Five delicious hours at Machu Picchu guided by our Intrepid guide from 6:30 am to 11:30 am. Once our tour guide left us to our own devices with our return bus and train tickets in our pockets to take us back to Ollantaytambe, I found myself with 4 hours at hand to kill in this beautiful land. My first instinct is to find my way back to the entrance without having to exit the fortress so that I could go to the sun gate, no chance! Once you have entered the one way path of the dictated labyrinth, Peruvian guards catch you at every turn you try to take to go back! After couple of futile attempts to benevolently beat the guards, I let it go...
Our guide and I just before he takes off to get back to his girlfriend in Cusco
I have to exit and get into crowd at the outside entrance, now swollen up to ten times what it was at 6:30 am, get in line, and get back in… This mentality is seen only in developing countries like Turkey. I don't know what the purpose of this may be, tire people out so that they leave sooner than they would like to, just to keep the crowd flowing in one direction, or to have more visitor numbers with double entry per person, for whatever reason. Who knows., I hope there is a good reason for it. I have made up my mind that I won’t allow anything to upset me at this crowded, yet, still peaceful place. I follow the crowd and exit.
I get back in line, not that bad actually, I realize that some of the huge crowd outside is made up of those that are done with their visit in Machu Picchu, waiting for a bus to take them back to Agua Caliente. In five minutes I am back in, climbing over the 2 ft high Inca steps one more time. I stop when I have to catch my breath, chat with other visitors until I come to the turn toward the sun gate. Two gentlemen from our larger Intrepid group are doing the same route, but they are fast, they don’t stop to take pictures or just watch what we have left behind turning our backs to Machu Picchu… I have lots of time, I don’t want to rush. I spend time taking in all of the beauty around me, the Machu Picchu that is getting smaller and smaller with every switchback, the mountains that are getting higher and higher around us, the wild flowers of all colors, the llamas grazing on the terraces, the fog forcing the mountain tops to play hide and seek with the sun, the river flowing gregariously down in the valley...
Urubamba River in its namesake valley down below from the sungate
A group of young men anywhere from 17 to early 20s pass by me with friendly greetings; this is youth. I let them pass, too. The higher I get, the cloudier it gets, at some point I feel like I am in the cloud, and I am. It is not raining, but I feel wet and put on my raincoat. I recall my visits to the Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey. Even in the summer, how wet and chilling they would make me feel, just like here. The plateaus of the Kacgar Mountains in Northern Turkey surrounded with harsh peaks. Mountain landscape is so similar all over the world: Beautiful, harsh, protective but dangerous at the same time, warm and cold simultaneously, rich and unforgiving... First destination is the sun gate. I stop one more time and look back. I am trying to figure out which part of Machu Picchu is the Father Sun Temple, which would align with the sungate in the old days during summer and winter solstices. I wish I had brought my binoculars, unfortunately I didn't. I just try to have a "de ja vu" sensation from the Inka times...
I will learn later on from fellow hikers that did the actual Inka trail that they walked all the way to Machu Picchu and entered the fortress from this very sun gate. I look down to the valley one more time. Sometimes the fog draws a veil over Machu Picchu and the mountains behind it. Sometimes it condenses into a cloud that settles over the valley just like our experience at the 4450 m summit on Quarry Trail, or when I had climbed up the Ilgaz Mountain summit in Western Black Sea Mountains in Turkey. It is so much fun to watch this playful spectacle of the nature.
Fog turning into a cloud settling over the river and valley as I climb up higher
I continue climbing up further from the sungate towards additional ruins on top of the next hill. There is a small building with four walls and window spaces all around with no roof top. A native, man, most likely a Quechua, dressed in the same attire as the guards down below, sitting on one of the "window" sills, straddling the Inca wall. He looks at us as if he has transcended centuries. Apparently, the sungate and its associated structures need extra protection! I will learn better soon there may be a different reason behind this.
Visitors are walking around almost aimlessly, all of us enveloped by the cloud, which is drizzling itself onto us, onto the lovely llamas that have traveled up alongside us, the trail, the terraces of old, Machu Picchu in the distance, and the Urubamba Valley. Everything is under and behind a gray veil now, which has a different somber beauty... I want to get to the very top of the ruins and look at all this beauty from up above. To the right of the "building" is a set of stairs that lead to two landings 15-20 feet higher than the "room" we are in. I climb up the stairs to my left. There are some 20 of them. I notice that the group of young men that passed me on the trail is up on the ledge of the top of the stairs to my left. Sweet, perhaps I may catch up with them and see what this group is about. All I know at this point is that they are a bunch of boys from different parts of the US. I reach the top step and as I do, I hear somebody snorting something followed with coughing and sneezing. I look up to see one of them turn away from me. What is going on here...
My peripheral vision catches a pipe being passed around and a couple other young men are smoking something that is not a cigarette. Although I am on the same platform with them, nobody seems to notice a stranger or "that old lady" with whom they chatted gregariously on the trail. I wonder if they were already high on the trail, was it why some of them were more self confident than the situation called for on the trail? Hmmm, this group is not really "here" at this point, who knows what they are seeing right now, how they are perceiving the beauty around and below us... Perhaps they are seeing things that I don't, who knows. I decide to leave them alone in their 'lost'-ness or perhaps discovery of experiences that I will never do, wishing them to be safe just as I always do with my daughter when she travels.
I stop and take one more long look at MP, stretching behind the veil of the mist and drizzling rain, calm, quiet, and peaceful. I wonder if it enjoys being stumped on by this many of us every day of the year. The terraces connect MP to the peripheral structures of it down below, still buried under vegetation and earth. My gaze naturally drifts down to the valley and Urumbaya river, who knows with what might it is flowing in the depth of the valley that I can’t hear at this elevation. I start heading down, savoring every additional moment of this divine, pristine, magical vista. I understand how and why Incas developed all their legends, this land is so conducive to creativity, imagination, and story telling…
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| Wymapicchu Mountain and Machu Picchu from the sun gate |
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