Bucket List Item Accomplished

We had an exciting week as we finally took the time to visit MachuPicchu.  More about that later.  First to report on the first part of the week.

I was sick up to the very day before leaving for MachuPicchu and limited what I did.  I was pretty worried how I would be able to handle the long days and the hike on the Inca Trail.  As it turned out, everything worked out ok.

We got our new apartment arranged in a more adequate manner.  We bought some foam pads to stick in the bedroom window, took the wooden sliding closet doors off and put that in front of the foam pads, then hung our down quilt over the window for covering as we no longer need two heavy blankets on our bed to keep us warm now that we are on the third floor and as storage space is limited it is a good way to keep it out of the way.  But that pretty much gives us three layers of insulation for the street noise and it seems to be working well.  The bedroom is much quieter.  It also saves us from having to purchase curtains.  So the bed is out of the living area and back in the bedroom where it belongs.  

Unique room decor and window dressing, but hey, it works.

This meant we had to turn the other bedroom into our dressing room/study.  But it allowed us to move the dining room table back into the main room near the kitchen.  We must have moved all the furniture at least three different times before finding this final solution.  

 Still need curtains in the living room

Back half of the living room area.  Table is directly in front of the window opening to the kitchen.

Here is a picture of our English class with the missionaries of the Cusco zone.  Transfers are scheduled for December 1 and a number of the missionaries are anticipating a transfer as they have been here from 6-9 months.  So we got a group photo.  This isn´t the whole zone, but most of them.

Thanksgiving isn´t celebrated here, but the mission president´s wife organized a dinner for the senior couples serving here in Cusco and the office staff and their families.  My assignment was to bring the sweet potatoes and a pie.  I haven´t done a lot of cooking here because the altitude presents a challenge for any baking recipe.  I took the easy way out and made a graham cracker crust and did a chocolate coconut pudding pie.  We found a powdered mix for something called chantilly which is pretty close to whipped cream.  I am learning to make just about everything from scratch.  There are not a lot of mixes or pre-packaged foods here.  Luckily both items were a hit at the dinner.  To eat turkey, mashed potatoes & gravy was a real treat! We were even given leftovers to take home. Score!

And we got to visit the mission home for the first time.  We felt like we were back in the states.  The house was large and roomy and didn´t feel like a cement home at all.  The church has installed electric heating in the mission home.  And they had a piano which I got to play.  I don´t get much opportunity to play the piano here so it was a treat.

The very next day we left for our MachuPicchu adventure.  We were picked up at 4 am from our apartment and driven in taxi to Ollantaytambo where the train leaves for MachuPicchu.  It was a very nice train with windows in the roof so you can view the passing scenery and mountains.  We sat next to a couple from Pittsburgh, PA and had a nice visit with them.  The train dropped us off at km 104 for the start of the hike on the Inca trail.  At this point we are at about 8,500 feet in altitude.  Here are some pictures of our starting point.  

 We were let off the train and left right on the side of the track.

 Heading down the stairs that led to the Urubamba River and the bridge to cross over to the other side.

The complete Inca Trail is a four day hike, but we didn´t feel like we could take that much time off from being missionaries so we settled for a one day hike and a one day visit to MachuPicchu.  They limit how many people can access the trail each day to preserve the environment.  Only 200 hikers each day.

The water level of the river Urubamba was quite low.  We are right at the end of the dry season and the rainy season hasn´t quite started completely yet.  So many of the huge boulders we saw in the middle of the river during the height of the rainy season would be covered and not seen.

Dave in the middle of the bridge crossing the Urubamba River on our way to the start of the Inka Trail.

Our guide was supposed to be waiting for us but we had an hour wait before he showed up.  Typical Peruvian schedule.  But this allowed us to have the trail all to ourselves because the other hikers had already taken off with their guides.  We took off  between 9 - 9:30 am.  The trail was through a semi-tropical rain forest and reminded me a lot of the Olympic rain forest in my home state of Washington.

 Most of the bridges we crossed were logs tied together to make a long enough stretch to cross.

What do you think Wrathall clan?  Am I right?  Looks a lot like western Washington, no?

The trail took us to a couple of Inca ruin sites.  The first one we came across rather quickly called Chachabamba.  The ruins are not originals but were reconstructed by Hiram Bingham, the discoverer of MachuPicchu.

We climbed about 1,500 feet in total during the hike.  There were a lot of sections where we were climbing up stone steps in the side of the mountain.  Dave loved them.  After climbing stairs more than a dozen times, I began to think I´d had my fill.  Some of them were quite steep.  Here is a sample of some of the stairs.

