with good sized walkways outside and openings just below the roofline to allow cool air to circulate over the stored crops, keeping them dry and extending their shelf life.
It is pretty much impossible for me to explain how incredibly beautiful the ruins at Wiñaywayna are set as they are in the Andes. Standing there on those terraces would be one of the most incredible sights I've ever seen in my life without any sign of human habitation. But the Incas chose to make something there in the middle of literally nowhere, in a spot that no rational people would think today about building anything. They had their reasons. They lived in places that were almost unreachable to keep themselves safe and developed ways to survive in the spots where they'd decided to settle. It's also super hard to argue with the view.
But the best part of Wiñaywayna for me was that we earned it. There's no way to get to this spot by car or by train or by plane or by helicopter. There's only one way to make it there and that's on foot. And it's a hard climb. It's tough work. And you don't get to go home quickly after you reach it. You can't buy this. You have to make it there yourself with your legs and your lungs and your will. Sure, there are hundreds of people who pass through that spot every day and thousands each year but it still takes sweat to get there.
Visiting Wiñaywayna made this trip for me. If I hadn't done this, (and look, there was still about half of the total hike to go so the fun was by no means over that day) Peru would not have been as incredible as it was. We saw landscapes and sights that few that go to Machu Picchu will ever see because they haven't walked for hours up and down too many steps to reasonably count to get there. The whole day was special; it's been the first thing I talk about when I tell anyone about this trip. Wiñaywayna is the most tangible symbol of the day so that's the spot that is remembered most fondly.
And looking at the structures the Incas made in the middle of that range of mountains is about the most incredible sight I've seen. I'm just going to leave the uncaptioned photographs below as evidence of how awesome and beautiful this place is.
From the time we saw Wiñaywayna for the first time it would be about 30 to 35 minutes before we got there. While we didn't know it at the time, this would be the last climb in the baking sun until Wiñaywayna itself where we would have to ascend the gringo killer stairs we'd been warned about earlier. The gringo killers were in fact the central staircase from the granaries to the temple.
The waterfall might have saved me from the sun.
A few minutes before you get to the terraces of Wiñaywayna, there's a waterfall with a pool at its base. I was ready to get into the shade and stay there by the time we reached the pool and I'd have to get up every terrace before we could get some shade. I needed to cool down and the waterfall let me. I've never been so grateful for cold water to dip my head and hat into and keep going.
After Wiñaywayna came lunch and after lunch we passed through the first checkpoint. The one we had to be through at 2:00 pm. It was 1:20. 40 minutes to spare. José told us that the morning was going to be tough and he was right. He said the afternoon would be "papayita" or a piece of cake (actually a small piece of papaya) compared to the walk before lunch. He was almost right there too.
Wiñaywayna was the spot where our Inca Trail met THE Inca Trail. From now on, we'd on on the route that the emperor would have taken (or been carried over) to get to Machu Picchu. That meant one thing right away: a wider trail. Gone were the three feet wide dirt trails that sometimes narrowed to 24" or so and sometimes expanded to a whole four feet. From now on pretty much without exception we'd be walking on paths maybe six feet wide on average and paved. Not paved as we think about it today; paved with boulders.
All that didn't mean there was no danger of falling off the side of the mountain, just that there was way more space to avoid falling off the side of the mountain.
The afternoon hike was also mostly in the shade. José was really truly mostly right. After lunch, it was way easier. The only thing that made it hard was that I'd already walked 6 kilometers in the baking sun while walking up about 2,000 feet. The only thing that made the afternoon hard was the morning walk. It was more comfortable, flatter, cooler and by and large without huge flights of steps.
We made it to the white rock we'd seen way back at Chachabamba about an hour after lunch and we could look back into the valley and see how far we'd come. We could see the train tracks that we'd ridden on; the Urubamba River that we'd crossed; the first buildings that we'd seen just five minutes into our walk; and pretty much the entire trail running along and straight and steadily up the side of the mountain we'd ascended. It encapsulated in one view everywhere we'd been for the last four and a half hours. It was pretty impressive.
And we were getting close to Machu Picchu which was after all what we were walking to see.
It would be about an hour and a quarter after the white rock that we reached the oh-my-God steps, which is basically a pile of stones stacked on top of one another at about an 80 degree angle or something insane like that. After the nice leisurely walk in the shade of the afternoon, they weren't that bad to climb. I just used my feet and hands and scampered up. Way easier than the gringo killers back at Wiñaywayna.
