It’s easy to book a trek to Machu Picchu and even before you go, feel like you’ve already been there. After all, you’ve seen the countless photos and social media posts of friends making the requisite pose above the citadel. You’ve seen it a hundred times. How different can it be?
The journey alone to get to this World Heritage site was the first indicator that this was going to be nothing like we might have guessed from our extensive scrutinization of photos by those that had come before us. A short flight from Lima plopped us down with a hard banked landing into the two mile high basin of Cusco. From there, a two hour taxi ride wound us up and out of the sink bowl through switchbacked rubble streets. Stray dogs of every breed watch from their stoops as we careen by them, climbing higher out of the city. The thin air, long day of travel, and steady sway of the car are the perfect cocktail for a few minutes of sleep.
Some time later we wake up in a world we can no longer call our own. Instead, we’ve found our way into something resembling a scene from a Harry Potter movie. As dusk creeps into the crevices of the Andean mountains that now press in on us from either side of the twisted valley we’re in; we look out at the green pasture covering everything the eye can see. Wooden farm shacks and alpacas whip past us on the hillsides. Countless curves later we begin to descend onto the far below blinking lights of a mountain town tuckered into yet another valley. Our driver bobs and weaves around tuk-tuks and flying soccer balls. As soon as we’ve entered the town, we’ve exited it. Another twenty minutes through the now night blackened terrain bring us to a stop quite literally at the end of the road. The driver unloads our bags, and in Spanish too fast and garbled for our gringo ears, points to the end of the gently sloping and narrow street. We scoop up our packs and begin the first of many hundred yard journeys of the next few days. Not more than ten steps later, with a deep, rumbling whoosh the power shuts off. Here we stood, in absolute darkness, miles from any world we know. People whoop and whistle around us. Old fashioned wax candles flare up in the shop fronts. The power flickers back on…. then off again. A train whistles in the distance.
We eventually find our way to the real world equivalent of platform 9 & 3/4. There we wait on the wooden deck; creaking and wet with rain for the next stage of what is gradually less vacation, and more pilgrimage. Ninety minutes of rail splitting rocking and rolling at the behest of a conductor too eager to get home; spit us out in the small town of Aguas Calientes. A few misplaced rights, lefts, and bridge crossings over a black and roaring river land us a hot butter beer and a bed for the night.
We beat the sun to our bus the next morning and boarded for another thirty minutes up a bobby pinned dirt mountain road at a speed that had us considering scribbling last wills and testaments on our phones, “just in case”. Upon reaching the citadel, we scramble through the main gates to find the entrance to our mountain assent before our cutoff time; not yet pausing to fully consider where we are, and what’s happening. For the next 2,300 feet we climb uneven, muddied, and shoulder width steps straight upwards toward the clouds. At some point, we pass though the cloud layer. Another half hour later we must have crossed into a new layer of the atmosphere. A final few steps, and the mountain crested to the view far below. And just like that, no longer did the countless photos of our friends and peers make sense. This view is impervious to camera lenses. The intensity doesn’t translate to Instagram. Machu Picchu’s magic does not transcend to the muggle world. There is no substitute, or even introduction to this experience.
Once again, in our world of endless technology that can bring everything within a .”com” grasp; we were reminded that there is absolutely no substitute for the real thing.
