Machu Picchu and The Sacred Valley of Peru

The Mystery Unfolds

The journey to Machu Picchu changed me. The utter strangeness of the place rekindled a sense of wonder and awe that I had lost somewhere as I worked my way through a respectable education and career path. The city itself is simply an impossibility, perched atop steep cliffs, banked on 3 sides by a massive gorge and a rushing river, beyond which are mountains, beyond which are more mountains as far as the eye can see, all covered in a green blanket of cloud forest and jungle. So save up and go. If anything, go to see the majesty of the place itself and get in some spectacular cloud-forest hiking.

With that said, a quick trip to the Sacred Valley, including Machu Picchu will reveal all sorts of majestic landscapes, ruins, wonders, and marvels (not to mention great food and culture), but to really understand the awe-inspiring grandeur of the place, you need to do some research and have a plan. A good place to start is the fantastic travel/history/adventure book, Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams. The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie depicts the tragedy of war and conquest between the Inca and the Spanish colonists, and is a prerequisite for understanding how we could have lost the practices and knowledge of the civilizations that were established before the Spanish.

For me, reading and researching before the trip, asking lots of questions, and visiting the museums in Cuzco during our trip made the mystery that much more tangible, as ancient ruins are still being uncovered from the jungles of Peru to this day, and the presence of the great stones, perfectly carved and set into place atop massive cliffs begs the question, "How did they do it?" To this day, we don't have a good answer.

Finally, to bring the whole thing out of ancient history and establish a thread of continuity to the story that touches our lives today, we need to look no further than the West Coast Rap/R&B scene. The late rapper, 2Pac, who's death is shrowded in mystery and conspiracy theory was named by his mother. She, being a civil rights activist fighting for liberation and change for the black community in the United States herself, was not necessarily thinking of beautiful landscapes and perfectly carved stones when she named her son, but she most certainly was thinking of the resistance and struggle and secret armies that the last Inca King valiantly raised to counter the invading armies of the Spanish. This freedom fighter ultimately paid with his life after he was captured and killed in the center square of Cuzco at the hands of Spanish conquistadors, but not before he was able to establish the hidden city of Vilcabamba in the inaccessible mountains of Peru, which itself was only recently found by modern-day explorers. His name wasTúpac Amaru.

These are just a few of the mysteries you might uncover, should you want to make a trip to the mist-shrowded city of Machu Picchu and surrounding majesty of the Sacred Valley of the Inca in Peru.