15 minutes later, we saw what looked to be a golden glowing doorway at the top of another set of stairs. It was the Sun Gate, or Intipunku. This was the last climb up. This was it.
The Sun Gate is little more than a few columns and a couple of walls standing where what used to be (I'm guessing a little here) a roofed over structure of some sort. Not too fancy; something just substantial enough to seem like an entrance into some other sort of world. A world that contained something as wonderful as Machu Picchu, a royal retreat for the Incan emperor.
When we reached the summit, at about 3 pm or so, the sun was focused squarely on the top of the hill where the Sun Gate was located and straight in our faces. But laid out there a mountain or so away was the citadel of Machu Picchu itself. This was the reward we'd been after for six hours of taking step after step up and down (mostly up) since 9 o'clock that morning. Suffice it to say that we just stayed there a while just looking. This was supposed to be one of the most spectacular sights in the world and so stopping and staring after a long day of doing nothing but walking towards that spot seemed justified. Over the next 24 hours or so we'd see something like this view from a variety of angles close and far. It was never better than those 15 or 20 minutes or so at the Sun Gate.
Looking down on Machu Picchu that afternoon, it was easy to understand why this site remained hidden from the general public for so long. There can't be many spots that are easily accessible where you can see this place. Sure, where we stood at that very moment was an exception but exactly where we were standing was likely overgrown by the mountain forest in pretty short order after the Incas abandoned this place. From below, it must be impossible to make out. It's like the people who created this place shaved off the top of a mountain, built something smaller and less obtrusive and then made as few alterations to the rest of the landscape as humanly possible, while also making the site suitable for farming. If they had done nothing to the landscape, it would have been barely less noticeable.
From the Sun Gate, the whole site was a brilliant green color. It doesn't come through in the photograph above but the green color stood out vividly in real life. I'm sure modern grass growing technology makes it way greener than it was back in the time of the Inca. Although if they had the same number of roaming llama as there were when we were there then the fertilization certainly would be good enough to make it as green as it is today. The picture definitely doesn't do the view justice. The sun on the lens inhibits the image way more than the sun affects the eyes in real life.
If the payoff seems like it was disappointing, it wasn't. I mean this is what we came to Peru to see. And viewing it as the Incas would have done when visiting the site was way better than taking a bus from below and climbing up to the site. It was all at once exactly what we expected and also at the same time enhanced immeasurably by the journey we had just taken. In the end, it was as much about the journey as it was about the view.
Of course, at the Sun Gate, we weren't done with our trek. It would be another 90 minutes before we got to the bus that would take us to Aguas Calientes and to our hotel. In between were more stairs. Lots more stairs. The difference was the view. We were no longer in the shade but the further downhill we stepped, the closer to Machu Picchu we got.
Ultimately, we didn't spend much time at the citadel when we reached it that day. A quick walk around one of the upper lawns, a few quick pictures and then off to the bus. We'd have plenty of time the next day. By the time we were sat on the bus, we had been on the move for seven and a half hours. I can't tell you how glad I was to sit down and at the same time there was no way any experience in Peru could have topped this day. The sense of accomplishment and the exclusivity of the journey (albeit shared by 250 people per day) made this day the most unforgettable in our entire trip. Way worth it. More than anything else we did.
Today, of course, Chachabamba is fully excavated and visible, the stone walls pretty much fully intact with the wood and grass roof structure long gone and taken by the jungle. The buildings were likely a way station, a stopping point for travelers on the trail that we were about to walk and a resting point for the chaskis, Incan messengers that would run coded documents from wherever they were stationed to the next waiting runner typically about 20 kilometers away. These men were the Incan pony express, using their feet to get from one spot to the next, instead of riding a horse (which didn't exist in South America at that time).
It was the first glimpse we got close up of how gorgeous these ruins in the Andes are. The stonework looks like it has never been touched, standing intact for the better part of a millennium with the backdrop of the mountains behind and in front and on all sides. Under the morning, and later mid-day and afternoon, sun it seemed we couldn't take a picture that wasn't just gorgeous.
We also found an altar in Chachabamba and got our first good look at the Incas' signature trapezoidal windows, which some people feel has allowed these structures to withstand the earthquakes that must have threatened them many many times over the centuries. The Andes, after all, are formed by tectonic action, not by volcanic eruption. Heck, we even found ourselves in the middle of a very small quake the first full day in Lima when we were getting ready for bed.
