day 4 - machu picchu

Everyone was waiting for the first ray of sun at the Sun Gate.
I ran towards Machu Picchu from the Sun gate 20 minutes before 7:00am. Just enough time to see the first light when I arrived.

Machu Picchu is the name of the mountain. It means old mountain. Huayana Picchu means young mountains, it was the mountain behind Machu Picchu which you can see from this picture. The old mountain couple with the young mountain, just like yin and yang, life and death, past and future, everything is two-faced.

The reason why Machu Picchu was so famous was because of Hiram Bingham who found the lost city in 1911. He wrote an fascinating story about the "lost city of Incas" (it was supposed to be an archaeological report).

Machu Picchu was surrounded by roughed, inaccessible mountains. The ruin was kind of intact. Bingham said it was never found by the Spanish and it was a secret holy city or a "lost city". But it's actually more of a "abandoned city" than a "lost city". Some archaeologists said that the Spanish did record the existence of Machu Picchu. The Incas set fire on the city when the Spanish came. And the fact that most "holy city" in the world are usually not very "secret" makes Bingham's report seem doubtful (if it's secret, how can you market your religion?).

But still, something remain very secretive in Machu Picchu, e.g. 70% of the human remains found in Machu Picchu were females. And there are lots of interesting gimmicks around the city.

I guess it justified to take a photo of myself after 4 days of hiking.

This was the chamber for keeping mummies. It's facing east so that the first ray of sun will reach into the chamber everyday.

The plaza divided the city into two sections, the left hand side was the religious section, the right hand side was for everything else.

Bingham said this might be the temple where the first Inca was born. He said Machu Picchu might be the origin of the Incas. The argument was a bit weak if he just base his proof on the 3 windows temple here corresponding to the traditional Inca legends (in the legend, 3 brothers started their journey from a 3 windows temple).

Inca practiced human sacrifice (not just human but animals too). They picked the most beautiful girl among the noble families and chose them as the virgin of the sun (whose lifetime career was to be a human sacrifice). When they were around 12 to 13, they would be brought to the high mountains or local temples and was fed with coca leaves and then ...

Reasoning of the idea: The Incas believed that life originated from Pacha Mama, the mother earth. That's quite true, according the Christian's belief, men and women were made of earth. Even scientifically, life was formed because of some in-organic materials (e.g. soil) interacting with lightening. It made sense to them that if we take from mother earth, we would need to return something back to mother earth. That's why some human sacrificed or mummies (naturally dead) was wrapped in a fetus position (you go back to the same way you came from).

The rock was sculptured exactly like the mountains behind (there was another bigger rock like this near the entrance of Huayana Picchu).

The famous sundial. The four corners of the rock on the top point to the exact position of North, East, South and West. I verified that with my watch compass (the front corner in the picture).

It was not known that Incas have knowledge of the compass, how they figured that out was a mystery.

Another interesting thing about the sundial was at noon of June 21st, the upper rock will cast no shadow upon the lower rock. This usually only happens to places on the equator (because the sun was directly above). Obviously the rock was tilted in a very precise position to achieve this effect.

Again the temple of the sun always have a huge rock inside.

The shape of this chamber resemble an open-winged condor. Incas believe that Condor will bring the death to the heaven. It will take them 3 months to do so (the same time a baby condor learn how to fly).

DJ- and I walked to Huayana Picchu afterwards. The trail was quite narrow and the width of the steps was in-proportional to the size of any human feet.

Near the top, there was a little tunnel, we had to take off our backpack to go through. After that it was the top.

The mountain across is Machu Picchu (which is also the name of the city). The view is not as good as looking from the other side.

Going down is very steep.

The hand rail save up from falling down directly.

We detoured half way down to the moon temple. When I saw the sign that says "one hour", I thought it was kidding. There couldn't be that much space behind the mountain. I was surprised it was right. the trail went up and down, through the jungle, down to the very bottom of the valley. And the temple showed up suddenly. It was kind of cool because no one was there.

Those are the shelves for the mummies.

I was hopping to find an underground tunnel inside the temple. There was a few shallow caves there, but no sign of tunnels.

There was a hidden pathway to the top of the mountain (maybe no hidden, it's just not obvious to me). And above the temple was a secret pathway to the top of the mountain. We saw someone came down from there and asked them where they came from. They told us they came from the top. I thought they meant the upper mountain, I didn't know they meant THE top. It's not funny to climb up that mountain twice.

Almost to the top, we need to climb the very steep steps. And after that there was a place one need to walk around a giant rock that block the way (you need to hold the rock else you fall down the cliff). I did it the coward way, I climbed up instead of climbing around. It was longer and more difficult but safer.

It started raining but the rain also brought the rainbow. The flag of Cuzco was a rainbow which represent the seven tribes of the Incas.

We took the bus down from Machu Picchu. This kid ran after the bus from the top to the bottom, at every corner he yelled to us "GOOD BYE", and at the bottom he came up the bus and asked for tips. He was the P?? (forgot the name) boy. Those people in ancient time were messengers and running fast was their specialty.