Machu Picchu

After our first view of Machu Picchu from the sun gate, we walked down about half a mile to this point in order to get some nice photos from above. And, by the way, our group of nine was the first to arrive at the sun gate. In order to do this we had to get up at 2:30a. The porters had pancakes ready for us at 3:00a and we waited at the park entrance until 5:30a when it opened. There were eventually 500 people lined up behind us. At 5:30a we walked 2 miles, mostly by headlamp before we arrived.

We arrived at the sun gate around 6:30a and were the first ones in the park, so we hurried down to get photos before all the tourists could get up to the site. As you can see, some of them still made it in early enough to get into my picture. They had come in from the buses below.

The views were magnificent in the early morning. The site is perched on a ridge with about a thousand foot drop off on either side. But the incredible terraces go all the way down to the river below. They grew corn and other crops on these terraces.

In the middle of Machu Picchu is this little mountain. On top is a rock they carved. They built the walls and a window on top to align with the sun during the summer solstice on June 21.



There were lots of tourists later in the day during our visit. Here they are on this little mountain. However, after a one hour rain storm, most of them left and the photography was much better.

We waited in the restaurant out of the park during the rainstorm and watched them all leave by bus load after bus load. We were so excited. More on this later...