Our travel writer/ photographer Berti Pozo is a globetrotter, closing in on the 70th country on her travel trail. The last time Earthwitness heard from Berti; she was in Djibouti, all excited about going to Lac Assal. In this issue, Berti shares her Machu Picchu experience.
To most of us, who have read James Redfield’s best-seller ‘Celestine Prophecy’, Machu Picchu is that magical city of Incas – a place where history has a meaning beyond the dates of birth and death of kings and queens.
Machu Picchu stands 2,430 meter above sea level, in the middle of a tropical mountain forest, in an extraordinarily beautiful setting. It was probably the most amazing urban creation of the Inca Empire at its height; its giant walls, terraces and ramps seem as if they have been cut naturally in the continuous rock escarpments. The natural setting, on the eastern slopes of the Andes, encompasses the upper Amazon basin with its rich diversity of flora and fauna.
According to Elías J. Mujica, Director of the Andean Institute of Archaeological Studies, “The beauty and exceptional quality of the pre-Hispanic buildings, the stunning landscape in which they stand, and the way in which the ancient Peruvians planned and harmonised their buildings with the surrounding site fully justified its inclusion on the World Heritage List in 1983 as both a cultural and natural site.”
The legendary Machu Picchu was picture perfect; I ended up taking loads of pictures while travelling; it is nothing new for me (A Japanese guide once told me that I “was worse than Japanese” when it came to picture-taking), but in this instance, I managed to end up with over 20 copies of the same picture. Well not exactly the same picture, but really close.
The reason for this was that I followed the recommendation of every guidebook, blog and fellow traveller by arriving at Machu Picchu before sunrise. Everything I had read rhapsodised about the incredible beauty, the serenity, the magical experience – watching the sun come over the mountain and engulf this mystical place.
People rave about how at that moment, you can imagine the Inca priests wandering through the temple, offering prayers and sacrifices to Waricocha. Who would not get up early for an experience like that? So we got to Aguas Caliente, the closest “town” (read: distressing tourist trap with a railway station) the evening before and booked a spot on the first bus of the day (5:00am!) to Machu Picchu.
This ensured that we were there before the gates opened and were among the first to make the mad dash up to the Caretaker’s Hut, which is better known as the spot all the postcard pictures are taken from. Unfortunately, it turned out that we were not the only people who had sought out the advice of guidebooks, blogs, et al. Behind us was a horde of people, scrambling up the rocks to get a better vantage point from where they, too, could experience the much heralded beauty and the increasingly improbable serenity.
It quickly became clear that with so many people around, once you found that perfect photo spot, you were pretty much committed to that spot until the moment that the sun rose, with nothing to do but to sit and wait. And to take picture after picture from the exact same spot, each with incrementally more daylight than the last. In the end, I believe that I took enough photos that if I were to print them out, stack them up and flip through them, I would end up with a short film depicting sunrise over Machu Picchu.
Too many photos were not the main problem though, that is the beauty of digital... the delete button. And there is absolutely no arguing that this is a beautiful and special place worthy of much giga-space, but somehow jostling elbows with a crowd around you and trying to figure out how to shoot around the overgrown red-headed farm boy who has positioned himself directly in between you and Machu Picchu aren’t really conducive to any kind of mystical experience.
Where I wanted to hear Inca chants, I instead heard a mid-western woman continuously whine because her husband didn’t want to stand directly next to her. Where I wanted to feel the energy that is surely all around Machu Picchu, all I could feel was rancour that the red-headed oaf would not simply sit down.
At one point me and a fellow-traveller sitting nearby bemoaned how the place would be so much nicer without so many damned tourists (never mind the fact that neither of us were remotely Inca). We also noted that it was not just our photos that were being jeopardised, but Machu Picchu itself. For some incomprehensible reason, there are no “do not enter” or “do not walk here” signs to force people onto some kind of maintainable trail, therefore you have people climbing all over these rock terraces with no thought to the dangers of erosion.
I know from this description, that it may sound like I did not enjoy Machu Picchu, which could not be further from the truth. It was Machu Picchu and I got to see it with my own eyes; of course I loved it. I would go back in a heartbeat.
It is just that I felt like it was a victim of its own success and that its caretakers weren’t doing a very good job protecting it. Fortunately as the day went on and tour groups, with their umbrella waving guides came and went, that promised serenity did finally begin to descend on Machu Picchu. I sat on a bench looking out at the whole of Machu Picchu for at least an hour. It was as awe-inspiring as I had imagined. I think I may have even taken a picture or two to prove it....
