January 3, 2025–Machu Picchu, Peru

Yesterday we got up at the crack of dawn to travel to Machu Picchu.  The first part of the trip was an hour and a half bus ride from Cusco to the Poroy Train Station where we boarded the historic Hiram-Bingham Luxury Pullman Train. The Hiram-Bingham train follows the Urubamba River through the Sacred Valley of the Incas.  The two hour trip includes brunch, complimentary cocktails and live music.  Pretty cool. 

When we arrived at the Machu Picchu Station, we jumped in a bus to travel for about 30 minutes up 13 switchbacks to finally reach the Sanctuary Hotel where we stayed last night.  The Sanctuary Hotel is walking distance to the entrance of Machu Picchu. 

When you finally arrive after all of the traveling, you walk about 100 yards around the corner through the entrance and there it is:  Machu Picchu, one of the most amazing places I have ever seen.  Only pictures can tell the story. 

Roger was in full form with his lectures yesterday, as well as still really mad at the Spanish conquistadors.  He knows his stuff, though.  The history of Machu Picchu is so complicated that I can’t begin to fill in the entire story here.  Basically, the Inca civilization was powerful from 1438 to 1532.   The Incas had no written language, only oral tradition, so there are only theories of why they built Machu Picchu.  Roger said that one of its main uses was probably that of a royal estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti and his family. The emperor may have used it to host feasts, perform ceremonies, and manage the empire.  Secondly, it is believed that it was a place for religious pilgrimage and sanctuary for the Inca people.  A third theory is Machu Picchu’s location between the Andes and the Amazon jungle may have allowed the Incas to observe astronomical events. The Temple of the Sun and the Intihuatana stone may have been used to observe astronomical phenomena that governed the Incas’ calendar, agricultural seasons, and society.  

When the Incas were conquered and had to retreat to the jungle in 1532, they destroyed the part of the Inca trail that led to Machu Picchu so the Spaniards could not find it and loot or burn it.  There it sat unknown until Hiram Bingham, a Yale University professor of Latin American history, rediscovered Machu Picchu on July 24, 1911.  Bingham was led to the Inca city by locals and was amazed by the temples, palaces, and fountains he found. He called it the “Lost City of the Incas.”  It had been hidden for close to 400 years.  It was covered with vegetation and the thatch roofs were gone, but the stone work is so perfect that the buildings have stayed largely intact. 

Of course the human element in this story is that although it was warm and sunny when we left the Sanctuary Lodge to hike in Machu Picchu yesterday, it started to rain somewhere up the 745 stone steps (our fellow traveler, Stacy, counted the steps, but that did not include the ramps).  At first it was a light rain, then it turned into a heavy rain.  It was muddy, slick and heavy going.  Also, we were at 12,000 feet and not acclimated.  Brutal.  We were asked to bring only light luggage up there, so we had one pair of pants, one jacket, one pair of shoes, a clean shirt and a clean pair of socks and underwear.  By the time we got back to the Sanctuary Lodge at 4 PM, we were all soaked and cold.  We put on the terry cloth robes in the room and hung our soaking wet clothes up.  They didn’t dry at all after a couple of hours, so I used the blow dryer to get them as dry as possible so we could go to dinner.  Miserable.

This morning we visited Machu Picchu again, and tonight we are back in Cusco after a long reverse version of the trip up.