Machu Picchu

On the train to Aguas Calientes

We rode next to the Urubamba river

At our first overlook, in the background you can see the large mountain Huayna Picchu - or young mountain

Construction into the natural rock

We climbed a lot of steps!

Hayna Picchu - over the visit it would appear and disappear with the fog

Gracie and Siena living their best life

Shea went to work to get lichen out of the rocks - a maintenance job!

Happy hikers post visit

Today is the day, our Super Bowl moment. After five days we’re finally heading all the way up the Sacred Valley to see one of the seven wonders of the world: Machu Picchu.

Bags had to be packed and loaded on vans by 5:00 am. We grabbed a skinny breakfast (thanks accommodating staff) and headed out the door before sunrise.

Aching bones, blurry eyes, and fatigue. But we were on our way. It started with a 30 minute bus ride, then a 90 minutes in a train that snaked along an inconceivably steep ravine directly above a raging, angry river fed by glacial melt high in the Andes. We pulled into a tiny town called Aguas Calientes, yet we still weren’t done. We hopped into two vans and climbed straight up a mountain, steeper than anything in the Alps. Switch back after switch back, with the van a mere feet from the precipice, we looked up and the two mountains appeared as the morning mist lifted. Breathtaking, yes. But awe and humility are closer. And even these words are like clanging symbols compared to the experience.

This site, however, is not a monument to engineering genius and strange esoteric pagan religiosity. It’s actually a silent witness to something much darker: how the death cult of colonialism disappeared an entire civilization for some metal that would allow them to fund other wars to gain yet more metal. Plunder, genocide, savagery, greed. It’s hard to comprehend the staggering brutality and stupidity of the colonial project, but when you walk through this city and feel what was here—and who was here—all the moral calculations and historical analysis are silent. The only thing left is a sadness, a sickening feeling that the damage of this system and mindset may be far worse than we know.

One thing that is inescapable when walking Machu Picchu is that these were not cardboard or symbolic beings. They were not “indigenous,” “Indians,” “primitives,” or “pre-moderns.” They were flesh and blood, living and breathing human beings with cares, values, families, losses, loves, dreams, communities, culture, histories, and stories. We stood, for instance, in the room that most likely belonged to the king. It was no bigger than a tiny den, with cubbies for his children’s belongings, windows for the sunshine and the breeze, and sophisticated systems for handling sewage.

This spot was to be one of the key cultural, religious, political, and social centers for a vast and sprawling civilization of 12-16 million people, covering an area similar to the size of California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Colorado. To govern a single people in a space this large, while Europe was still waking the slumber of the Middle Ages, is nothing short of astonishing.

Machu Picchu was under construction for more than 90 years, which means four generations of of more than 10,000 artisans, stonemasons, laborers, engineers, astronomers, priests, agronomists labored day in and day out. The bureaucratic and organizational systems required to complete such a mind-boggling project, in the midst of such an inhospitable location, belies a sophistication that undermines our paper-thin stereotypes of "pre-scientific people." Imagine moving 50,000 pound stones with no hydraulic devices or even pulleys. Imagine terracing hundreds of acres of shear mountain cliffs with no tractors. Imagine hauling 50,000 cubic yards of fertile soil from miles away, with no pack animals and no gas powered devices. Imaging engineering 20 foot retaining walls that also have 20 foot foundations, leaning at a 13 degree angle to hold back the entire city from collapsing. Imagine a drainage system so sophisticated that after three full days of torrential down pour in 2013, the entire city was dry. The list could go on for days, but to call the Inca empire anything less than a politically and advanced civilization is laughably stupid.

The Inca Civilization had a similarly advanced spiritual and social system. They believed reality was a living, integrated, cooperative whole, with everything having equal value and playing an essential role. To harm one is to harm all. All living things are called brothers and sisters (which, by the way, is why the Spaniards falsely said they practiced incest). They belonged to a wholly intact cosmology, with Pachamama (mother earth), three other pilars holding everything together.

Their science, engineering and epistemologies are sophisticated too, Our guide, Freddie, for instance was asked about his beliefs and he said, "we are able to hold multiple beliefs at the same time. For instance, we go to Catholic Church and then sacrafice to Pachamama, all on the same weekend." He then asked the driver if he holds both Christiantiy and Incan beliefs, he said of course, as do most other indigenous people. Freddie then contrasted with capacity of synthesis against the history of Christianity, where persecution and absolute idealogies are the norm.