But we weren't there to visit Chachabamba and we had a long way to go and stopping for a serious break just five minutes in wasn't the way to get through 12 kilometers (or whatever it really ended up being) in a single day. Besides there was a schedule we had to meet. The first milepost at Wiñaywayna had to be passed by 2 in the afternoon. Haku!!!
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| On our way along an Inca trail. Oh so far from the end. |
The route that we traveled was absolutely beautiful. I have walked and driven through a lot of mountain ranges in my life and I have to tell you I've never spent a day in the mountains like I spent walking in the footsteps of the Inca that day. You are in absolutely the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain on a trail bound for somewhere that you don't know exactly where yet other than you know that Machu Picchu is at the end and that it's probably a spectacular payoff. There were spots on the trail where there were no people visible in front of us or behind us. And with the cloudless sky above, most any birds that would have been out were already sheltered from the heat so the only noise we could hear was the sound of the Urubamba below and our footfalls as we took step after step after step.
Now, this is not the kind of walk where you can gaze at the scenery while you are moving along the trail. Oh no, not at all. Why is that, you may ask? Well, quite simply because the average width of the trail in the first part of the day was maybe three feet wide. Sure it was narrower in spots and wider in others, but pretty much three feet was about typical. On the left side? The upper half of a mountain with hundreds of feet to the summit. The other side? The other half of the mountain with hundreds of feet about straight down. You do not want to slip here because it's a long way down and you are not likely to stop falling, rolling or tumbling any spot close to the trail. No looking around while walking, folks. Every view I took in and every picture I snapped on the way was taken with me standing dead still. And I'm here today because I did it that way.
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| Tiny trail carved on the mountain. All the trail pics are looking backwards. I was in the back, after all. |
Oh, and it was hot. Like pretty hot. Like no clouds in the sky and close to the sun hot. I already mentioned this was one of the most physically challenging things I have done in my recent past, right? Now you know why. This was some serious, serious work feet (or in some cases foot) from much falling and bodily harm. Lots of sips of water. Take it slow. Lots of stops along the way whenever we could find some shade. But not too slow or too many stops. That clock's ticking after all. Got to make those checkpoints!!!
This went on for a couple of hours. About two hours and 15 minutes into our walk under the sun, we reached our first set of monkey steps. And peeking around the corner was the old settlement known today as Wiñaywayna. Finally our first major milestone (not to mention our lunch spot and the halfway point of the whole ordeal) was in sight! I have to tell you there was some joy in this.
And monkey steps? Steps that you have to use your hands and feet to go up because just using your feet is too darned dangerous. We'd find two more sets of steps with names along our hike: a flight of gringo killers at Wiñaywayna and a ladder-like stack of oh-my-God steps closer to the Sun Gate.
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| Monkey steps! With a glimpse of Wiñaywayna in the upper right. |
This would also be the first time we'd been in any seriously sized Incan town. We had seen the fortresses of Sacsayhuaman and Ollantaytambo earlier in the week but had not reached either on foot. And passing through the post of Chachambamba didn't really count as a visit to a town.
Arrayed on the terraces of Wiñaywayna are two sets of structures: a series of storage buildings (again with their wood and grass roofs long gone) about a third of the way up the slope and what was likely a temple of some sort closer to the top, placed higher than any other building on the site in accordance with its importance. The storage buildings or granaries are arranged parallel to the terraces with good sized walkways outside and openings just below the roofline to allow cool air to circulate over the stored crops, keeping them dry and extending their shelf life.
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| The first good full view of Wiñaywayna, about 40 minutes before our arrival. |
But the best part of Wiñaywayna for me was that we earned it. There's no way to get to this spot by car or by train or by plane or by helicopter. There's only one way to make it there and that's on foot. And it's a hard climb. It's tough work. And you don't get to go home quickly after you reach it. You can't buy this. You have to make it there yourself with your legs and your lungs and your will. Sure, there are hundreds of people who pass through that spot every day and thousands each year but it still takes sweat to get there.
Visiting Wiñaywayna made this trip for me. If I hadn't done this, (and look, there was still about half of the total hike to go so the fun was by no means over that day) Peru would not have been as incredible as it was. We saw landscapes and sights that few that go to Machu Picchu will ever see because they haven't walked for hours up and down too many steps to reasonably count to get there. The whole day was special; it's been the first thing I talk about when I tell anyone about this trip. Wiñaywayna is the most tangible symbol of the day so that's the spot that is remembered most fondly.
And looking at the structures the Incas made in the middle of that range of mountains is about the most incredible sight I've seen. I'm just going to leave the uncaptioned photographs below as evidence of how awesome and beautiful this place is.
From the time we saw Wiñaywayna for the first time it would be about 30 to 35 minutes before we got there. While we didn't know it at the time, this would be the last climb in the baking sun until Wiñaywayna itself where we would have to ascend the gringo killer stairs we'd been warned about earlier. The gringo killers were in fact the central staircase from the granaries to the temple.
The waterfall might have saved me from the sun.
A few minutes before you get to the terraces of Wiñaywayna, there's a waterfall with a pool at its base. I was ready to get into the shade and stay there by the time we reached the pool and I'd have to get up every terrace before we could get some shade. I needed to cool down and the waterfall let me. I've never been so grateful for cold water to dip my head and hat into and keep going.
After Wiñaywayna came lunch and after lunch we passed through the first checkpoint. The one we had to be through at 2:00 pm. It was 1:20. 40 minutes to spare. José told us that the morning was going to be tough and he was right. He said the afternoon would be "papayita" or a piece of cake (actually a small piece of papaya) compared to the walk before lunch. He was almost right there too.
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| On the gringo killer steps. |
All that didn't mean there was no danger of falling off the side of the mountain, just that there was way more space to avoid falling off the side of the mountain.
The afternoon hike was also mostly in the shade. José was really truly mostly right. After lunch, it was way easier. The only thing that made it hard was that I'd already walked 6 kilometers in the baking sun while walking up about 2,000 feet. The only thing that made the afternoon hard was the morning walk. It was more comfortable, flatter, cooler and by and large without huge flights of steps.
We made it to the white rock we'd seen way back at Chachabamba about an hour after lunch and we could look back into the valley and see how far we'd come. We could see the train tracks that we'd ridden on; the Urubamba River that we'd crossed; the first buildings that we'd seen just five minutes into our walk; and pretty much the entire trail running along and straight and steadily up the side of the mountain we'd ascended. It encapsulated in one view everywhere we'd been for the last four and a half hours. It was pretty impressive.
And we were getting close to Machu Picchu which was after all what we were walking to see.
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| The afternoon path. Shade!!! |
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| The view from the white rock, with Chachabamba in the distance and the thin line of the trail up the mountain. |
15 minutes later, we saw what looked to be a golden glowing doorway at the top of another set of stairs. It was the Sun Gate, or Intipunku. This was the last climb up. This was it.
The Sun Gate is little more than a few columns and a couple of walls standing where what used to be (I'm guessing a little here) a roofed over structure of some sort. Not too fancy; something just substantial enough to seem like an entrance into some other sort of world. A world that contained something as wonderful as Machu Picchu, a royal retreat for the Incan emperor.
When we reached the summit, at about 3 pm or so, the sun was focused squarely on the top of the hill where the Sun Gate was located and straight in our faces. But laid out there a mountain or so away was the citadel of Machu Picchu itself. This was the reward we'd been after for six hours of taking step after step up and down (mostly up) since 9 o'clock that morning. Suffice it to say that we just stayed there a while just looking. This was supposed to be one of the most spectacular sights in the world and so stopping and staring after a long day of doing nothing but walking towards that spot seemed justified. Over the next 24 hours or so we'd see something like this view from a variety of angles close and far. It was never better than those 15 or 20 minutes or so at the Sun Gate.
Looking down on Machu Picchu that afternoon, it was easy to understand why this site remained hidden from the general public for so long. There can't be many spots that are easily accessible where you can see this place. Sure, where we stood at that very moment was an exception but exactly where we were standing was likely overgrown by the mountain forest in pretty short order after the Incas abandoned this place. From below, it must be impossible to make out. It's like the people who created this place shaved off the top of a mountain, built something smaller and less obtrusive and then made as few alterations to the rest of the landscape as humanly possible, while also making the site suitable for farming. If they had done nothing to the landscape, it would have been barely less noticeable.
From the Sun Gate, the whole site was a brilliant green color. It doesn't come through in the photograph above but the green color stood out vividly in real life. I'm sure modern grass growing technology makes it way greener than it was back in the time of the Inca. Although if they had the same number of roaming llama as there were when we were there then the fertilization certainly would be good enough to make it as green as it is today. The picture definitely doesn't do the view justice. The sun on the lens inhibits the image way more than the sun affects the eyes in real life.
