Machu Picchu Family Adventures

The @homelesshartlens making "sexy llama" signs, @ Machu Picchu

,After visiting the Pyramids at Giza, Machu Picchu moved to number #1 on the ole’ travelling bucket list. On the day of the summer solstice, (winter for the northern hemisphere) I am proud to announce, it has come down! Ultimately, I would have loved to have done the Inca Trail as well, but in this context we are travelling with a 4, 7, 10 and 71 year old, some of whom had a hard enough time doing the regular tour. I am not sure what I can add about this place that hasn’t already been said, but I will reflect on our family experiences, and provide some travel insight nonetheless.

Getting there with a family advice and experiences:

,We accessed Machu Picchu from Cusco, Peru, because that is where I thought it best to access it from, and in hindsight I am glad we did because there are a lot of other things that can be done from Cusco.  Had we not been travelling during the Christmas holiday season, (where we only had a few short weeks off) we likely would have spent more time here to do the rest of the typical sites, like the Sacred Valley  and the Maray Salt Ponds and Moray Terraces. It is still about a three hour journey to get to Machu Picchu from Cusco, so it is possible to have an earlier start, beat a lot of the crowds, and have less of a long day. To do this you can make your way to Aguas Calientas, which is often known as "Machu Picchu Pueblo(town)." It exists solely to cater to tourists, and from here you catch teh shuttle up to Machu Pichu, or hike, if you prefer. It was here that I sampled Alpaca for the first time at the end of our tour. Alpace: not just a fancy throw rug or comfy sweater, but also a tatsty steak!
The townsite itself is quite charming, and reminds me a lot of Banff of Jasper in Alberta. the town name literally means hot water, and there are thermal pools you can soak in, though we did not exercise this option.
Our day started with a pickup from the tour we booked through Machu Picchu Center, who arrived promptly at 6am to take us to the train station in Ollantaytambo, (about an hour and a half away) where we took Peru Rail to the town-site of Machu Picchu (Aguas Calientas), which was another hour and a half or so. We met our guide Osman Sarmiento, (who was beauty!), and had a quick lunch before taking another bus that lasted about an hour up to the citadel site itself.

Clara striking her best yoga pose

The tour gets the epic photo opportunities out of the way immediately, as you arrive into the site above the citadel and near the entrance to the Inca Trail, which leads to the complex. (Inca Trail hikers typically arrive through the sun gate and get the epic sunrise/less crowded entrance to Machu Picchu, but on this day the hikers saw little as everything was shrouded in fog, It being the rainy season after all. (I will chalk this up to a win for the typical tourist experience, as our views were awesome!)
We did not have perfectly clear weather, but it was not completely overcast, and though there were plenty of other tourists on the site we had ample opportunity to avoid stranger tourists in our photos.
We got all of our fun “yoga pose at a historical monument” photos out of the way, and then our guide decided we would take a quick break and he would tell us a little about the history of the place. We learned how the Incas were quite advanced in their farming techniques, and were considered to be the Romans of South America, expanding and conquering much of South America. Unfortunately for them, when the 12th Inca King himself got captured by Spanish conquistadors, it lead to a civil war within the empire to decide on his successor. What wasn’t ruined by the civil war, or fear of the Spanish “Gods” (they were paler skinned, had these weird creatures (horses) and modern weaponry) was wiped out by smallpox. The Incans eventually fled into the Amazon jungle, where they intermingled with native peoples there, and survived, but did not thrive as they once had. Many people in modern day Peru, Bolivia and Colombia are thought to be descendant from the Incas. Suffice it to say, I am now obsessed with Incan culture, and will force feed it to my Comparative Civilization students in the upcoming school semester in a the same way that I did last year with Islamic empires after re-reading the Kite Runner.
Once our history lesson was over it was time to explore the actual citadel, but unfortunately for us, it was also time to bucket rain. This did not dampen our experience though, as it did stop enough to have a pleasant guided tour, with less tourists (many less fearless tourists were cowering in the few covered archways) and an ambient fog cover that made for some nice photos. 

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Although it is super popular, I feel that Machu Picchu should be on everyone's bucket list. It is important to see that it is not just the European empires of old who had the right idea about civilization building. These guys were sustainable before it was a trendy 21st century thing to be, and had figured out terraced farming,and astrology in the same way that the Egyptians, Romans and Chinese had. Further visits to Incan sites on this trip only reinforced my admiration for these people. It is well deserving of its UNESCO world heritage status. Machu Picchu was never conquered, its inhabitants were ordered to abandon it and head for the Amazon in the face of the advancing Spanish.