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The Ultimate View and the Park Entrance

THERE are a few scenes in the world that are so photographed, that the images stick in the memory even though you have never been there before. Finally when you do arrive, you look at the scene in three dimensions, hear the sounds, smell the smells and feel the surroundings, although it is so familiar to you, it seems surreal.

That has happened to me before when I visited Milford Sound in New Zealand, seeing the scene of the mountains sweeping around the fiord for real. Now I was in another place so indelibly etched in my mind, but I was seeing it in the flesh. I had to pinch myself. I really was at the legendary city of Machu Picchu.

Despite all the photographs I had seen, and despite all the photos I was taking, no amount of photography of this scene I had seen in the past would prepare me for this experience.

We climbed down to the next level, the level where people get their photos taken. The wall we climbed down had four carefully located stone steps sticking out of the wall making for a surprisingly easy descent.

Now this was one shot that I didn’t want stuffed up, so I was close to Amy, who had the same model camera as me, and who I had been teaching a few things about shot composition, so by now she was primed up ready to take my shot. I handed my camera over to her and let her work her magic confident that I was getting some good shots.

Then we swapped over. I took her camera and took a few shots of her. I had lent her my spare polarizer, but for some reason she had never used it despite me telling her that it adds a lot more colour to the photos. Without the polarizer I feared the shots I was taking of her using her camera were going to be a bit washed out as if often the case with Japanese cameras.

The view from up here was stunning. We were very fortunate that the clouds were high above us. Quite often the view is disappointing with the clouds settling deep in the valley blocking the view. This morning we had a clear view, and fortunately there weren’t many people in the city yet. It was surreal actually being in a place where you had seen so many photos of, and it was an instantly recognisable area. Being there was totally different though. Sure I had seen this place many a time, but actually being here and experiencing it was truly amazing.

About a kilometre ahead of me was stood the towering obelisk of Waynapicchu. The city of Machu Picchu stood on the saddle between where we were standing and the cliff face. The saddle swept off to the right before meandering back to the cliff face. There was a moderate slope to contain the terraces of the city. Either side of the saddle the the slope plunged precipitously through dark green scrub into the river some four hundred metres below.

The mountain is just a part of the deeply carved greyish white granite base, known to geologists as the Vilcabamba Batolite formation. The rock was excellent for carving. The mountains here were extruded 250 million years ago – extruded at about the same time as the great flood basalt eruptions of Siberia. The runaway greenhouse effect and abundance of toxic hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere and sea was responsible for the complete extinction of ninety five percent of all plant and animal species, making way for the dinosaurs. Of course this formation occurred deep underground, never seeing the light of day to contribute to the toxic atmosphere that almost killed all life on Earth. This rock remained deep underground though until the Andes were uplifted and the rock above it eroded by rivers and glaciers.

The city itself was covered in bright yellow green grass filling the spaces between the grey terraces of the western agricultural area and the building structures. Some of the buildings were complete with only the thatched roofing missing. Other buildings lay in various states of ruin.

I was surprised to see the excellent condition of the city as it had been completely smothered in jungle when Hiram Bingham discovered the ruins in 1911.

Behind the city, on the other side of the river stood the jutting purple peaks of the jagged mountains standing some four kilometres high above sea level. To our right was a solitary small building complete with thatched roofing. This was the Recinto del Guardian – the Guardhouse. No doubt a guard would have been posted here five hundred years ago to watch for people approaching along the trail.

There was a strong spiritual presence here. It had not been inhabited for over five hundred years, but I felt a similar spiritual presence here as I had at Angkor Wat about a year ago. There was something very reverend about this place, especially as we had been on a pilgrimage through the mountains over the past four days to get here. That brought the whole experience to a totally new level. I wondered if they tourists who had come up here by train would have that same feeling as those of us who had done the track? Probably not. Doing the track had given us the time to experience the Incan ways and to built up to this climatic moment. Taking the train here would have been like flying a helicopter over a mountain rather than have actually gone and achieved it.
Here I was standing at the place where the Incan emperor would have first seen his destination at his retreat about a hundred and twenty kilometres from his home in Cuzco. This was a very remote outpost – so remote that the Spanish Inquisition never discovered it.

We had a couple of group shots, before setting off down the hill towards the entrance gate where we will need to pick up our tickets.

We followed Wilbur down towards the entrance gate to get our tickets. I would have thought this would have been arranged at the gate at Winaywayna. Not so apparently.

We were just getting off the top of the viewing platform when Amy suddenly dropped her SLR camera. It landed with quite a bang. Amazingly it didn’t shatter. She quickly picked it up and tried it and all was well. It was still taking good photos and there was no damage to the lens. She said there was nothing to worry about because she had dropped it several times so far on her trip around the world.

Now that was intriguing as she had the same model camera as me. I had never dropped my camera before despite taking it travelling in all sorts of outdoor locations totally unsuitable for any electronic equipment. I had taken over fifty thousand shots with it to date and still it was in very good condition. It was kind of nice to know that it could survive a fall onto hard rock like this. Not that I was at all willing to put that to the test.
 We followed a narrow path through the top of the city down from terrace to terrace. Although the top of each terrace was flat following the contours of the mountain, the drop from the terraces was precarious at over fifty degrees. This would have been an extremely difficult city to build so far away from anywhere.

The echoes of the river thundering below us reverberated amongst the precipitous mountains as we approached the crest of the ridge and continued heading downhill. We passed an interesting natural rock from where a lot of people were getting photos taken. This must be the “other” picture perfect photo location. We continued down a path passing a few stone huts that would have served as houses. Finally we reached the new looking wooden entrance building. It was painted a dull khaki green no doubt to blend in with the surrounding scrub.

Once through the entrance we waited on a platform above the road where buses were dropping off tourists. It felt strange to be in such a crowded environment with so many non-exploring tourists without having the experience of the trail all waiting with us. I supposed the one thing they had on their side was that they were a lot cleaner than us hikers who hadn’t washed properly for three days.

We approached the entrance gate, and Wilbur showed them our passes. They gave us a map and a ticket each and let us through. My ticket number was 711750. Now we were officially in the city.

Marissa and Amanda hurried across the city to Waynapicchu to climb the steep hill as Wilbur led the rest of us back into the city going past the grain storage houses.

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