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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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We woke up at 4:30 to get a super early bus ride to the top of Machu Picchu. It was just gorgeous (pics attached). To be honest, I´m still not sure who built it, why it was built, how it was built or why it was abandoned. And, I´m not sure if this is due to my inability to pay attention to guides when there are spectacular landscapes around me or whether no one actually knows the answers to these questions. Feel free to let me know your thoughts...
Anyhow, after touring around (and clearly not paying attention to my guia) for a while, we decided to climb Wayna Picchu, a mountain next to Machu Picchu what gives you a wicked perspective on Machu Picchu once climbed. I´m not exactly sure what possessed us to climb another mountain at 9 am that morning (maybe it was the relatively lax day the day before or delirium induced by sheer exhaustion or maybe it was just trying to distract ourselves from the fact that there was no bathroom on Machu Picchu and D.T. had set in). The climb up was pretty steep - but exhilarating, because my legs actually worked and for once I was not out of breath (I kept yelling to Daniel, ¨see! I am in shape! I knew it!¨). We bumped into two of the Kiwi guys, Guy and Marcus (who had been separated from us for the last 3 days). They had been running up and down Wayna Picchu (they also carried their own bags on the Inca trail. Way too much energy!). The guys suggested that we go see the caves on the way down. The caves were only a twenty minute detour from the path down and were so worth seeing, they reckoned. So, on the way down, we decided to take their advice.
Um, three hours to their 20 minutes later, we emerged, having narrowly escaped a couple of panic attacks, asthma attacks and Mike´s continuous soliloquy, ¨if we ever get out of here, all I want is Gatorade. Í don´t care how much they cost. I´m going to buy them all and just dump them on my head. I just need Gatorade ...¨ I didn´t even see the caves, because Alex, who was a couple of minutes ahead of us deemed them ¨rubbish¨as only an Englishman can as he broke the news that although we had just descended the length of the mountain, we needed to climb back up it for an hour and then back down for 45 minutes. No point in seeing ¨rubbish¨caves when there was an additional 2 hours climbing tacked on to our already 2 hour hike.
Anyway, we got out of there alive. And I friggin´ gave it to the Kiwis when I saw them at dinner that night.
previous travel blog entry
Menar78 says:
Anna, it was built by the Incas, there are different theories for its purpose, but I think everyone agrees it was a sacret city where they went up to commune with the gods. I think I have heard that after the Inca was kidnapped by Pizarro and the empire was conquered by the Spanish, Machu Pichu was the last hide out of the royal family and other nobles.