sacred valley, peru
18-21 may, 2023
I keep thinking of hiking over the uneven stones half eaten by the jungle & thousands of individual feet. A path laid into the sides of mountains & etched through caves & over leaning bridges. What a place to have been.
Starting in a lush valley then continuing up up up above the treeline to the bright beating sun of the alpine with its sharp air & soothing breezes.
Then down again to alpine valleys, freezing overnight but you can still hear the distant music of the jungle as the sun sets behind the mountains. An explosion of stars.
Finally down into the Amazon with the thick foliage stacked on top of each other, all different shapes growing out of the rock & between the uneven stairs carved around them. The bird calls. The chorus of insects & frogs singing all night long.
The final push up slick jungle stairs rising vertically into the clouds. The locals call them "Gringo Killers" & I climb them using all of my limbs for balance.
Then, finally, the Sun Gate. High in the mountains perched hanging over the jungle. Sometimes this is your first glimpse of Machu Picchu, but on our Sunday morning the mist & clouds hung to the mountains like a white sheet in humid weather.
For the briefest of moments the mist rolls up, revealing the city & Huayna Picchu crowned in clouds. The hikers gathered around the Gate clap & cheer & then just as quickly the fog descends again.
The Sun Gate is the end of the Inca Trail but you're not there yet. You continue over the alternating smooth & jagged stones & through the mist & ruins until Machu Picchu finally reveals itself.
Huayna Picchu is always crowned in clouds it seems. Machu Picchu mountain is behind, & the city lays between these two sacred peaks. Machu Picchu the masculine protector & Huayna Picchu the feminine. The Inca viewed mountains as gods & holy places. As living things. They built into their natural form because they did not see themselves as the dominators of the land, in stark contrast to the colonizers who would shortly come to destroy them.
Machu Picchu city was abandoned in a rush to hide their most sacred places from the Spaniards who came to demolish them & slap a Catholic church on top – as happened in Cusco, once the capital of the Incan Empire. The plan to conceal worked, the city was hidden from outsiders for centuries.