A Trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu

As a former college professor who has taught American archaeology for over 35 years, I have always wanted to visit Machu Picchu, the Inca site in the Peruvian Andes discovered by Hiram Bingham, with the help from local Indians, in 1911. It is relatively inaccessible and in a beautiful setting above the Rio Urubamba Valley on a ridge between Machu Picchu Mountain and Huayna Picchu Mountain, at 8040 feet above sea level. Because it was unknown to the Spanish, the site and its structures are remarkably well preserved. It and its discovery has the aura of an Indiana Jones adventure or, at least, the closest real archaeologists get to such an adventure.

Machu Picchu (Site and Mountain)

Our trip to the site began in Lima, at the same time leaders of the Pacific rim nations (APEC)were meeting there. Parked at the Lima airport were numerous official jets from the large and small nations that participated, including China, Russia, Japan, and, of course, the United States. Air Force One and George W. Bush were in town for the meeting. We would return to Lima just after it ended, but with the security at hand in Lima and the inconvenience it would cause us, it was fortunate that we were headed for Cuzco and not staying there. The flight to Cuzco on LAN Peru Airline took about 75 minutes, and it took us from sea level in Lima to 11,200 feet above sea level in Cuzco. My wife and I had taken high altitude medication (Diamox) to minimize the affects of this altitude, and we were glad we did, as we saw a number of tourists who became sick in Cuzco from the altitude change. We became tired easier, but taking it slower and drink plenty of water kept us healthy.

Ruins of the Inca Qoricancha under the arches of Santo Domingo Convent

We stayed at the Hotel Libertador, near the center of the city and across the street from the Santo Domingo Convent and the ruin of the Inca Temple of the Sun (Qoricancha) over which the convent was built. After lunch at the hotel, we walked around the city, visiting the convent and the Inca ruins within it, the Plaza de Armas and the Cuzco Cathedral (built over the Inca Wiracocha Palace), and other sights in the city. We had a wonderful guide who showed us Cuzco's sights and later Machu Picchu: Fernando Boca. We met him at our hotel, and he walked with us around the city and then took us above the city to the Inca fortress, Sacsayhuaman. The fine Inca stonework in the city is readily distingishable from modern and that of the Spanish. It is made of closely fitted large stones, sometimes regular and flat, as at the Qoricancha, and sometimes irregular and pillow-like, such as at Sacsayhuaman. Both forms are without mortar and are of impressive craftsmanship. Spanish and modern walls of buildings in the center city often rest on foundations of Inca walls. Our guide spoke English very well and was very knowledgeable about the Inca and their culture. He gave us the native point of view; for example, he pointed out native additions and alterations to numerous things that the Spanish forced the Indians to construct, to paint, and even to think.

Arches of Santo Domingo built on Inca walls

Sacsayhuaman (sounds like "sexy woman," according one of our bus drivers) is an large complex built on one of the hills overlooking the city. The stonework is massive, and some individual stones must have required huge efforts to put them in place and to fit them together. The size of both the stonework and the site suggests the formidable power of the ruling Inca.

Sacsayhuaman

The trip to Machu Picchu involved a bus ride over mountain roads from Cuzco to the train station at Ollanta (about 1.5 hours) and the train ride along the Rio Vilcanota valley to Aguas Calientes (another 1.5 hours). The train goes where no road goes, so it is the only way to get to the site, unless you want to walk the Inca Trail from Cuzco. The trip takes you from an Alpine mountainous environment at 11,200 feet to a tropical mountainous one at 8040 feet. From the train station at Aguas Calientes in the valley, a road goes up the mountain to the site. You can walk a well-defined trail or take a bus, which snakes its way up to the site on a narrow dirt road with numerous switchbacks. We took the bus and noted that some of our fellow passengers closed their eyes for parts of the trip.

Aguas Calientes train station

The site is beautiful and a magnificent monument to Inca culture and technology. It is breath-taking in it setting and scope, and not because of the altitude. We carried with us a copy of Ruth M. Wright and Alfredo Valencia Zegarra's recently revised book The Machu Picchu Guidebook: A Self-Guided Tour (Johnson Books, Boulder, 2004), and with it and our guide, I believe we had a wonderful tour of the site. We visited and photographed all the site's landmarks: the Temple of the Sun (which was inaccessible because it was under excavation) and the cave below it, the royal residence, the Sacred Plaza, the Intiwatana, the Group of the Mortars, the Temple of the Condor, the Slide, several of the site's 16 fountains, and others. Some areas of the site have been reconstructed, most probably to stabilize and to make the site more accessible to visitors, and thatched roofs have been added to a few of the guard houses; but, for the most part, the site is one of a kind: it was not destroyed or built upon by subsequent cultures.

Guardhouses

Stonework in the royal residence

Temple of the Three Windows

Intiwatana Stone

One of 16 fountains

Condor stone in the Temple of the Condor

Agricultural terraces

There is a hotel and restaurant at the site, and there are more tourist facilities in Aguas Calientes. Everything from postcards to jewelry to clothing (more tee shirts) are sold in the stalls outside the train station.

Tourists and Aguas Calientes vendors

We returned to Cuzco the same way we came, and to Lima again by air. We took a tour of Lima before leaving. Our Lima guide, unlike our Cuzco guide, had no native heritage and no identification with native culture. In fact, Betty, as she introduced herself, complained that the native people come down from the mountains to Lima for employment and pay no taxes on their earnings. She said they move in with family in crowded, poor housing and have overburdened the city's infrastructure. She took us to the main plaza and the Cathedral, where we saw the tomb of Francisco Pizarro, who after arriving in 1532 proceeded to destroy Inca culture. Nearby is the Presidential Palace, and around the corner is the Church of San Francisco, which has mummies and is the roosting place of hundreds of pigeons. The center of the city has beautiful colonial architecture, in addition to the numerous churches, and this is recognized by its designation as a UNESCO Cultural World Heritage Site. It also has several important archaeology museums, including the Archaeological Museum, with its notable Inca ceramic and Paracas textile collections, and the Gold Museum, which displays the lure for the Conquistadors. Peru is an archaeologist's paradise. I want to go back soon.

Pizarro's Tomb (right) in the Lima Cathedral