Page 106 - ESCARPMENT MAGAZINE | Winter 2013

106 Escarpment Magazine Winter 2013
ESCARPMENT ESCAPES | mysterious machu picchu...
It was never found by the Spanish conquistadors and was “discovered” by an American historian and self-
styled explorer in 1911. Hiram Bingham heard about it and paid a local farmer’s son one dollar to lead him to it.
When he arrived at the site he found three farm families living there and the name of someone before them scrawled
on rock. Bingham was not an archeologist and failed to realize what he had found. Years later he said that it was
the capital city of the Incas and had been used as an estate, a religious site, a fortress, a citadel and a convent for
royal princesses. But no one knows for sure.
It was probably built by the amazing Incas who
erected other amazing structures, but since they had
no written language, there are no records of what
they did or how they did it. They did not possess the
wheel and no one knows how they transported mas-
sive stones from quarries miles away, lifted them into
place and fitted them together without mortar so well
that they are still in place centuries later.
Getting to Machu Picchu was never easy and the
same is true today. One has the choice of taking the
Inca trail, a brutal and dangerous four or five day
trek on foot, or a modern train from Cusco or the sta-
tion at Ollantaytambo. The train travels on a single
track beside the raging Urubamba river and takes
you to Aguas Calientes where a 20 minute bus ride
will take you to Machu Picchu itself.
We took the train to Machu Picchu and were lucky
to get there. The tracks had been covered by land-
slides and no trains had been able to get through for several days. Some people had been stranded for 24 hours
on a train that was hemmed in by slides. We managed to get on the first train to get through and arrived in the
dripping dismal town of Aguas Calientes late in the afternoon. There are relatively few hotels and ours was rather
rustic and had no heat. The rain had stopped by the next morning and we rushed to line up for the bus. However
the beauty of the site made everything worthwhile.
Machu Pichuu is not for the frail or disabled. The steps are numerous,
steep and slick but the views are truly fantastic. It is easy to understand
why Bingham imagined royal and religious purposes for the place. Ad-
mittance to the site is carefully controlled and while there were crowds
we were stuck by their silence and respectful demeanor. Only 30 per-
cent of the site has been restored but row after row of houses stand as
they were centuries ago lacking only their thatched roofs. One cannot
help but imagine plazas and temples full of people and the carefully
terraced fields filled with produce. But it is anyone’s guess as to why it
was built, how or what it was used for.
The trip back to Ollantaytambo was an unexpected treat as we found
ourselves in a very modern observation car and when we pulled off
onto a siding to let another train pass, we were entertained by the train
staff who modelled alpaca clothing accompanied by a colourful witch
doctor in full regalia. Outside the train on one side a local woman and
her family sold flowers and fruits while on the other side the raging river
tore along like nothing we had ever seen.
We were glad to have been able to visit Machu Picchu
but came away a little worried about it. In 1983 UN-
ESCO declared Machu Picchu an absolute masterpiece
of architecture and a unique testimony to the Inca civiliza-
tion but because it has attracted so many tourists the
World Monuments Fund placed Machu Picchu on its
2008Watch List of the 100Most Endangered Sites in the
world because of environmental degradation. *
Getting to Machu Picchu was never easy and
the same is true today. One has the choice
of taking the Inca trail, a brutal and danger-
ous four or five day trek on foot, or a mod-
ern train from Cusco or the station at
Ollantaytambo.