Machu Picchu

"Outer" Adventure and "Inner" Journey Part 1

Machu Pichu means "Old Peak" in the Quechua language. City in the Clouds,The City of Light and The Crystal City and the City of Knowledge are a few names.

No matter how people enter the city, by the Inca Trail or by bus, most people suddenly stop and try to digest what the optical nerve is transmitting to their brains. You stare in disbelief as your eyes swell with tears as everything around moves in slow motion. Yes, we have seen pictures of this amazing city but nothing can prepare you for the real experience. You can feel presence of the mountain spirits, looking down on you. The mountains stand before you like living beings, the aware intelligence you feel leaves you humbled. Oddly enough it feels like “going home”

Pictures do not do Machu Picchu justice, you must see it and feel it to understand how spectacular this site is. To try and imagine the Incas not only living in but building the city in such a remote and seemingly uninhabitable place baffles the mind.

Located in cloud forest between the Andes and the Amazon, Machu Picchu really is everything you expect it to be, which is breath-taking, awe-inspiring, mysterious, and beautiful. It is an architectural wonder. It is surrounded by mountains and jungle vegetation. The site is richly green and grantie stones are perfectly formed. The Terracing practically clinging to the slope of the mountain. Wandering the ruins you can feel the weight of history as you marvel at the Inca's achievements.

The ruins of Machu Picchu was rediscovered in 1911 by Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham

Morning sun rays on Machu Picchu

Main gate into the citadel

The Inca citadel of Machu Picchu is one of the world's most spectacular ruins. Houses, temples, baths, storage rooms and agricultural terraces were built high among rugged and forested mountains with distant snow-covered Andean peaks providing a backdrop. It was and still is watered by natural springs, invisible from below and completely self-contained and in great state of preservation two thousand feet above the rumbling Urubamba river.

Machu Picchu seems to have been used by the Inca as a secret ceremonial city.
You stand in the clouds and it’s the most amazing feeling. Even when you walk in “solitude” in Machu Picchu you sense you sense that you are not alone there.
To watch the sun rays descend down the mountain slopes to the ruins is an unforgettable experience.

The Watch Post

Machu Picchu is often wreathed in mist.

Merging from the mist, the whispery clouds are pulled back in slow motion like curtains. Like a mirage appearing and disappearing in the clouds.

A walk in the clouds

Far below, the rapids of the Urubamba river loop round the site like a serpent wrapping and protecting the sacred site.

The Snake (death), Puma (physical plane), guardian to Machu Picchu and the Condor (after life), the carrier of souls to the "other world" were very sacred to the Incas. Machu Picchu is built in the shape of the Condor. Cusco (the navel of the world) is in the shape of the Puma, then you have the Urabamba river looping like snake below surrounding three side of the mound of the mountain then flows off into the sacred valley.

The Quarry

Crystal City in the clouds-- The stones of the city are white granite, composed of 40% quartz crystal. You feel as if you are inside a huge giant crystal city that is vibrating around you.
Like thin veils between worlds you can feel the magnetic inward pull and the electric outward pull.
Legends and myths indicate that Machu Picchu was used as a sacred place as far back as 2500BC. Machu Picchu was never discovered and ransacked by the Spanish Conquistadors, it is something of a time capsule.

It is obvious the city was a work in progress when suddenly the Incas disappeared.