 Dave is sitting about midway up a series of stairs.

These were by far the steepest.  For most of the way you literally had to use both your hands and legs to climb up these stairs.

It rained a couple of times during the day long hike.  There were times where we felt we were literally taking a walk through the clouds.

Here are some of the views as we looked back and down into the valley where we had started.

There's another train going into Aguas Calientes, the nearest town to MachuPicchu.  Trains run from early in the morning until late at night.  Train is the only way to get to Aguas Calientes unless you want to take a very round about way by bus that takes a lot longer.

Here are some more views of the trail.  At one point we went past a waterfall.  

Our guide said much of the trail was original from the Inca days.  Hard to know if this was one of the original sections or not, but you could just imagine the Incas traveling along this path to make their sacred pilgrimage to MachuPicchu.

The water level was pretty low here as well.

Also as we hiked, we saw a couple of other ruin sites that we did not visit.  Intipata being one of them, which was mostly agriculture terraces.

This is Intipata.  We only saw them from a distance so the photo is not that great.

Oh, and look what else we found along the trail?

About lunch time we arrived at the Inca ruins Wiñaywayna, literally built into the side of the mountain.  Wiñaywayna means "forever young" in Quechua.  Here are some photos.

Stairs leading up to the ruins.  One thing Winaywayna had a lot of, besides rocks, ...stairs.

 It was interesting how they built right into the natural stone in places.

There were two levels, the lower level had the housing and the upper level had the temple and sacred areas.  This photo looks up to the temple of the 7 windows or rainbow temple.  Our guide said each window represented a color of the rainbow, but Dave thinks each window represents a day of creation.

 Lower level ruins

 Below is a good view of the whole lower level

 Rainbow temple or 7 windows temple

Below is a photo of the view from the top of the ruins.  We started down there at the river so we had climbed quite a ways up by now.

Off to the left as you climbed up to the second level was a series of irrigation canals and fonts to hold water.  They would carve these right into the stone.  Above are two close up photos of how the canals worked and below you can see the multiple levels of water fonts going up (or down) the mountainside.

There were lots and lots of terraces.  We took a lot of photos of those, but we will only post this one of Dave with the terraces behind him.

Our farewell view of Winaywayna as we headed off down the trail to take a lunch break.

After lunch we continued on the trail until we reached Intipunku, which means Sun Gate in Quechua.  From there you can have a grand overlook of MachuPicchu.  The Sun Gate was built to align with the summer soltice here.  On that date, Dec. 21 or 22 depending on the year, the sun´s rays come over the mountain as the sun rises and hits the window of the Temple of the Sun which is part of the MachuPicchu complex.  So the Sun Gate is to the east of MachuPicchu.  Here are a few photos from this spot on our hike.

 Does Dave look a bit tired here?

 You can get a good idea of what Intipunku looks like.  It is a very small spot.

Dave and I celebrate as we can finally see our final destination - MachuPicchu.  Below is a zoomed in photo of the ruin site.

Here are some views we enjoyed as we rested before heading down.

You could get a good view of the road leading down the mountain from Machu Picchu.  Plenty of switchbacks.

The entire trail was approximately 14.5 kilometers or about 9 miles.  After resting at the Sun Gate, we hiked down into MachuPicchu and got our first views of the famous ruins.

 Small outpost of ruins on trail down into Machu Picchu

We are on the outskirts of the ruins at this point.

 Our view as we come into the main ruin area

Check one off of my bucket list!  We made it to Machu Picchu and it was awesome!

To be continued..... Watch for next week's post for a continuation of this trip.  Just way to much to show in one blog post.

Spiritual Thought of the Week:  Not sure how spiritual this quote is but I found it from a book called The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie.  It actually relates to self-reliance but talks about the Inca empire, which Machu Picchu was part of.

“In a sense, New World conquest was about men seeking a way around one of life's basic rules - that human beings have to work for a living, just like the rest of the animal world. In Peru, as elsewhere in the Americas, Spaniards were not looking for fertile land that they could farm, they were looking for the cessation of their own need to perform manual labor. To do so, they needed to find large enough groups of people they could force to carry out all the laborious tasks necessary to provide them with the essentials of life: food, shelter, clothing, and, ideally, liquid wealth. Conquest, then, had little to do with adventure, but rather had everything to do with groups of men willing to do just about anything in order to avoid working for a living. Stripped down to its barest bones, the conquest of Peru was all about finding a comfortable retirement.”