The night before the final assent we got a chat by the guide about what lay ahead, we could either get the bus with the guides at 5:30am or we could begin our own climb up at 4am, which consisted of an hour walk up and then two thousand steep steps, directly upwards for one to two hours depending on your pace. The guides advised we got the bus if we weren’t very fit as the bridge across the river opened at 5am and our tour would start at Machu Picchu at 6am, so we would have to do the steps in an hour not to miss it.
I think you can probably guess what my choice was, yup the bus because I’m unfit and lazy, on the step machine at the gym I normally last about 5 minutes, so an hour to two at fast pace was a solid no from me! Apparently everyone else in our small group of friends was a psychopath and choosing to do the steps, including two of the girls who had been slower than me on the trek, so there went my unfit excuse. After a team talk (aka peer pressure/bullying) on how we were in it together I begrudgingly agreed to take the steps.
After a few hours sleep my alarm went off and we got dressed and headed straight out the door, eating breakfast on our way. We walked along in the dark, too stingy to use our phone batteries on a torch, when it was needed for the hundreds of photos we were going to take at the top.
At 4:45am we had reached the bridge before the beginning of the steps, the bridge doesn’t open until 5am but that’s where the real que for Machu Picchu begins. Thousands of people visit each day, hundreds of those choose to take the steps and the closer you are to the front the closer you are to getting there actually seeing Machu Picchu deserted of tourists and how it was in the past, before the invention of the selfie stick.
We were quite close to the front of the que, although it was probably wasted on me, I knew I’d end up falling behind, but it was nice to have a good head start!
We started off over the bridge the minute it was open and the serious hikers with their poles and camel water back packs set off overtaking everyone. We had decided to just set off slowly and warm up, but that went out of the window when a group of dogs decided to start fighting and chasing eachother up the steps behind us, turns out the fear of rabbies is a good motivator to get a move on!
After 5 minutes we all got separated, there’s so many people and you’re constantly being overtaken and overtaking others, you’re so concentrated on the effort it takes to keep going onwards and upwards you don’t have time to keep track of anyone else or the energy to keep up with them if you did.
It was hard, so hard, the first 20 minutes were probably the most mentality strenuous of my life. We went from standing half asleep waiting for the bridge to open to steep steps with no warm up, after the first 10 minutes my lungs were burning, and I felt knackered, I knew it was because my body hadn’t yet switched between sprint and marathon mode yet but that didn’t make me feel any less knackered. I forced myself to push on hoping it would get better, spoiler alert, it did not. After 15 minutes I was getting sick of waiting to feel better and fed up of all my positive mentality tricks, if it had been someone else saying it to me I think I’d of told them where to shove it! I had to stop, I sat down on an out of the way rock at the top of one zig zag of stairs and drank about a litre of water in one go. It was so depressing watching people trudge past, I was only 15 minutes in to something that at this rate would take several hours and I was totally knackered. I looked out for the two girls who had been behind me for most of the other trek, I decided if I saw them I would just suggest we quit now and headed back down for the bus, but I didn’t see them and I was too much of a coward to face the shame of going back down past hundreds of people alone.
Then after 3 or so minutes sat down feeling sorry for myself I realized I felt fine again, I wasn’t knackered, my legs could keep going again, I was just out of breath. Out of breath and knackered are two very different things and I decided fuck it! (excuse the language but it was a profound moment for me!) I’d turned back and quit so many times out of fear of being last or not being able to do it that I’d never really tried, and now more than any other trek was one I really wanted to try. If all it took was a 3 minute break everytime I would have one, screw who ever wanted to over take, let them go. I would get there, maybe much slower than everyone else or maybe I would honestly get to the limit and body wouldn’t be able to make it any further but I would try and at least get to that point rather than turning back at just the fear of it.
Honestly my whole mentality changed, I started upwards again and again ten minutes later I got knackered. But this time, instead of being angry with myself for not being better, I kept thinking ‘well that’s ten minutes further along than we were before’, ‘every step counts’, ‘doesn’t matter if we slow down, slow is still moving’. I let myself take breaks more often, before I was totally knackered and found when I did that I didn’t need as long to recover, ten seconds and I was off again. Because I didn’t keep stopping for several minutes my body finally switched from sprint to marathon mode and everything started to get a bit easier, I got into the grind of it and didn’t have to concentrate on encouraging myself up every step, instead I could look around. That was a reward in itself, the view was beautiful rocky peaks all around peaking above low hanging clouds, the steps were hard and steep but that ment after every set you could see a measurable difference in your height compared to the surrounding peaks, suddenly I felt rewarded for my effort, I may be drenched in sweat but I would have never seen this on the bus, and even if I had it wouldn’t have felt half as special, like I earned it.
I was on such a high, both on the side of a mountain and mentally, even the burn in my legs felt rewarding, I looked at my watch and suddenly it was quarter to 6! I wasn’t going to make it by 6am but even that didn’t bring me down, if I made it all the way up it would be the hardest thing I’d ever done and I’d come so far I knew I’d make myself get there even if I had to crawl the last part. Seeing Machu Picchu would just be an amazing cherry on top who cares if it wasn’t with a guide!
