Day 4: Peru, Machu Picchu: tour

Roger, our private tour guide, met us as we got off the bus at the top of the mountain. We had a few minutes until our 2 pm entrance time so encouraged us to put on bug spray and lather on the sunscreen. I could have used him the rest of the trip to provide those reminders.

Roger will forever be remembered for his dry presentation of these three rules:

No jump photos ... OR YOU WILL DIIIEEEE!!

No selfie sticks ... you will walk off the trail and YOU WILL DIIIEEEE!!

No umbrellas ... you will be struck by lightning and YOU WILL DIIIEEEE!!

We joked about his warnings the rest of the trip, and fortunately none of us DIIIEEEED. It is too bad the thirteen of us will not gather together again because it turned into the type of inside joke friends could say to each other for years that would make the others start laughing.

Onto the serious stuff...in 1843 the town of Machu Picchu got the train. In 1983 it was designated a UNESCO site. On July 7, 2007 it was designated the seventh modern wonder of the world.

According to archaeological dating, it is from the mid-1400s, or possibly two to three thousand years before the Incans arrived. 

Roger tells us this is only one of 32 Incan sites. It sounds like even if we hiked for a week we would only see bout a dozen of them.

The trek started off misty, yet sunny. In the pictures it is cloudy, yet had shadows. We could see swallows and butterflies dancing about. Everything was lush and green, exactly like the photographs. Roger said 80% of what we see is original, the rest has been restored. Later he said there are no handrails because the Incans did not need them, so the tourists don't need them either. Seemed a bit harsh to me as people of all ages were walking on the stone steps that later turned slick when it started to drizzle.

Roger told us Manchu Picchu was a former Incan city at the beginning of the Amazon. It is home to over 18,000 species of flora and fauna. They have bears, possums, jaguars, eagles, toucans, hummingbirds and more. We did not see anything but the swallows on our tour, and they did not pause for the cameras.

The Incan empire began in the 1200s and ended with the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. They saw their largest expansion in the 1400s, expanding to Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Brazil. Trails connect each city. Approximately ever six to nine miles there was another Incan City -- meaning they are each about a days' walk from each other. The other countries have not protected them as well as Peru has.

The ninth Incan leader of South America was Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (1438-1471). According to many, he was the best leader of South America ever. He commanded much respect. The National Geographic Society believes Manchu Picchu was built as his summer home. 

Manchu Picchu is also referred to as the "lost city of the Incas," lost because the conquestidors never made it this far inland. When the Spanish arrived, Peru was ripe for being taken over. They were in the midst of a civil war between two brothers who wanted the power for themselves. As the war ended, the Spanish arrived and found chaos. They brought diseases from small pox to the flu that were unknown to the locals, killing off many of the people who survived the war. Others were murdered for not following Catholicism.

In 1911 Yale professor Hiram Bingham rediscovered Manchu Picchu. Trouble was, he was not interested in finding it. He was looking for Vilcabamba, the last city of the Incans. Instead he found Manchu Picchu (translation: Old Mountain) buried by nature in forest. He needed permission from the Peruvian government to explore it. I imagine him pinky swearing to return any treasures he finds, after he processes them in the United States because (of course) that is the best place, all the while crossing his other hand behind his back. World wars were fought, he served as a pilot in WWI, and his project was put on hold indefinitely. His team found 40,000 Incan artifacts, 137 skeletons in one place, and another 31 throughout the site (more on that later). 

A hundred years later, in 2012, the Peruvian government asked for their artifacts back from Yale University. Only five percent were returned. They are displayed in Cusco at the Casa Concha Museum, which we did not go to, but as I type this I wish we had remembered and gone on our free day.

Guys like him give archaeologists a bad name.

In the 15th century, Manchu Picchu had multiple uses. It was a citadel, used for religious, political, and military reasons. It was divided into two parts: agricultural and a city.

There are 100 Incan terraces for growing food. They fed over 1,000 people. Estimates say there were 400 and 1,000 people living there at any given time. The lived in a caste system.

We paused in front of what Hiram Bingham  identified as the royal mausoleum, however no skeletons were found here. Food was left as sacrifices. The sun temple is on top of the mausoleum. Amazingly the light enters the one window through the valley across from it annually on the summer solstice (December 21) and through the opposite window 180 days later and through on the winter solstice. Reminded me of our recent trip to Stonehenge. How did they figure this out? What did they know centuries ago that I have no idea how to figure out even with the help of Google? In order to be a successful gardener, you need to understand the season. They used the sun, moon, and stars to learn through astronomy. The Incans then thanked the sun, moon, and stars. Archaeologists interpreted this as worshipping the sun, moon, and stars.

The Sun Gate is the entry from the Incan Trail to Machu Picchu. In September (spring) they thank the gods before planting. They thank them again in March (autumn) for the harvest. They used the stars to predict natural disasters. It was a different time. One more in tune with nature.

