Flashback: Macchu Pichu

Processing and tweaking photos is one of the few tasks I can put my mind to these days, so here are two pictures of a llama at Macchu Pichu that my critical eye for some reason (okay, I see the reasons--imperfect focus, less than ideal composition) deemed not worthy of inclusion on this august blog.

But today they make me smile.

And there was a baby llama!

This baby was trying to nurse but every time it latched on, Mom would move on to a more promising patch of grass and baby was left running after her to try again.

A few more Machu Picchu pictures

Steel and stone

It is true that the Incas had no written language and didn't use the wheel, but I've sometimes read that they didn't have metal tools, and that isn't true. They didn't have iron or steel, and they seemed to have thought of metal as a religious material rather than a practical one, but they did have bronze tools, including knives. At Macchu Picchu they seem to have built with the stone that was already on the mountain, and you can see that only one of these walls uses the perfectly sized and fitted ashlar masonry you see in Cusco. Still, to have cut all of this stone using only stone or bronze tools is mind-boggling.

While I was in Peru I read a novel called Civilizations, by Laurent Binet. It's an alternate history, where Atahualpa conquers Spain instead of the other way around. It's written in the style of a contemporary historical account, and so there wasn't the world-building or character development I would have liked, but it was very clever and it was amusing to see Europe (now “the New World”) through Atahualpa's eyes. One of his generals dreams of being the first to “discover” Italy. Jesus, aka The Nailed God, is “a local fable.”

This version of events is possible because a daughter of Erik the Red flees Greenland after a murder and sails south to Central and South America, where the Norsemen show the natives how to find and use iron. When Columbus turns up a few centuries later, he and his men are killed and Atahualpa uses one of his abandoned ships as a model to build his own. The Incas could live without a written language or the wheel, but if they'd had steel, history might have been very different.

More stairs

The sun came and went while I was there. Overcast skies made this picture work well in black and white.

Stone steps at Machu Picchu

You can see why you don't want to have to run down several levels of these in a real hurry.

Being there

For the first time since dropping out of graduate school, I remembered an unpleasant weekend spent struggling to comprehend the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s explanation of the difference between calling something beautiful and calling it sublime. Nowadays, we throw around the word “sublime” to describe gooey desserts or overpriced handbags. In Kant’s epistemology, it meant something limitless, an aesthetically pleasing entity so huge that it made the perceiver’s head hurt. Machu Picchu isn’t just beautiful, it’s sublime.

--Mark Adams, Turn Right at Machu Picchu

Yes. Maybe I'll go back some day. But I don't have to.

And there it is

The day before, when I'd been lying on a bed in a clinic in the Sacred Valley sucking on oxygen, I'd been resigned to missing Machu Picchu. I hated to come so far and not see the main attraction, but I didn't see how I could keep going.

So I was thrilled to be there. I made it! I was actually at Machu Picchu!

And unfortunately I wasn't well. It wasn't the altitude that bothered me, but my digestive system that distressingly picked That Particular Moment to act up. After taking the bus up to the ruins, we had lunch in the restaurant outside the gates. After lunch, I was setting up my walking poles and slathering on insect repellant—Machu Picchu is jungle after all—when I suddenly had to run to the bathroom. Urgently. And a few minutes later, when we had just started climbing, I had to leave and go again.

I was okay after that, but as there are no bathrooms at the site I didn't want to take any chances, and so while the rest of my group did the long circuit including the top levels, I stayed below, closer to the exit. I was a little disappointed not to get the “classic picture” looking down on the site, but in some ways, I lucked out. When I described how I'd found being there an almost spiritual experience, others in the group commented on not having time to really take in the views because they had to watch where they were walking, and that it was crowded and noisy. Whereas I was mostly alone, except for a few llamas, and I got to spend time sitting on a bench and looking at this view.

The road to Machu Picchu, continued

I took this picture from the bus going up the mountain. (Taking pictures distracted me from the steep drops and lack of guardrails.) You can see the Urubamba River in the valley far below.

The Machu Picchu Express

The ninety-minute train ride from Ollantaytambo follows the Urubamba River through spectacular scenery. All of these pictures were taken through the train windows so aren't as clear as they could be, but you can see how the mountains change as you move into the high jungle.

The road to Machu Picchu

I always underestimate the size of countries in Africa; on a map they appear comparatively small, just a small percentage of the total land mass of the continent. But that continent itself is huge, and the individual countries are always much bigger than I would guess.

I think the same may be true for South America—I was shocked to learn that Peru is almost twice the size of Texas. I would have guessed it was maybe the size of California, or a little smaller, but it's much much bigger.

And all of that land is very diverse. There are 34 types of climatic zones, and Peru has 20 of them, from the deserts in the south and on the coast, to the Andes, and then the Amazon Basin.

You can see the changes as you head from Cusco north to Machu Picchu. The mountains in the south are brown and rocky, with little snow. Machu Picchu is in what is called “the eyebrow of the Amazon,” a high-altitude jungle.

There are no roads into Machu Picchu; you have to take a train from Ollantaytambo to what used to be called Aguas Calientes and is now being rebranded as Machu Picchu Pueblo, the town at the base of the mountain. From there it's a death-defying (only a slight exaggeration!) bus ride up the mountain to the ruins.