At 5 to 6 I started to feel tired, it was funny how I had assumed I was completely spent 15 minutes in but after another 40 minutes I was actually just starting to feel the beginning of being tired. I sat down and ate half a banana, I would need the energy, I guessed I was about half way and had another hour, I would need to pace myself, my legs were tired but I knew they would do another hour, I would just need to take a bit longer breaks. I got up to move on before my body switched back to sprint mode, that was the last thing I needed. I zig zaged up the next 2 set of stairs when I heard a coach stopping and people chatting, this was the half way point I thought, I could just get the bus the rest of the way, but everything in my body said no we can do this, 1 more hour, I’m knackered but I can do this! Only when I reached the top of the stairs and got onto the road it looked like an entry que, I didn’t let myself believe it, false hope is a cruel thing on the body and mind, so I asked a woman selling water (for £8 a litre!) If this was half way, I almost hugged her when she said ‘no, este es el final’ but I was scared she would try and charge me a £10 for the privilege!
I had made it! And managed to do it in under an hour! It sounds silly but I actually had tears in my eyes, wether out of relief I made it or out of how proud I was of myself I’m not sure, but even writing this makes me a bit emotional (I know I’m a soppy mess).
It probably sounds silly reading it, but I can’t state how much of a enormous mental journey this whole trip was for me, how with a different mindset of being nice to myself and my body rather than hating it and getting angry changed everything, I felt lighter, I went from telling myself I had to give up after 15 minutes to preparing myself for another hour and honestly being quite excited for it! I was so happy I’d made it to the top I almost forgot we were actually here for a reason!
Machu Picchu was amazing! We were among the first 100 people to get in, we got to see it without hoards of tourists, quiet and peaceful among the clouds. It was worth the journey ten times over. I was worried before the trip that it would be over rated and not able to live up to the hype, as some places we’ve visited have been, but it wasn’t, it was beautiful. I can’t say the same for my photos, I was a sweaty mess with my hair plastered to my head! If you every see nice photos of people at the Machu Picchu it means they haven’t done it properly!
Although I was happy to miss the tour if I didn’t make it, I’m really glad I made it in time, it was so interesting and gave me a much greater appreciation for the place!
We learnt all about how it was built, if I felt tired coming up those stairs I can’t imagine how workers felt coming up it every day carrying rocks and building materials! Before they could even build the impressive structures above ground they first had to flatten the mountain peak! Not only that, they put in drainage and foundations while they were at it, 60% of the building and engineering work at Machu Picchu is underground, otherwise it would have just slid off or sink into the mountain during the rainy season, most of the terraces you see in photos are for holding the mountain back not farming as the soil on the mountain wasn’t very fertile. As a solution to that, tonnes of soil was brought up from the river valley below (screw carrying that up!). In total Machu Picchu had been under construction for 95 years. It’s estimated 1500 people worked on site each day, not slaves as you would expect, but civilians from different regions, the Incas used labour as a form of tax so people from different regions would work for a month a year for the government.
Unfortunately Machu Picchu was never completed, there are still statues waiting to be finished or placed in their final positions, although people did live there, it was built for the higher levels of society, not the rich but the important thinkers – philosophers, architects, priests etc. (Did you know the Inca were some of the first to independently use the concept of zero and also invented a secret messaging system involving the position of knots).
It is not 100 known why Machu Picchu was abandoned, but it is known that after one Inca ruler died the empire was torn apart when his two sons fought over the thrown, with one eventually winning but leaving the empire disjointed and weak. Soon after the Spanish invaded the already weakened empire, killing and conquering with force and the spread of western diseases. There are no signs of mass death at Machu Picchu and all roads to it were destroyed and hidden, so the current idea is that the ruler requested everyone leave and hide any trace of it to protect the unfinished project, which worked, the jungle had recovered the site in 10 years and it was never found and destroyed by the Spanish.
After years of conflict the Incas were wiped out, as technically the ‘Incas’ were the ruling class, but the normal lower class people, the Quechua people as they are known, fled into the jungle and mountains and are still around today, with the same language and traditions. Infact out guide came from one such family and told us about how his family still farmed in the Andies with the terrace system used by the Incas.
Hiram Bingham is credited with rediscovering Machu Picchu in 1911 but there were already farmers living there when he arrived and he was directed there by locals. Bingham did however make Machu Picchu world known again and all over the world the site and it’s artifacts were and continue to be studied. Only in 2011 did the UK give back artifacts it has kept from Machu Picchu and even then only 20% of what they hold.
After our tour was finished we had a walk around ourselves and took about a billion photos. By 11am it was starting to get rammed, busses packed people were arriving every few seconds and it was getting hard to move about so we decided to leave. I was so glad we had done the walk and gotten there early, as honestly the crowds were ridiculous!
All in all it was an absolutely amazing 4 days, I went into it crying and dreading making a fool out of myself and came out having done a complete 360. It was probably one of the hardest and most rewarding things I have ever done and at the end I got to see the beautiful Machu Picchu!
Afterwards we piled on an 8 hour bus back to Cusco, which at this point is probably how long it’s taken you to read this huge post so I’ll update you on what we got up to in the next one!
Lots of love,
Alice x
P.s. sorry I’m a bit behind on these blogs but grace decided to nearly die! Which I’ll eventually get to writing about….. And it put me behind a bit.