It might have been because we were all a bit exhausted from a day of mountain biking and two days of trekking–though the trekking was completely ¨flat,¨ as our guide would always say as he indicated a steep incline with his hands–but once we entered the gates at Machu Picchu, sweating profusely even in the pre-dawn cold from the steep hike up the hill, we followed a sign for ¨Cerro Machu Picchu¨ and just kept going up. A little over an hour later, after a brutal climb, we stopped well above the clouds and discovered that we´d been climbing up and away from the ruins themselves. As we turned back and starting climbing down the clouds finally began to clear and we saw below us Machu Picchu. If I were a religious person I´d be tempted to draw on the language of religion; suffice it to say, it was stunning in a way that I didn´t quite believe it could be, given all the tourist hype that surrounds the site. We stood aghast for some time and then made our way down to join the crowds, about the time the tourist buses began to arrive full of the folks who didn´t want to leave Agua Calientes at 4:30 in the morning. For now, I´ll leave it to the realm of the visual.
