MachuPicchu - Part 2

Safely arrived at the entrance to MP, valid ticket for 10am entry to Huaynupicchu mountain in hand, I was left with an hour to spare before my guide turned up for my tour. I wasn´t sure how I was to find him, but had been told somewhat cryptically that "His name is Miguel and his jacket will match his flag." Further clarity was not possible due to the mutual lack of common language between me and my contact at 4 in the morning.
It was ineveitably raining hard, so I waited under cover close to the entrance.
At 45 minutes past when my guide was supposed to show up, I decided that South-American scheduling or no, I had to go hunt for him. After establishing that he had in fact somehow already started the tour and was somewhere within MP complex, another guide raced me round almost the whole mountain in an attempt to find my tour, which, breathlessly, we eventually did. He was wearing an orange poncho and carrying a rainbow coloured flag. Hmmm.
Anyway, the tour was all pretty informative, the usual stuff about rocks that look, sometimes quite dubiously, like either a condor, a snake or a puma - each of these representing a different aspect of the Inka world view. Lots of stuff to do with shadows in various shapes of llamas and such that only appear during summer or winter solstice. Windows that align with the sun during solstice. And so on....
All very interesting, but having seen a fair number of Inka sights by now I could probably reel off this stuff by heart. And sometimes,just sometimes, I think a person could be forgiven for saying that, on occasion, a rock doesn´t have to look like anything except, perhaps, a rock.
Tour done, I made my way to the entrance to Huanupicchu (I´ll call it HP now). I should explain; HP is a mountain that rises monument-like to 300m above MP, at the opposite end from the entrance. Intrepid people that have slung themselves out of bed at 4am and beat their way to the front of the bus queue are permitted the privilage of climbing up for an extraordinary view down into the MP complex.
At 10am I began my hike up. The climb was extremely steep, essentially 300 vertical metres of crazy, uneven, rain-slick, gigantic-stepped stairs. Standard sheer drops to one side or another. A clamber through a couple of caves. A last few steps up a perilous little ladder. And then I emerged at the glorious summit.
Into a cloud.
Everything around was solid white. An infinity of whiteness, as opaque as the blackest night but filled with blinding light. There was nothing else to do but sit around and wait. And at least the rain had stopped.

Gradually the light broke through the clouds, and they shifted, to reveal what has to be one of the most stunning views I´ll ever get to lay eyes on. Hundreds of metres below the whole complex of MachuPicchu is laid out like a miniature city shining golden in the morning sunlight, white clouds drifting over and constantly concealing and revealing different aspects of the scene. You can see all the way to the river far below, and all the neat horizontal lines of the Inka terraces cut into the hillsides. A few metres away from where I was sitting, little whirring birds chased through the shrubbery and astonishingly bright and metallic green hummingbirds were feeding from the fushia pink flowers. Incredibly beautiful. It wa svery easy to see why the Inkas considered the mountains to be holy and built their temples high up in the clouds.

Waiting in the rain at 4am for an hour and a half after an hours sleep in order to get my ticket for HP, it did cross my mind on not a few occasions that perhaps nothing was really going to be worth this much effort. Well, it really was.

Sadly, no sleep and chaotic planning don´t really do anything for my organisation. I forgot to but my fully charged battery in my camera. There are no photos to come of any of this. So, you´ll all just have to believe me when I say I´ve been to these incredible places. I don´t think I could forget them, so photos seem a little beside the point anyway. If you want to see what it was like, you´ll all just have to go!

xoxo