Rambling in Peru, Day 6: Breathless at Machu Picchu
By Tom Barton | November 19, 2009 | Peru
I tried to begin this blog by distilling what it's like to see this stunning, incredible place high in the Andean Mountains of Peru.
In fact, I tried several times. Then I gave up.
Seeing Machu Picchu was like an unexpected punch to the stomach. It took my breath away. After a heartfelt and totally unoriginal \"wow,\" I was silent for a minute or two. I don't think the photos I took after I recovered did it justice either.
About the closest thing to which I can compare this experience is seeing the Grand Canyon, an eye-poppingly gorgeous work of nature. But Machu Picchu does it one better. It combines the best of nature -- soaring mountains, plunging valleys, patchworks of white and gray clouds and, in our case, rainbows -- with amazing feats of human construction and architecture. I felt like genuflecting, except I was afraid of tumbling thousands of feet into the bottom of the adjacent Urubamba Gorge.
Machu Picchu is fairly accessible now. But for centuries, it was buried in the jungle on a ridge that was only slightly less easy to reach than the inside of Fort Knox. That's why it's so well preserved for an Inca site. The looters couldn't get to it, let alone find it.
To get to Machu Picchu, our group took a bus to the train station in Poroy, a small town about 45 minutes from Cusco. The station is easily the nicest building on the main drag, which really is dragging. It's neither charming nor prosperous looking. But it reflects the area, which has a lot of poor people. At the station's platform, a group of young dancers and musicians in colorful, indigenous garb entertained the several dozen passengers who were boarding the blue-painted Hiram Bingham train, operated by PeruRail and named after the American explorer who wrote \"Lost City of the Incas.\"
It was one sweet ride. The three-hour journey to the real life town of Machu Picchu included dramatic changes in terrain, from wide plains and farmland to the rugged, rocky and steep Urubamba Gorge, where the tracks hug the mountain walls near the churning Urubamba River. If all train rides were this scenic, Amtrak's money woes would be history.
At the end of the line, the town of Machu Picchu has the feel of early Gatlinburg, which is not a good thing. Let's hope wiser heads at the local tourism bureau prevail and prevent the tackiness from spreading. From here, we boarded a second bus for a 30-minute ride up a nearby mountain on a narrow, switchback road with at least six tight turns. I saw only a few guardrails. If a Georgia moonshiner is reading this and needs a runner to haul a precious load quickly and safely, this driver's your man.
Fernando Astete, director of the Machu Picchu Historical Sanctuary, met us near the top of the mountain. He led us through the park gates and then up another incline path. The purpose of Machu Picchu remains a mystery. But there's no mystery about how some Incas stayed in shape. Getting here is like climbing a giant Stairmaster.
And then you finally arrive and trip over your tongue, which is tied up with awe.
The ruins were awesome. I know that's hardly a profound observation, but it's accurate and concise -- just like Inca stoneworkers who whipped this pile of rocks into shape. The structures here were made of huge blocks of hand-shaped granite. Amazingly, the individual pieces that haven't shifted because of earthquates still fit so tightly that I couldn't work my fingernail into the seams.
\"The Incas did not reside here, but Machu Picchu played an important part in the Inca world,\" Astete said. Plants like corn, coca leaves, peanuts and cotton were grown here on terraces carved out of the mountain. Since the Incas taxed people through forced labor, plenty of workers were available to do the heavy lifting.
Also incredible is how people used to get to Machu Picchu prior to buses and trains -- on the aptly named Inca trail. This centuries-old path crosses rugged, mountainous terrain. It barely clings to a rock wall at the Inca Bridge, about a 30-minute walk from the site. And the word \"bridge\" is generous. It's basically a few boards over a bunch of nothing, not counting the ground thousands of feet below. We didn't tease gravity by walking across it, but not because we were chicken. Rather, the bridge is blocked off because of damage to the trail. (That's my story -- cluck, cluck -- and I'm sticking to it.)
Astete said hundreds of thousands of visitors come to Machu Picchu every year, but not just for the post-card perfect scenery. For many, it's a spiritual journey, he said.
\"Geography was sacred to the Incas,\" he said. \"Each mountain has its own god, and everything has life.\"
Earlier during our visit, a single rainbow slowly emerged overhead. It anchored itself between the cloud-shrouded mountains around Machu Picchu. Then a second rainbow slowly took shape over the first, creating a double rainbow. Clearly the gods were working overtime this day.
I hope to write more about it, but don't hold your breath. I'm still holding mine.
(Tom Barton is is with the Savannah Morning News and is in Peru on an IRP Gatekeeper Editors trip organized by the International Reporting Project.)
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