Machu Picchu - Lost city of the Incas

No trip to Cusco is complete without a visit to Machu Picchu. We wanted to do a trek to the ruins (rather than just catch the train) and decided on the Inka Jungle Trail offered by Lorenzo Expeditions. The jungle trail is a multisport (biking and hiking) alternative to the famous “Inca Trail”, which has become expensive due to a cap on visitor numbers.

The tour lasted four days, consisting of a day of downhill mountain biking, two days of trekking and then a day at Machu Picchu. There were also optional activities of whitewater rafting and ziplining (which we didn’t do this time for the sake of our budget). The tour was not really what we expected, but we thoroughly enjoyed it anyway. Mostly it was much cruisier than we anticipated. For starters, “mountain biking” meant rolling down a road on bikes geared too low to reach a decent speed (although you wouldn’t think so based on the extensive safety gear). We did descend from 4350m to 1400m in a few hours which was pretty cool.

We probably walked for about three hours on the “eight hour” trekking day – the rest of the time was informative talks, lunch and even siesta time in hammocks after lunch! There was some amazing scenery and part of the trek was on an original Incan trail.

The Incans had an interesting communication network made up of formed trails and foot messengers. Spaced 15-20km apart, these messengers would run along the trails to relay messages. This meant that, day and night, messages could travel throughout the Incan empire at running pace – an impressive achievement for the time. One Incan king was known to have the messengers run fresh fish up to him from the coast to the mountains of Cusco.

The catering on the tour was one of the highlights. We expected typical camp food, but got four course meals for both lunch and dinner each day! We got to try several traditional Peruvian dishes throughout the tour, all delicious. There was a power cut at one town we stayed in, so we had a romantic candlelit dinner for 12 :-D

The makeup of the tour was unusual in that New Zealanders were the most common nationality. In an amazing coincidence, they were all Wellingtonians and Sally knew all of them!! Sadly we reinforced the misconception that NZ is a small tropical island where everyone knows each other (“You’re from New Zealand? Do you know Steve?”)

We got up at 4am on the final day of the tour to walk up to Machu Picchu before sunrise (along with hundreds of others). When we first set eyes on the city we were blown away by its beauty, scale and setting.

The Incans were very religious/superstitious people. It’s believed that the site for Machu Picchu was selected (a difficult building site to put it mildly) because of the three mountains surrounding the site (a significant number for the Incans) and a river that follows the path of the Milky Way. We were surprised to find that only around 1000 people lived there. The Incans did not mine for building materials, but built with the existing stone on the site. They only broke rocks which had existing cracks, using wet wooden dowels placed in the crack to break the rock.

There were several temples – the most interesting for us was the Temple of the Condor. The Incans believed that when a person died that a condor took their spirit up to the “upper world” while their body went to the underworld. The temple was shaped as a condor, looking down the mountainside to the east (to take the spirits into the rising sun). There were several alcoves on the condor’s “back” where the mummified bodies were placed for a day or so, to allow the spirits to depart. Incans were a strongly class-based society – there were special alcoves under the condor’s wing for the upper classes, as this was believed to be the warmest, most protected place.

Temple of the Condor

Machu Picchu was occupied for less than 200 years. The Incans abandoned the city towards the end of the Spanish conquest, pulling almost everyone out of the city and back to the last Incan capital, Vilcabamba. This was in order to concentrate warrior numbers in the capital and also to keep the sacred city a secret from the Spanish. A secret it remained – missed by the Spanish, it was discovered by a handful of locals and then by a British explorer in 1911, who revealed Machu Picchu to the world.

As an optional extra, we climbed Montana Machu Picchu, one of the three mountains overlooking the city. This was a further 500 metres higher than Machu Picchu itself. It was a hard climb up in the heat, about 80 minutes of steep stone stairs. The views from the top of the mountain were stunning, and it’s always an amazing feeling to stand on a mountain summit.

The train back was amusing, the staff had to put on an awfully touristy show – first a traditional depiction of the devil paraded up and down the carriage and then the staff had to walk the catwalk in alpaca clothing that was then sold off to the passengers (at inflated prices, no doubt).

If you want an interesting, varied and relaxed expedition to Machu Picchu (and want to be well fed) we can recommend the Inka Jungle Trail by Lorenzo Expeditions. For something more strenuous, it sounds like the Inca Trail or Salkantay Trek are the way to go.

We’re now sitting in the bus terminal in Arequipa after an overnight bus, bound for the Colca Canyon. We are going to be trekking independently rather than taking a tour, starting with a five hour journey on a local bus. We’ll let you know how it all goes in our next post.

To read about our time in Cusco, click here.

Comments from WordPress

• Garry 2012-07-05T01:06:49Z

  Great pics again! We got your email too. What a hoot seeing Karl, Megan, and Elise! That sort of coincidence will happen again before your trip is finished, too. Enjoy your remaining time in South America. XX.

• Lesley 2012-07-06T20:59:12Z

  Hola. Cusco and Machu Picchu look amazing. I’m having to think about going to South America after your wonderful photos. And I am green with envy about your next stop - New York!! xox

• Frederieka 2012-07-10T05:55:07Z

  Craig we once had a conversation in which you said you would not wear a skirt. But you look like a South-American superhero! Please wear that all the time.

• Thomas Davey 2012-07-23T09:35:12Z

  Think that is now on my bucket list…

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson