16 Days Later: Vol. 2

Getting to Machu Picchu can be as easy as catching a train from Cusco to a closer town called Aguas Calientes during the day then taking a bus up to the ruins the following morning. But for the more outdoorsy and adventurous tourists,  there are a variety of trails that lead up to Aguas Calientes that can be hiked over the course of 2-7 days, depending on the route.

The most popular is the Inca Trail because it was one of the main roads used by the Incan Empire and there are a variety of small ruins to be seen on the trail itself. This trail is the most commercial of all the trails and the amount of people that the government lets go up on any given day is tightly regulated, so trips book up months in advance. Caitlin and I decided on an alternative trail called the Salkantay that would take us up a snowy mountain before descending into a warmer sierra-jungle border climate that would eventually end up in Aguas Calientes four days later.

Salkantay Trek

When we arranged the trek on the internet back in Ambato, the company led us to believe that tennis shoes, a sweatshirt, and a "sock hat" would be enough for the weather we were going to face on the way up to Salkantay, and their recommendation to bring shorts for when it would get hot made me feel pretty comfortable with the hoodie and long-sleeve shirt I brought with me for the cold stretches. However, when we got to Cusco, it was cold enough that I was not warm wearing all of my warm clothing. We did the altitude math and pretty quickly came to the conclusion that we would all need to buy more warm clothes before hiking to Salkantay, so we hit up some of the trekking gear places and while I laughed at Asia for renting a North Face winter coat and wool socks, I stuck with a thermal shirt ("This will definitely be enough").

On our way to the starting point, we got our first look at a snow-capped mountain that I'm pretty sure was Salkantay

Our tour guide was a trilingual (English, Spanish, Quichua) Peruvian man named Jose. The tour company we were using boasted that they were under indigenous management, and Jose and the rest of the crew (chef, chef's assistant, horseman) were all from rural areas of Peru and spoke the indigenous language Quichua as their first language.

The trek was supposed to be four days of hiking around five hours a day. We drove a car up to the starting point will all of our food and gear for the hike, and within a half-hour we had our first problem. Jose approached us from the meeting he was having with the rest of the crew a small distance from us and informed us that he had some bad news. Apparently the horseman never showed up, so we wouldn't be able to hike at all the first day because we didn't have anyone to carry our gear. So the first day, instead of hiking up the trail we went to a nearby lagoon just to check it out and take some pictures.

The first picture in my outdoor winter fashions portfolio

After that short trip there was no hiking, which meant no moving, which meant no body heat from physical exertion, which meant it was freezing. We played cards in a wooden shack with no door, so we were essentially outside the whole time. When it came time for bed, I didn't think I was going to make it through the night with all my extremities intact because I couldn't feel my big toes even when I tried to rub them to keep them warm.

Luckily for me, after our second day's hike (ten hours to make up for the unproductive first day), the temperature rose dramatically and I didn't have to sleep in fear of being two little piggies down the following morning. Below are some pictures of the trek.

Me and our tour guide Jose. He's not taller than me, he was just standing on a rock in this picture.

Getting warmer as we head down from the mountain

Not our mule

Where the Salkantay merges with the Inca Trail for a small stretch (note the stairs in the background)

Machu Picchu from a distance (terraces visible in the middle of the picture if you look closely)

Tourism

On the trail up to Machu Picchu, my friends and I had a lot of time to talk with our tour guide Jose. Jose is an indigenous man from outside of Cusco who now spends some of his time in the city working full time with an indigenous owned tour company leading different trails to the ruins. I was interested to hear more about how Cusqueños feel about their city and historical sites being flooded by tourists, so we ended up discussing tourism quite a bit.

It was clear from the beginning that Jose was not happy about the treatment of indigenous Peruvians. He talked about the rural community he was from growing up before he learned English and got work in tourism, and how he makes a point of giving back to indigenous communities with the money he makes when he can. I was impressed by how Jose seemed to not want to forget his roots, but when we started talking about the rediscovery of Machu Picchu, I found his attitude towards foreigners to be bitter and misguided.

While the ruins at Machu Picchu had been observed earlier and known locally, they were only made internationally famous by an American named Hiram Bingham (hence the use of the term "rediscovery" in reference to his expedition). According to what Jose told us, when Bingham came across the ruins he wanted to excavate to see what he had stumbled upon. Not an archeologist by trade, he apparently destroyed some relics there and set fire to the ancient city to clear away all the vegetation quickly. Also, some of the items that he discovered were sent back to Yale, the university he was working with at the time.

Nowadays, the Machu Picchu operation is run by the Peruvian government. Jose told us that the government takes nearly all of the money that the ruins generate through tourism. Regardless of the fact that Peru is now benefiting from the popularization of Machu Picchu, Jose still expressed disgust for Bingham and what Jose considered his exploitation of the descendants of the ancient civilization that built the ruins.

I agree that Bingham probably should have been more careful with his excavation and perhaps should have studied his findings in Peru or returned the artifacts to Peru when his work with them was finished. However, I do not think Bingham is the real bad guy and that Peruvians should be grateful that he made Machu Picchu an international tourist destination.

First of all, Machu Picchu generates a tremendous amount of money. Far from even entering the ruins, there is an entire industry based on the hiking trails near Cusco that wouldn't have attracted anyone if the final destination weren't Machu Picchu. I am confident that the indigenous guys on our trek with us make much more doing that respectable work than they ever could in their rural communities farming or making crafts. Also, the unique location of the ruins makes them nearly impossible to reach without using buses and trains, so tourists are forced to spend money on transportation. Then there is the entrance to the site itself which also costs money that the Peruvian government collects. Nothing associated with Machu Picchu is cheap, and without it none of that money would be in Peru. If it weren't for Bingham, Machu Picchu would have remained in the shadow of obscurity as the homes of a handful of indigenous families from the area.

Now, I understand that just because there is money being spent doesn't mean that it is going to the right places, but that doesn't mean it is an American who rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911's fault. The first thing that was clear to me was that all of the people we dealt with in Cusco while trying to rent equipment and book tourist activities were Peruvians. Granted, I don't know too much about business and who ultimately runs the show at the level above storefronts, but the operations were too informal and unprofessional for me to believe that they were anything more than a group of Peruvians who got together one day and thought it would be a good idea to make some money from tourism.

The second thing is that Peruvians were employed everywhere we went. Bus drivers, waiters, store clerks, and tour guides were all Peruvian people who were employed because of the international draw of Machu Picchu. Again, I don't really know too much about how business and money work, but it seems to me that without these opportunities all of those Peruvians I saw would be either out of a job or working in a less desirable area outside of tourism like agriculture.

The last thing that really annoyed me about Jose's badmouthing of the American explorer was the fact that the Peruvian government now runs the operation and absorbs the profits. If Jose has a problem with the way the money from Machu Picchu is being spent, he should be mad at his own government, not a man who passed through 100 years ago. In my opinion, the big picture is that by putting Machu Picchu on the international stage, Bingham handed Peru an incredible money making attraction that has brought in a tremendous amount of revenue for the country. Now that America has got nothing to do with it, however, I think Peruvians upset with the fact that Machu Picchu isn't benefiting them directly should either get involved in the tourism industry or take it up with the Peruvian government, because from what I have seen, if anyone in tourism is exploiting Peruvians in 2011, it's Peruvians.

Machu Picchu

When we arrived at the ruins early in the morning, a thick fog covered most of the city and there was hardly any visibility. It actually looked really cool like that, and it reminded me of how a dramatic reenactment of Incan times would look like on some show on Discovery Channel. 

As the morning went on, the fog cleared up and we got to see the ruins more clearly. Below are some pictures of the ruins I took that day, trying my best to take shots with no tourists in them.

Incan stonework was so precise that nothing was needed to hold bricks like these together.

Terraces

In this room, sunlight comes through the windows and hits the rock in front, creating a shadow that, together with the shape of the rock, forms an Andean cross.

In the Temple of the Condor. When sacrifices were made on this stone, blood ran down the neck and "fed" the condor statue.

View from the top

The thing about going to see ancient ruins is that you need to have a good imagination to appreciate what you are looking at and the history behind the site. People who don't inevitably end up wondering why they traveled so far/paid so much to look at a pile of rocks on a plain. I'd say I fall more into the latter category. I saw a lot of ruins when I studied abroad in Mexico, and after the first couple of sites I started not really caring because it all looked the same to me.

However, regardless of whether or not someone likes history or has a good imagination, I don't believe that someone can visit Machu Picchu and not be impressed. Even if a person knows nothing about the history or what the purpose of the ruins were when they were created, the location is really what makes Machu Picchu special. The fog in the morning gives you the sense that you are so high you are in the clouds. When it clears up, the tremendous mountains all around manage to instill, even in a modern man, the sense of awe that inspired the Incans to worship mother earth as their protector. Not surprisingly, I knew Machu Picchu would be the highlight of my trip even before we continued on to see Lake Titicaca and Arequipa.