We spent the last night in the Winay Wayna campsite, which is about 6 km from Machu Picchu. It feels a bit annoying to stop when you are so close to reaching the goal of the hike. Many people had problems falling asleep since we were so close and they were filled with excitement. Me? I slept nicely, but half of the people in our group said that they were awake for most of the night. Someone could not sleep at all, but instead spent the night playing solitaire in the light from a torch, and kept playing until the battery ran out.
There is a last checkpoint just after the campsite. Everyone has to pass through this checkpoint, which opens at 5.30 in the morning. Well, the porters take a different route and go back to the town directly instead of continuing to Machu Picchu. A lot of people go up quite a bit before 5 am and start forming a queue to the checkpoint. We got up around 3.30 am already! This way we had time to have some breakfast and pack everything before going to the queue. It is really dark that early in the morning (or late at night...), so it could be useful to have a torch with batteries.
We started queuing around one our before the checkpoint opened. There were already around 50 people standing there, waiting. I think most of the tourists from the whole camp were there queuing when the checkpoint finally opened. Until that time you stand there and chat with the people around you. I ended up close to a couple of swedes and talked with them, which was really nice.
It started getting bright around this time, so you don't really need to use your torch too much. The problem was that all the friendship and lovely atmosphere from the previous days were completely gone. Now everyone wanted to be the first ones to see Machu Picchu. Where people before were friendly and let faster people pass and you sometimes chatted a little bit, people now seemed a bit grumpy and did their best to stop people coming from behind. At one point S. was almost pushed off the path by some guy who couldn't handle the thought of us passing him. This way it went very slowly and people got frustrated.
The worst part was an extremely steep flight of about 50 steps. They were almost vertical! Naturally this was the slowest part of the trek. However, all of these things were quickly forgotten when we reached the top of the stairs and saw this:
The first thought was: "ahh, there are some nice, big ruins". Then we all realised that we were looking down on Machu Picchu. We were there! For some reason I had naively thought that the ruins were at the top of a mountain, looking down on the peaks around. This is not the case at all, as you can see in the pictures further down. In fact, Machu Picchu is located at a relatively low altitude of 2400 m. This can be compared to the highest point of the Inka Trail, the Dead Woman's pass, which is at 4215 m. The ruins are instead on a mountain side which is protected on three sides by the Urubamba river.
Those almost vertical steps leads up to the final pass, called Intipunku or "the Sun Gate". This is where you first can see Machu Picchu. A lot of people stop here to see the sunrise over the Machu Picchu, see the picture above.
However, we continued a little bit further down the path, where we got this view of the ruins:
We stayed at some small ruins between the Sun Gate and Machu Picchu itself and watched the sunrise from there.
The picture below shows the Urubamba river and the winding road the buses take up to Machu Picchu.
We then continued into the old ruins, where our guide told us a lot of the history and explained how life was there during the Inka times.
Machu Picchu was a town for priests and the upper class, but there were also workers and farmers in the area in order to provide food for the rich. However, these were not allowed into most of the town. They were not allowed in many more areas than the farming terraces you can see in the pictures below.
Only the people who were allowed to go to Machu Picchu actually knew where it was. This was a big problem for the Spanish when they invaded the Inkas. In order to "civilise" the Inkas, they killed the whole upper class, which resulted in that they killed everyone who knew the directions to Machu Picchu. The Spanish therefore never discovered Machu Picchu. It was not until Hiram Bingham rediscovered the town in 1911 that the world started to know about it.
There are plenty of temples in Machu Picchu. The picture above shows the Sun temple and below you can see the out of the temple of the three windows.
Coca leaves were important to the Inkas and they had some growing in Machu Picchu. There are some plants in the picture below.
The Inkas were extremely good at working with stones and using them for buildings. They could shape the stones to fit each other perfectly as you can see in areas all over the old Inka empire. However, they did not always fit the stones together perfectly, as you can see in the pictures below. The pictures were taken of walls that were very close to each other in Machu Picchu. One shows a temple wall, one a wall of a priest's house and one shows the wall of one of the worker's house. Can you guess which is which?
Below is another example of the Inca's ability to shape stones. The huge boulder has been shaped after mountains in the horizon and it also resembles a crouching puma. The puma was one of three very important animals to the Inkas. The other two were the snake and the condor. The snake represented the underworld, the puma the world of the living and the condor represented the upper world.
We arrived quite early to the ruins, so there were not too many people there at first. But that quickly changed. During most of the Inka Trail you have the landscape, nature and ruins almost to yourself. For a few days you see a very limited amount of people, and for most of the time every one is relaxed and happy. Then when you arrive at Machu Picchu, there are hordes of tourists who came with the buses. Everything is quiet during the trek and you can hear birds sing and so on, but when you come to Machu Picchu there is almost chaos with loads of shouting tourists. It is a strange feeling that after you have hiked for a few days and you finally arrive at the goal of the trek, you encounter so many people who just took the bus.
In the beginning you can take pictures with very few people around you, like the ones above and below. But that quickly becomes impossible. The long queue of people to the spot where we are standing for the picture above is not shown.
Machu Picchu is an amazing place, which I definitely recommend you to visit. I completely understand why it was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World!
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