C & C globetrotting around the world…

Machu Picchu is as amazing as everyone says. We did not do the famous Inca Trail, but arrived on the site before sunrise anyway. It’s nice to see the site empty before the hoards of other people arrive. It was also very fascinating watching the mist glide over the ruins before the sun reappeared again. The Incas started building the “estate” around 1400, but abandoned it as an official site for the Inca rulers a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911, earning its name of “The Lost City of the Incas”. Over the years most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like. The restoration work continues to this day. Since the site was never known to the Spanish during their conquest, it is highly significant as a relatively intact cultural site, only destroyed by earthquakes.

The city sits in a saddle between the two mountains Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu, with impressive views down two valleys and a nearly impassable mountain at its back. The hillsides leading to it have been terraced, not only to provide more farmland to grow crops, but to steepen the slopes which invaders would have to ascend. It is believed that it has land to grow food for about four times as many people as ever lived there. Because the Incas didn’t write and the Spanish never found Machu Picchu, not much known is about it. There are many different theories, but they agree on some things. Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Intihuatana (Hitching post of the Sun), the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows, all located in the Sacred District of Machu Picchu. The central buildings of Machu Picchu use the classical Inca architectural style of polished dry-stone walls of regular shape. The Incas were masters of this technique, called ashlar, in which blocks of stone are cut to fit together tightly without mortar. Many junctions in the central city are so perfect that it is said not even a blade of grass fits between the stones. Some Inca buildings were constructed using mortar, but by Inca standards this was quick, shoddy construction, and was not used in the building of important structures. Peru is a highly seismic land, and mortar-free construction was more earthquake-resistant than using mortar. The stones of the dry-stone walls built by the Incas can move slightly and resettle without the walls collapsing. How they moved and placed the enormous blocks of stones remains a mystery, although the general belief is that they used hundreds of men to push the stones up inclined planes.

Machu Picchu is a really impressive sight and we spent about 5 hours walking around and discovering its many nooks and corners. As can be seen in the pictures, we loved all angles and took a ton of pictures. Each building is nothing special, but if you consider that the complex is built on top of a steep mountain at about 2,500m altitude, it is amazing. But to put it in perspective, Christoph kept on saying that the Romans built grand cities (such as Trier and Rome) that existed already 1,500 years earlier than the Incas…