Machu Pichu...Feeling Kinda Blessed

A knock on the door at 4:30 am. At such a ridiculous hour, the brain doesn´t really register, and I just about roll over and go back to sleep. Thank goodness my alarm clock goes off at that precise moment, and I sit straight up: Machu Pichu! To have come all this way, from winter in Edmonton to the start of the rainy season in the Peruvian Andes, from a city with a penchant for ripping down any building more than twenty minutes old to one of the great architectural wonders of a lost civilization, I am NOT going to miss out on first light, on the dawn breaking over Machu Pichu.

The plan is to leave the hotel at the foot of the mountain at 5, in order to catch one of the first buses up to the site. It turns out that hundreds upon hundreds of people from all over the world have the identical plan, and while we are in more than good time, there are at least four or five busloads of pilgrims standing in line in the dark street in front of us. Thankfully, and with a healthy touch of ¨Nyaaah nyaaah¨, within minutes the line is many times longer behind our little group of eleven. And what a motley and huge crew we all are: unshowered, crusty-eyed, coffee-needy and too groggy to be using any of the languages represented by our ever-increasing numbers. Still, in the silence, you can feel the excitement that we will all soon be THERE.

Just after 5:30, the buses begin to arrive, and sure enough, our Intrepid group will be on either the fifth or the sixth: our goal is to be among the first four hundred to reach the entrance gate up top, in order to be eligible for the precious tickets to climb the Wuayna Pichu mountain above
Machu Pichu. Overcrowding is becoming a huge issue, and the Peruvian government is wisely trying to keep numbers of potential ass-over-tea-kettle-toppling tourists to a safe minimum. In theory, the thirty-minute ride up the ever more white-knuckling series of switchbacks, even in fifth bus, should get us there in loads of time for the prized tickets...in theory. What we haven´t
counted on are the hordes of Argentinians and Chileans who started the pilgrimage on foot just after midnight, the Inca Trail hikers who began their final few kilometres at 3:30 am, AND the well-heeled crowd staying at the $1200.00 US per night (!!!) hotel right at the entrance to the site...all four hundred of them beat us to the punch and score the tickets...arghhhh! It´s a brief and minor disappointment, for I´ve arrived at Machu Pichu, and I´ll just have to hope that a few of them topple over the side of a cliff...deep down inside, I´m shallow.

I have to say, as an Edmontonian, it´s a thrill to see plaques everywhere paying tribute to HIRAM BINGHAM, the official ¨discoverer¨of Machu Pichu. As the locals quickly point out, their ancestors knew it was there all along, but they happily pay homage to the great man who brought it to the attention of the world in 1911. Doug, you must be very proud of your grandfather.

The gates are open, the tickets are processed, the passports are stamped and suddenly, it´s there. Even in the half light before dawn, it´s the enormity, the hugeness, the spirituality, the complexity and the sheer achievement of the ruined city that first takes my breath away. The best guess is that around a thousand people lived in this spectacular city more than five hundred years ago, but countless thousands spent their entire lives building this masterpiece of the Inca civilization. The highly-evolved religious beliefs of the Inca, their superior understanding of mathematics and architecture, their knowledge and understanding of helio astronomy and the very fact--dammit--that they even had a perfect 365 day calender, make me wish that these people had survived. Whether a superior war machine, or simply the killer European diseases they brought with them that wiped out millions in the New World, it´s pretty hard to think kind thoughts about Pizarro and the Spanish when you visit Machu Pichu.

While the excavated portion of the site on the peak is enormous (¨Machu Pichu¨actually means "old mountain"), the unreclaimed terraces are believed to extend all the way down to the river, hundreds of metres below. The best vantage point, the place from which all the classic and unforgettable pictures of Machu Pichu are taken, is on the highest terraces surrounding what was known as the Guard House. And it´s waaaay up there, following still more flights of age-old and very precarious stone steps--well, precarious for us two-legged creatures: the dozen or so lamas hanging about seem to have no trouble at all--that we all gather. Waiting. This must be what it´s like when people come in huge numbers to Lourdes, waiting for some kind of miracle.
We are all waiting for a unique and stock-taking moment in our lives. Moments later, and through the clouds at this extremely high altitude, the sun begins to appear above the crest of the mountain behind us. It´s almost as if the collective intake of breath of all the people who have dreamed of capturing this moment sucks the remaining clouds and mist out of the way, and...the first rays of the sun hit Machu Pichu.

I´m a complete mess...my eyes fill with tears. As it was when I first saw the great temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, or the Great Pyramid in Egypt, or even the Great Wall of China in, duh, China, moments like this remind me of the greatness in man: I´m very lucky to be here,
and to be reminded that we´ve done some things right.

I spend hours on the site, wandering, exploring, just trying to take it all in. One of my geeky traditions is to schlep great books with me when I visit monumental places like this, to take a break and read something wonderful in truly wonderful places. I once read Yeats on Torcello in tribute to Harold Pinter; this time, I´ve got Dickens´NICHOLAS NICKLEBY in my pack, and there´s something pretty great about making both the centuries and the achievements of man collide high on a mountain in the Peruvian Andes. Other people, other traditions: two of our group hike all the way up to the top of the legendary Sun Gate, where Aaron asked Michelle to marry him in the most powerful place he could imagine...she accepted. Machu Pichu is one of those places that makes us feel different about ourselves, and I´ll hold the images of the place forever.

Brian goes to Peru...the mind reels.