Inca Roads / Angels in the Architecture

Why not give this entry two names, I couldn't decide on one and the place warrants it anyway. My day at Machu Picchu started a couple of hours later than anticipated due to this inclination of hitting the snooze button, but it turned out to be a good thing as I needed the extra energy at the end of the day. If anyone goes to MP, don't listen to the people who say it's soooo lonnnnng to walk to the ruins from town and it's allll stepppps. It does take a little time and it is all steps once you start uphill, but who could even notice the walk when there are lush fresh-smelling plants on all sides, colorful flowers to photograph and birds serenading the journey? I thought I might run out of camera battery before arriving at the ruins because I was snapping so many flower shots, but fortunately it lasted.

 

When I arrived at the top I had the same sort of moment that I had with my first glimpse of the Grand Canyon. 'Hmm.' Sometimes things take a while to hit home, especially when you know of a wonder for your whole life and now rather than leaping out from the pages of a picture book it stands before you in plain silent reality. I thought I'd stick around for a couple of hours and call it good, but ended up closing the place down. There were so many vantage points, plus little trails to explore out from the edges, one taking me a good way up Mt Machupicchu for some amazing vistas and dozens more flower photos before I realized the sun was heading down and I should too. I practically had to run to the last viewpoint to get there and back in time; a guide along the way had warned me that the last bus was leaving soon, and I was yet undecided if I'd have enough time to walk down to town before dark or if I should take the bus (wouldn't have cared had I brought a light, but the cheesy little $5 headlamp that replaced my Spot got lost somewhere between here and Cuzco). With dusk setting in and 20 minutes to the bus I turned for a last view of the main complex, and snapped the last photo of the day; indeed when I tried to take just one more, the camera battery died. Perfect timing. After a whole day of walking up and down and all around, it seemed anti-climactic to jump on the bus and miss all the evening sounds and scents along the forested path, so I checked my watch and the remaining sunlight and made a dash for it. What took an hour and 10 mins going up, albeit very leisurly and with lots of photo stops, took 35 minutes going down, and it was just getting too dark to see by the time I reached the road at the bottom. There were huge black butterflies that came out in the evening, substantial enough that their fluttering wings amid the foliage were sometimes audible, and of course that great sensation of an evening in the forest after a long sunny day.

 

The next day the train wasn't until after 5pm, so I headed for the botanic garden. As it turned out you could only enter with a ticket to the adjacent museum, which I wasn't too interested in, but with hours to kill and nothing to lose but a few bucks I bought the ticket. This turned out to be a great move - again if you go to MP, go to the museum! It sounds like it only re-opened in '95 after a long closure, and a lot of the artefacts on exhibit were only found in the last 10 years (many in 2005) so this turned out to be a great time to go. Not only did they have all the usual interesting stuff made of stone, metal and pottery, but they had explanations of the Incas' organization and how Machu Picchu was built. I always thought terraces were carved out of mountains, but it turns out they actually built them upwards from the mountainside, bringing many of the materials somehow with them. There were quotes from some elders in the area who said that the Incas were very powerful, and whipped the stones to make them walk up the mountain. Most also mentioned that the Incas' time was over, and something about their judgement, sounding relieved that they wouldn't come back - it sounded like even the modern people had some underlying fear of the old powers, which was interesting. There were also displays of big flat mortars which apparently they used to fill with water to use as mirrors for observing the stars. Fascinating stuff.

 

The botanic garden was more like a jungle than a garden, which was cool. Oh I was wrong about the hundreds of plant species in the area; hundreds are the species of butterflies (more nocturnal than diurnal surprisingly), and if I added the list correctly, the plant species come to about 8,000!!

 

It was easy to while away the day, including a stop to a local veg restaurant for some healthy eats, hard to come by these days. I haven't really sampled the local cuisine, but as it seems heavy on guinea pigs and alpacas it's not high on the to-do list. Ooh, did I mention that I saw a little monkey! I was sitting by the river waiting for the train and chatting with two long-haired wandering traditional musicians that I'd met earlier (I always find the wayward artist types, is it gravity?) when one of them said, 'Monkey!' and pointed to a nearby tree (kind of funny that he said that in english). I had no idea there were monkeys there.

 

Let's see, back on the train to Cuzco watching the last bits of day depart from the valley as we went... a surprising amount of lights when we arrived in town... The next day I bought my ticket to continue up north and spent a few more hours admiring the main plaza. I realized that the plaza is the perfect proportion for taking photos, whether on a restaurant balcony or down on the sidewalk, with steps and curbs and the whole thing on a tilt, big enough that you can get sweeping views but small enough that you can zoom in close. I would say this square easily rivals the Grand Place in Brussels, except instead of being packed with ornate buildings, there are spaces between to give the mountains an equal voice. Not just man's architecture, but a meeting place of man's and God's buildings, blending into one perfect scene.

 

I'm at yet another bus station now, in Lima, waiting for a connection to Trujillo and Huanchaco up on the coast. Twenty hours from Cuzco to Lima, 8 hours waiting (with not much to see in this area) and 8 more hours of bus. It's kind of taking its toll having so many long bus trips in such a short time, I'm feeling it all over, but hopefully this is the last biggie of the trip. I did take a walk down a strip of park on the way to a chinese restaurant - something bizarrely abundant in this country - the park containing statues with big etched glass panes containing quotes and picturse. One that I ventured to read I thought said something about death and suicide. Another seemed to say something about butterflies being cubists in the world of green. A good indication my still-limited spanish comprehension, but hey maybe it's more interesting that way. They could have been perfectly normal quotes, but I'll never know.