If the payoff seems like it was disappointing, it wasn't. I mean this is what we came to Peru to see. And viewing it as the Incas would have done when visiting the site was way better than taking a bus from below and climbing up to the site. It was all at once exactly what we expected and also at the same time enhanced immeasurably by the journey we had just taken. In the end, it was as much about the journey as it was about the view.
Of course, at the Sun Gate, we weren't done with our trek. It would be another 90 minutes before we got to the bus that would take us to Aguas Calientes and to our hotel. In between were more stairs. Lots more stairs. The difference was the view. We were no longer in the shade but the further downhill we stepped, the closer to Machu Picchu we got.
Ultimately, we didn't spend much time at the citadel when we reached it that day. A quick walk around one of the upper lawns, a few quick pictures and then off to the bus. We'd have plenty of time the next day. By the time we were sat on the bus, we had been on the move for seven and a half hours. I can't tell you how glad I was to sit down and at the same time there was no way any experience in Peru could have topped this day. The sense of accomplishment and the exclusivity of the journey (albeit shared by 250 people per day) made this day the most unforgettable in our entire trip. Way worth it. More than anything else we did.
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| I don't know if there's anything that tops this view. |
How We Did It
We booked our day on the Inca Trail as part of a larger tour package in Peru with G Adventures, who have become our preferred adventure travel (such as it is at this point in life) company. This was our third tour with these guys, having previously been with them to the Galápagos Islands in 2016 and Kenya and Tanzania last year. If you need a reliable, trustworthy, responsible travel company committed to giving back in the places where they run tours, I can highly recommend G Adventures.
Because we let someone else handle the arrangements for us, I don't have a whole lot to say about the logistics in booking a one day (or four day) hike to Machu Picchu. After all, all I did was pick up the phone and pay someone to take care of everything for us. It seemed to me that there were tons of tour operators in Cusco offering day trips to all sorts of places in the Andes; I'm sure one of those tour companies runs Inca Trail tours.
I do have a few words of advice to offer, however. First, you can't do this experience alone. And by that I don't mean you should take a buddy along to keep you company; you have to have a guide with you. No guide, no ride.
Second, there are 500 four-day hikers and an additional 250 one-day hikers allowed on the Inca Trail at any one time. This is a hard limit. Book early, which is always sound advice. There were two people in our group who tried to find a way on to the trail the day before and found it sold out. They took the train all the way to Aguas Calientes and heard about the whole trekking experience from us instead of doing it themselves.
Finally, take plenty of water. We almost messed this up. We had a pretty good sized refillable water bottle each along with a bottle of mango juice each in our boxed lunches. We decided to buy an additional bottle at the stand just inside the train entrance at Chachabamba which was a great idea. We'd have had some difficulty rationing what we had before buying that extra bottle. Water doesn't weigh that much. It's always better to have too much than too little.
We booked our day on the Inca Trail as part of a larger tour package in Peru with G Adventures, who have become our preferred adventure travel (such as it is at this point in life) company. This was our third tour with these guys, having previously been with them to the Galápagos Islands in 2016 and Kenya and Tanzania last year. If you need a reliable, trustworthy, responsible travel company committed to giving back in the places where they run tours, I can highly recommend G Adventures.
Because we let someone else handle the arrangements for us, I don't have a whole lot to say about the logistics in booking a one day (or four day) hike to Machu Picchu. After all, all I did was pick up the phone and pay someone to take care of everything for us. It seemed to me that there were tons of tour operators in Cusco offering day trips to all sorts of places in the Andes; I'm sure one of those tour companies runs Inca Trail tours.
I do have a few words of advice to offer, however. First, you can't do this experience alone. And by that I don't mean you should take a buddy along to keep you company; you have to have a guide with you. No guide, no ride.
Second, there are 500 four-day hikers and an additional 250 one-day hikers allowed on the Inca Trail at any one time. This is a hard limit. Book early, which is always sound advice. There were two people in our group who tried to find a way on to the trail the day before and found it sold out. They took the train all the way to Aguas Calientes and heard about the whole trekking experience from us instead of doing it themselves.
Finally, take plenty of water. We almost messed this up. We had a pretty good sized refillable water bottle each along with a bottle of mango juice each in our boxed lunches. We decided to buy an additional bottle at the stand just inside the train entrance at Chachabamba which was a great idea. We'd have had some difficulty rationing what we had before buying that extra bottle. Water doesn't weigh that much. It's always better to have too much than too little.
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