On our way we stopped in the small village of Ollantaytambo to experience the way an Incan village was laid out and to see the inside of a home with rooms that surrounded a central courtyard. One room was filled with guinea pigs, a staple of rural Peruvian diet.
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| No they aren’t holding live Guinea pigs. |
Late morning found us boarding the Hiram Bingham luxury train where we had lunch while enjoying the beautiful river and mountains as we descended into the Sacred Valley where we will find Machu Picchu.
We arrived in the town of Aguas Calientes then took the bus up the mountain on winding switchbacks to the entrance to the ruins and the Hotel Santuary Lodge.
The Incas moved into this area of the Andes, along the Urubamba river, around 600 AD and stopped building in the 1300s. By 1400s they moved to another city, Villa Bamba, about 72 miles away. Most likely they were run off by other Incans or the lack of food. That city was totally destroyed by the Conquistadors in 1872 and that was the end of the Incan dynasty. They only occupied Machu Picchu for about 100 years and the Spanish never discovered Machu Picchu.
The word Machu Pichu means Gold. There are 178 buildings on the site for 700-1000 people. The round building is a temple to the Sun god with one window facing east. What looked liked other windows was actually niches for idols or other objects. The structure was most likely covered with gold or plaster painted yellow.
Machu Picchu was discovered in 1907 by Hiram Bingham. He returned in 1914 -1921 to remove a lot of the vegetation that covered the stones but nothing else happened to the site until the Peruvian government took over in 1968 but by then most of the stucco and paintings had been lost to the jungle.
We ended our afternoon at the Sacred Plaza where two unfinished temples bordered two sides, a third side was another unknown building and the west side was open to the setting sun.
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