Megann's Blog: Peru (day four)

I've genuinely been enjoying my late throwbacks to mid-March. Reminiscing over the greatest adventure of my lifetime (so far) has been a true pleasure for me these last few days, and I'm so glad that I have eight moredays of Peruvian posts to look forward to!

As I'm sure is evident, I've been trying to relay each of my days in South America as if they were chronological chapters in a story. In my idealistic mind's eye, I see the entries in my journal forming an exciting plot line, taking the same peaked, mountainous shape as every stereotypical plot line I've ever analyzed in literature class. My June 01 post served as an introduction to my adventure, and then introduced the rising action (my exploration of Cusco and small Inca sites around The Sacred Valley), which escalated exponentially in my sequential entries until... the climax! Humph... I guess, my Peruvian plot line isn't quite so cliché as I originally thought; the climax of my story has arrived a bit sooner than would be expected.

"So, what is the climax of a story with no conflict?" you ask, excited at the prospect of its early reveal. It's the most exciting part, of course; and in the gorgeous, green, mountainous, historically infamous setting of Peru, the highlight of my adventure could, really, be only one thing: the most famous and mysterious Inca palace hidden in between the high peaks of the Andes Mountains... Machu Picchu. Therefore, I dub the grand finale of my March 18 hike: the summit of my plot line. Although the actual exploration of what very well may be the world's most famous ruin came on the 19 of March, the view of Machu Picchu, when I finally laid eyes on it after a long and taxing day of trekking through the great ups and downs of the Andes, nearly made my heart stop in my chest. It was positively incredible; "I'm the king of the world!"

Below, my heart-stopping climax is preceded by a continuation of the rising action (a train ride to the head of the Inca Trail at Kilometer 104, and the exhausting, yet absolutely amazing, hike from Kilometer 104 to Machu Picchu).

The magnificent travels of Megann Phillips: a journal

March 18, 2013

A list of random writings from a train: riding the Peru Rail from Ollantaytambo to Kilometer 104

1) The Urubamba River is as wide as the Columbia River, and probably just as as deep. It is muddy brown and raging. Our guide says it is too polluted to fish from, but even still, it is pretty set in contrast with towering, cloud-covered rocky points, rich green foliage, and red-roofed adobe houses.

2) Elvis (our guide) says the river is much more clear in June and July.

3) I see Inca ruins everywhere! I almost missed the remains of a small village, constructed with relatively large stones fitting together seamlessly, because it was a view from the windows opposite my seat. Minutes after, I saw from a distance another small ruined Inca village in the hills. Their terraces are everywhere, laced through almost every slope; steep, stepped, even, somehow enduring all these hundreds if years.

4) Elvis tells us that he is from the Amazon region of Peru. He says that they speak an uncommon language in his home village in the jungle-- even more uncommon than Quechua, which, I guess, is not quite so uncommon in Peru. Elvis admits to being fluent in both of these tongues, along with Spanish and English and Portuguese, and I find myself seething in jealously of his five-language arsenal... I only have one and a half.

5) I like Elvis; he's funny and interesting. He tells stories in the train that sound like they are taken from the pages of The Jungle Book. When he was little, his father brought baby cougars back from a hunting trip. He raised them and loved them as pets, but eventually their instincts has predators kicked in and one of the grown-up cubs attempted to attack him. After that, Elvis said his village left the cougars to their own devices in the wild. He talked about, too, how he hated monkeys because they used to steal his toys as a child. "You leave your toys outside for too long, and they become not yours anymore," he said.

The hike from kilometer 104 to Machu Picchu

Our trail began at an ancient Inca resting place-- a couple of ruined buildings which served as a retreat of rest and worship along the extensively long Inca trading route. It was the crown jewel of the three tiny rest stops constructed by the Inca along the trail, containing three roofed buildings and a altar, instead of a single open shelter. It was a wonderful and scenic place to start our journey after jumping off the train, and the rest of the landscape along the old trail did not disappoint. Ninety-five percent of the trail was paved by the Inca with flat stones, and because the trail was mostly uphill, stair cases were abundant as well as breath-taking views.

One flight of stairs Elvis called "the monkey stairs" because it was so steep that a lot of hikers (particularly foreigners) use both their hands and their feet to climb. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that Dad was one of these monkey tourists, but I may have been too, had I not needed the use of my hands to protect my camera from hitting the steps in front of me. When we reached the top of what at the time seemed to be such a monumental obstacle, it was as if it were simply another forty or so feet less to hike before reaching the famed Machu Picchu. We took a deep breath and moved on, our egos slightly bruised after seeing a large group of elderly Chinese people had also scaled our mountain minutes before.

"The famed Machu Picchu"... We didn't get to explore it after we reached the end of our trek today; that is on tomorrow's itinerary. We did, however, set foot within the less known (but altogether awesome) ruins if Wiñaywayna. There, we stood in the remains of an old temple of worship to the rainbow deity. It was the shape of a half circle, with seven windows and a view of a dramatic waterfall in the green mountainside. There was another enormous flight if stairs there, too. By far the longest count of steps we ascended on our journey, it was lined with beautiful baths, natural water still flowing continuously through their spickets. Elvis said these may have been used for ceremonial cleansing before paying a visit to Machu Picchu in Inca times. The buildings here were a vast labyrinth, unlike anything I've seen yet, they easily outshine Pisac and Ollantaytambo, and I thought them more beautiful because their restoration by people of the modern era was minimal and unnoticeable; the stonework seemed to have lasted without assistance, intricate and firm as the day it was laid.

The Temple if the Sun, in between Wiñaywayna, was not as elaborate as I had expected it would be. The last historic site before our arrival at the main attraction, it seemed to be... well, just a building on a high-up point. One can never understate an example of Incan architecture, however. No matter how simple the building, it is always build with a firm foundation intended to endure the ages. The sun temple was no exception, and standing in its doorway, I had a fantastic areal view of the Valley, including Machu Picchu.

Welcome to Peru: a side note and not-so-fun fact

Elvis says racism is abundant in Lima. He isn't allowed into some establishments because of skin color's representation of his Native American heritage. Speaking Quechua, too, has come to be regarded as primitive and distasteful, frowned-upon. The people in the Capitol forget: they are almost all descended from the Inca too, despite the fairer hue if their complexion. The Conquistadores brought no women with them to conquer the lands of South America, and the mothers of their children were the daughters of dark-skinned natives.

We took a taxi to the train station in Ollantaytambo. Just the same as nearly every taxi in the Cusco region, ours proudly bore an ornamental representation of Virgin Mary swinging from the rear view mirror.