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Machu Picchu – A Rainy Afternoon – Part II

We continued our walk thru the ruins of Machu Picchu as the weather continued to try to clear…..

Multiple Doorways

At this point, we were walking down toward the factory house area of the ruin.  I happened to notice this great image waiting for me to snap it – looking thru a number of doorways until you are finally looking at a niche in the wall.  I also love our first look at a blue sky!

Mimic the Shape

I love this scene.  The Inca’s apparently built this wall at the far end of the city to mimic the shape of the mountain behind it.  How nice that the clouds were lifting enough to actually get to see that mountain!

Ruins in the Andes

There are a couple of interesting things going on in this image.  One is the view that was just outside the door to this building – I wonder if the Inca’s noticed that.  The other is the upper set of windows in the building ruin.  A number of the buildings in the city did have second floors, altho I don’t know if this was one of them.

City Gate

When Hiram Bingham first entered Machu Picchu he did so from what is called the Gate to the City.  You can see the highest guard house in the lower right corner of the image.  The gate (not a formal gate as we think of it today) is up above that guard house and to the left.  It is somewhat difficult to see – but know it is still there.  One other interesting note is that the people who chose to take the 4-day hike from Agua Calientes to Machu Picchu will enter the city ruins from this gate.  The gate is on the mountain that is known as Machu Picchu (the city was named after the mountain).

 

Peeking Bunny

Just because this is an ancient ruin, that doesn’t mean nothing is living there now.  One of the residents is this bunny, lying low and peeking out from under a structure.

Sun in the Mist

Here’s an image that allows us to see the terracing that’s in place in the city.  You can start to better see more of the Andes peaks surrounding Machu Picchu.  It’s difficult to imagine how the ancient Inca’s managed to get all the stones used to build the city from the different mountains surrounding them.  The mountain in the foreground (the green one) is called Wynapicchu.  I think it means something like the “old” mountain.  This is the mountain that people hike up in the morning to see the sun come over the mountain peaks and light up the city.  They hike up the spine of the mountain, which you can see in the middle of that mountain.  One sad piece of news that we heard about while we were there was that a woman doing the sunrise hike up the spine a few weeks before our visit, fell off the mountain and unfortunately, was killed.  We did not do this hike.

 

The Ruins

We ended the day today with this look at some ruins that are not in as good shape as everything we had seen earlier.  I really like the absolute rustic look to this part of the city.  More to see tomorrow!

Enjoy!