Back in the 1400s the volcanos were active. It was a rough time to be alive. Starvation was rampant. People took their children to the glaciers to see the volcanoes, knocked them out, and left them as a sacrifice. They watched nature. When they saw animals killing their babies during el nina years, they also killed their children so more people could survive. I'm actually impressed Roger covered this gruesome era in Incan history.

Someone asked about snow (thank you for the topic change). He said snow occurs at higher elevations , not down here (17,000 feet vs. 8,000 feet).

I know I said there are no railings. Thankfully the government allowed stairs to be rebuilt about five years ago. Here are the new ones next to the original 600 year old stairs.

Next up was a guardhouse with a cemetery behind it that archaeologists discovered during the 1912 excavation. They found an even distribution between male and female skeletons, with a 40-50 year life expectancy. Death was due to yellow fever, dengue fever, as well as children's deaths. 

The thatched roofs last about six to ten years.
These are clearly replica roofs.

The Incans had a rich system of canals and fountains to bring clean drinking water. Even today the water looks brown due to having 50-60 different minerals in it, making it look muddy. They used cacti to filter the water to make it drinkable, or you can boil it.

We entered the Royal House and moved into the
residential section of Machu Picchu. The two houses have a courtyard between them, a canal, an aqueduct (drainage). There are 206 drainage canals.

The windows were covered, providing shelving. The windows are open in the upper levels for ventilation. People used the clay pots as private bathrooms, which were then used as fertilizer. The bed would have been here.

A 2012 French-Peruvian-Spanish excavation team shows the walls go deep into the mountains, with about 60% of the wall being underground.

Our group climbing the 60+ steps to the next level

It was nice having people
offer to take full body pictures

We stopped at a nice vista where for
once we were the only group. I asked Roger to take a group picture. One woman is missing because she went back early. She needs knee surgery and this trip has been physically hard on her. Roger took his own selfie of the group with his phone, adding himself to our group.

One of our core group of seven asked for a separate photo. I am grateful. The others grumbled "the Americans," and I think she was right, we were the Americans in the group. I'm glad for the photo. After Machu Picchu we returned to separate vacation tracks.

Roger pointed out three plazas in the other direction that form a neighborhood. Originally archaeologists thought this was a school, a house of knowledge, or maybe a neighborhood only for women. I love that archaeologists are open to new interpretations as new artifacts emerge. Some study has been done on how men treated women. Were they machismo, like the Spaniards have a reputation of being? Evidence shows they revered women starting with pachamama (Mother Earth), after all women raised the warriors. They were ambitious. They wanted their children to thrive. Men were raised to respect them. With the invasion of the Spaniards, Peru became a patriarchal society.

Roger recommended a book called Los 14 Coyas (Coyas are the king's wives) by Iyari Sanchez that came out last year. This anthropologic book dives into how women were treated by the Incans.

We looked at a guinea pig corral next to a fireplace. Guinea pigs are for eating. By storing them near the fireplace, the smoke kills the bacteria. This room was used to smoke meat, to preserve it longer.

We turned to the amphitheater where events and rituals were celebrated, as well as trading. I asked about trading -- after all we felt pretty isolated at the moment and that is hard to do in the 21st century. He said gold and silver were ornamental, they had no monetary value. They traded coca and sea shells. Other tribes were invited to trade with them.

We see where in 1978 the president order the land to be cut so the king and queen of Spain's helicopter could land. Argh! In 1998 helicopter tours were ended. They can't even use a helicopter to rescue people hurt on the trails. (As Roger would say, they WILL DIIIEEEE!!)

In addition to the 137 skeletons found in the cemetery, they found another five in a crypt. These may have been priests. Or not. 

We entered a home. Archaeologists
estimate 10-15 people lived in each room, there were six rooms. Therefore about 90 people in each home.

Just as I had been grateful the mild spritzing had not turned into anything stronger, it started to rain. The stone stairs became slick. Our two hour tour still had another ten minutes to go.

We visited the only condor temple in the world. Condors tend to get a bad reputation as they pick the bones of the dead. The Incans celebrated them because they pick the bones clean. They believe the condors deliver the spirits to the next life. Archaeologists found llama bones on the altar, they assume they were left there to attract the condors.

I'm not sure if if that was the true end of the tour, or if Roger realized the rain was dampening our fortitude. Don and I helped a couple of elderly people on slick stairs who were unfortunately just beginning their tour. 

Someone in the group pointed out a rainbow. Truly the views just did not feel real. They look just like any image you have ever seen of Machu Picchu on an overcast day.

We were only the third circuit. Our trail was easy to walk, even for the women in our group a couple of decades older than us. It was too much for the woman facing knee surgery. I was glad I did not bring walking sticks that may be been confiscated. Over the next couple of days we went on hikes where I would have welcomed guides. This trail was not it.