It’s hard to put in words experiencing something that you’ve read about and seen in pictures, but then you’re in that pinch yourself moment where you’re there. I’ll try, but I’m still processing the magnitude of being there, seeing and experiencing what we did today.

It was an early start. And from what I had previously read and seen in videos can be an absolute nightmare, but Intrepid took care of all that, leave your bags they’ll be at the station later , 5 minutes later and we were on a bus.

But what a hair raising ride, narrow steep incline up a series of hairpin turns where it constantly felt like you were going to go off the edge, huge drops, and yet somehow or another it was two way and buses would pass each other. serously look at that road!

It was very cloudy and moody when we arrived, we disembarked and started the trek up to the viewing platform in what seemed like a relatively thick fog. Were we going to see anything at all? even the sun was straining to be seen

So we waited , and waited. and we wondered if we would see anything at all,

But slowly it started to turn, but it needed to hurry up as the next allocated group were hot on our heels.

And then the clouds started to part and the cameras came out as we all hustled to find our spots, friggin hilarious. Our guide warning us not to give up our “territory” hotly guarded territory at that

I should probably about now give a little Incan history, our guide had time to fill and I took notes so here it goes.

By the 15th century the Incan empire covered area in what we now know as Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia and Chile. A vast population of 10 million people. Cusco was the capital , designed specifically to have paths in each direction of the empire. However, the ruler had a brother who had a falling out with his brother , who had set up a secondary capital in the north in what we now know as Ecuador. The Spanish arrived in 1532 , with their religion, in search of gold and silver and Malaria and other diseases. There were only an initial 152 Spaniards , they sought to exploit the brotherly feud and got lots of details on who was who and what the politics were in Cusco and used that information to assassinate the leaders in Cusco, and for his efforts , they murdered the brother too. I suppose that dealt with that feud. Colonisers, they’re special aren’t they?

By 1536 the invaders had got into sacred valley and word spread to Machu Picchu who at that time decided to abandon and retreat to another site.

And so it lay abandoned for centuries, slowly being consumed by the surrounding landscape. And given how remote it is , it could have stayed that way.

It was rediscovered by a local farmer in 1902, but he was not believed. And it wasn’t until 1911 when an American archaeologist from Yale university on the request of the Peruvian government came to start looking for a lost city. He offered a reward that was picked up by a young boy and in 1911 he was taken to the overgrown site.,,

It wasn’t long before his discovery was being published and Machu Picchu was back in the eyes of the world, opened up to tourism in the 70’s and named a unesco heritage site in 2007.

History lesson over. Back to the blog.

There is so much to see and do, I still csnt get my head around why there , it’s so remote , so inhospitable. But they had their restons.

The Incans like many indigenous societies were deeply connected to their environment, a deep sense of balance that they saw around them. Machu Picchu means old mountain. But it is balanced by new mountain , and either side of that are happy mountain and sad mountain.

Massive stone sculptures designed to only reveal their secrets st sunrise on Solstice.

As well as a sun temple they had a moon temple and it is from there you can see that Machu Pichhu as a whole is designed in the shape of a soaring eagle. Representing the sky , where Cusco is in the shape of a Puma, ( the earth) and a neighbouring town is a snake representing the underworld.. it’s tingling the parallels to Te Ao Māori.

But that wasn’t all the flora was fascinating too, over a thousand types of orchids grow here too

What a treat we had. Truely incredible! And I’ve even managed to write this on the bus on the way back to the hotel. Tomorrow for us will be Christmas Eve and I’m heading up to Rainbow mountain, a 5am start , a hike up to 5200m. Yikes. Wish me luck.