ant out of context: Run through Ruins

The alarm goes off at 5am. You’ve laid out what clothes your going to wear the night before, and your bag is packed. You’ve even shaved minutes off your schedule by showering before bed and wearing your tee shirt. You’re out of bed and out the door not 3 minutes after the default Nokia alarm tone has shaken you violently from slumber.

Breakfast was included in the package you bought. You make your way to the dining room where other red-eyed and irritable backpackers have the same plan you do. In fact every traveler in the entire town of Aguas Calientes has the same plan you do. So it’s wise to bring your A-game. Time check. Breakfast in 5 minutes. 5 minutes to walk to the bus stop to be first in line. Machu Picchu in another 45 minutes. Waynapicchu Tickets secured. Tour. Climb Waynapicchu. Explore. Leave. A day planned. Perfection. Clockwork wouldn’t run this smoothly.

Breakfast. Wait. Wait. 10 minutes. 15 minutes. Finally, warm tea and stale bread with butter and jam. We waited for this? Slam it down. Carry half of it with you. Hit the bricks. Make your way to the bus stop. Your still on schedule. You’ve guessed that if the bus’ leave at 6, 5:30am is a perfect time to be there nice and early. You’re wrong. You’re very wrong. Aguas Calientes is a morning city. At least five hundred Northface jackets and alpaca hats stand before you. A line of knitwear and Gore-Tex. Incredible. I’d pay to see that. I didn’t pay. I saw it for free. So I probably wouldn’t pay now.

Locals are selling souvenirs, drinks and food. These five hundred people transform into five hundred wallets. Cash Rules Everything Around Me, get the money, dollar dollar bill y’all. Method Man’s voice keeps ringing in my ears. My iPod’s jammed. Have to try and fix that…

Finally the buses pull up. An impressive convoy of the latest Mercedes Machines. Sleek and colour coded. The orchestration is amazing. The buses skirt around each other driving past us to execute a three point turn on a narrow street beside a river. There’s a beauty in their dance. It’s funny how profit makes things work. Efficiency for a price. Although to see Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp driving, buses in rivers are funny unless someone is horribly killed.

We file slowly onto the buses. Keeping warm, and staying positive that we can be the among the first four hundred people who get tickets to climb the highest peak Waynapicchu. The road up the mountain is literally up the mountain. It travels diagonally left to right across the face, coming to a steep sharp corner. And repeat. Always repeat. Up the mountain, ears popping. The view: Amazing. From the bottom, you see thick jungle, or bush, with the headlights of the buses ahead weaving through the shrubs. Think Indiana Jones. From the road. You are totally encased in steep mountains and hills. All carpeted in thick foliage. The sun like a small child trying to see over a high fence, keeps peeking over the top of the mountains.

Arriving at the top, it’s a touristy ticket gate, with a hotel and souvenir shop. Toilets and bag check. Same old same old. Pass through that gate however, and you step back in time. You can’t see the entire ruins, only a very small portion, but it’s already breathtaking. Once you maneuver through the path and the whole complex opens up before you. I can’t describe it. Go see it for yourself and you’ll understand. So. Faced with this amazing sight. In a very spiritual place. In the middle of the Peruvian wilderness. What do you do? Start running. You run past the ancient water system, that still provides the structure with fresh water. You run past the ancient observatories, where the Inca’s studied the solar system. You run past the ancient classrooms where future Inca kings and queens were educated. You run through a city that was invisible to the Spanish Conquistadors. A place that stayed virtually untouched until the 20th century. You run all the way to the back. To stand in line again. For these god damned Waynapicchu tickets.

I want to let the photographs do the rest of the story telling. But even these do little justice to the magic of Macchu Picchu. If I was pressed to describe it, imagine being 10 years old again and someone takes you to the biggest and most interesting playground your imagine could ever muster. That’s Machu Picchu. Enjoy.