Yesterday Sally and I did Route 1, which gave us the classic overview of Machu Picchu (MP). This morning we went into the heart of the sanctuary, which involved relatively little climbing (1).

We had agreed to meet Marisol at 7:00 (2), so we grabbed some early food.

Where yesterday afternoon the skies were bright blue, this morning started out cloudy with fog and a chance of rain. It had rained overnight, and the ground was wet. Our hotel room comes with ponchos, so we threw those in the bag and headed out.

You’ll see in many of the pictures that the rooms have very few windows. What may appear as windows at first are simply niches, which could be used for storage. As MP was a sacred sanctuary built by and for the Inca king, the stone work is fastidious. The stones are polished and often fitted together without any mortar. And they are standing 500 years later.

By 8:30, the fog was starting to lift. In the upper right of the next group, you can clearly see three niches in the wall and a single window above them. The circular building at the upper left is the Temple of the Sun. It has two windows which are aligned to the summer and winter solstice. It’s believed that this temple was used for offerings and ceremonies dedicated to Inti, the Inca’s god of the sun.

The fog and clouds continued to come and go as we started on the return trip. In the bottom image, you can see a huge rock carved to a shape and placed to mirror the mountain peak and range behind it. While the Incas did have metal tools, much of this sculpting was probably done with hard stone.

My plan was to have breakfast when we returned before going out for the last route, but we got back to the hotel just after 10:00, and the breakfast room closed at 10. They offered us a snack menu, which wasn’t very appealing, so I just had a granola bar in the room.

Now’s a good time to talk about the room. As I wrote earlier, the Sanctuary Lodge is the only hotel right at the entrance to Machu Picchu; all of the other hotels are in Aguas Calientes and require the 20 minute bus ride (plus queuing) each way. It’s also the second most expensive room we’re staying in on this trip. It’s 161 sq ft, and very poorly laid out.

The clothes closet shares a 3’ x 6’ space with the sink and tiny vanity (3). That is, if someone is using the sink, there’s no room for someone to get to the suitcases, drawers or hangers. And two people can’t access the closet simultaneously. This space is open to the entry area.

Once you pass through this tiny space, you come to the water closet with is divided half for the 3’ x 3’ shower, and half for the toilet. Turning on the light in the bathroom area also turns on the fan, which sounds like a jet engine. To get out of the water closet, you open the door into the sink/closet area – but you can’t see if anyone’s standing there until you knock them over.

The service is great, the food was great (not withstanding being closed from 10 to noon), but the facilities are poor.

Okay, back to MP. Sally called it done, but I went back at 11:00 for the third try, Route 2. Route 2 climbs almost as high as the Route 1 that we did yesterday, but then descends into parts of the sanctuary that the other two routes don’t include. I have to say, this entire operation is very well run. It’s crowded, but the crowds are controlled by assigning people 30 minute entry windows, and having rangers located all throughout the site (4).

Here are two views of the Temple of Three Windows. They represent heaven, the underworld and the present day. I’m sure the Incas didn’t call it by that name.

And finally, another view of the Temple of the Sun (the circular structure) and an overall look at this section of the sanctuary, including the mountain Huayna Picchu, still shrouded in the clouds.

After this, it was back to the hotel to clean up, have lunch, pack and relax, and then catch the Hiram Bingham train to our next stop at Cusco. This ride took us 3-1/2 hours, so we didn’t even get to the hotel until almost 10:00pm. And we were pretty tired by then.

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(1) “Relatively little” doesn’t mean “none”, and we still don’t have enough oxygen.

(2) Each admission ticket to the site has a designated time to enter, with a 30 minute window. So you need to be timely – if you miss your window, you can’t enter.

(3) There’s no room to take any more meaningful pictures than the ones I have in yesterday’s blog.

(4) I never saw the rangers do anything, but then again I almost never saw anything that needed doing.