The Magic of Machu Picchu

This is the final of seven installments.  Click here to read from the beginning.

We were to meet the bus at five-thirty – and since the station was a stone’s throw away from the hostel, the walk took 30 seconds – 28 more than I needed to determine that Aguas Calientes was one of the darkest towns on Earth.  It wasn’t for lack of city light, for while that was sparse, it wasn’t the problem.  The problem was lack of SKY.  The town lay at the bottom of a narrow gorge, with steep mountain walls a thousand feet high.  This is obviously the place where the South America chapter of the Twilight vampires live.

Just like one of them, Angel appeared behind us, and we boarded the bus.  A chill was in the air, just enough to fog the windows.  That turned out to be a good thing, since the path up the steep mountain consisted of turn after hairpin turn.  The vegetation made it appear that the edge of the abyss was just past the nearest tree.  By the time we reached the top, first light had been upon us for several minutes.

The lines were starting to form, but it wasn’t quite Disneyworld.  A short walk around the brick path, and there it was, cast entirely in shadow.  Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, was there in living black-and-white and brown, the only trace of color in the pale blue sky above.  Even though we were at the top of this mountain, the surrounding peaks formed a giant nest around the ancient city.  We wouldn’t see the sun pop over the peaks for at least an hour.

So there we sat, on ledges made possible by Inca builders dead for half a millennium, listening as Angel pointed out different buildings, and taught us about Father Sun and Mother Earth, and how both must always be respected because they are the source of all life.  He showed us where we could expect the sun to appear on this particular date.

When the beam finally broke through, the brush of the sun drew a line harder than any Thomas Kincade painting, like a perfectly straight sword of yellow, slowing descending on the city, just as it had for centuries.  Then, for the few minutes that represented the cusp of daylight and darkness, I snapped photos as the sun first kissed the temple atop the ruins proper, then the peaks of the other high walls. 

Seeing that one thing made all the stiffness I felt from climbing out of bed go away.  For a few minutes, there were no worries, no conflict.  There was nothing except me, the Earth and Sun, and my cheap digital camera.

Within the space a man can hold his breath, the sun bathed the city in light, and it looked normal.  To such an extent that a 500 year old city hand made from stone can look normal.

Angel let us gawk for a while longer, then we headed around the mountain to see the Inca Bridge, a stone trail that crossed the face of a cliff a hundred feet wide and three hundred feet tall.  I guess it was too difficult to just build the trail at the bottom or the top of the cliff, it was much easier to just carve into the side of it.  Maybe that’s where some of the city stone originated.

Angel then led us around the other side of the mountain, to a place called the Sun Gate.  Angel had referred to himself as a “mixed man” when he discussed his heritage, but this is where I discovered that he is half mountain goat.  He’s 60 years old, and could out-walk us lowlanders ten times over.

After a quick twenty minute hike…How do I know it was 20 minutes?  Because every time we asked Angel how much farther, that’s what he said…anyway, almost an hour later, we reached the sun gate.  We had seen Inca burial sites and all sorts of medicinal plants along the way, but the sun was definitely there, beating down on all of us.  It was then that I finally understood the magic of this place.

The sun gate was nothing more than a giant stone door, but on the morning of the December solstice, the mystical sunrise we had watched earlier, instead of slipping over the mountain,  would for the first minute occupy only this doorway, sending a ray of light ten feet wide toward the city, which would strike the altar at the sun temple.  For those few seconds, it would be the brightest spot in Machu Picchu.

Angel stood there, closed his eyes, and tried to describe the mystical power of the Lost City of the Incas, but he couldn’t articulate how it was supposed to feel - it was like he didn’t have the words.  For a man who speaks Spanish, English, Italian, and Quechua, that might be a surprise to some.

There are some things that can’t be described.  They can only be felt.