Machu Picchu – wow. I guess there is a reason it is always one of the undisputed wonders of the world – up there with the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids and without question it did not disappoint. The value of travelling around Peru on a tour, with guides, is that we learned a whole lot about the Incas and about the many ancient civilizations and most importantly about who came when. It is these timelines that always confuse me – I blame it on my lax history education – I had decided to take Psychology and Sociology in High School and missed knowing if the dinosaurs were before the Incas and the Mayans and about Christopher Columbus and all those Romans and Spaniards that cruised around conquering new worlds. I am way smarter now about the Incas and have seen the proof of their amazing architectural skill. All of Peru is prone to earthquakes and they occur, in one form or another, on a regular basis. A huge one levelled Cuzco in the mid-nineties.


Seeing Machu Picchu in all of its glory, and also Ollantaytambo, another site, where we spent two nights, both built at the top of a huge mountains at 10,000 feet or so, was more than a "how did they do that?" experience. As impressive as both the Great Wall and the Pyramids, but far more spiritual. You could just 'feel' the power of Pachamama, or mother earth. These are sacred places, built with stones the size of small buildings – some carried to the highest peaks from 7 kilometers away, and fit together so tight it is still impossible to slide a sheet of paper between the grout less seams. This precision blows the Egyptian stuff away and add to the difficulty of the builds – these communities are built on the sides of cliffs at some of the highest habitable altitudes in the world. Wow, wow, wow.

We got lucky with the weather – it had been raining pretty steady for a few months – so much so that the train tracks from Cuzco to Ollantaytambo are still washed out. Instead of the train all the way from cuzco, we bussed that part and stayed a couple of days in Ollantaytambo before taking the train up to Aguas Callientas, the town at the base of Machu Picchu.  
We did have a little rain during our guided tour of the site, but after that, we had a glorious afternoon to explore on our own. It is low season here in Peru and the crowds were certainly manageable. High season is June, July and August – much colder and they say with 5 times the number of tourists. I think we hit it just right. Just between the wet, warm season and the cold dry season. Lucky again.

The pictures, I hope, can show you just a little of the magic of this place. Another thing crossed off my bucket list!