At one with the Incas

Get up early in Machu Picchu, they said. Stay overnight in the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge and awaken in the dark. Come the dawn, a strange feeling might pass through you. Unusual things could happen, life-changing things. Don’t let the sun rise without you.

Get up early.

This urgent message came from friends who already had visited the Inca ruins. They always sounded wistful when they said it, and I could tell they wanted to go back. None of them had ever seen anything like Machu Picchu. It did things to them.

I arose as instructed and hiked to a high vantage point before the sun could climb above the sharp, jungle-green peaks of the Vilcanota Range. Below I saw the walls and foundations of a long-abandoned community laid out with precision and care. Gray rocks formed the skeleton of a village with a spiritual cast, its masonry beautifully offset by verdant plazas where llamas grazed.

At the north end, the mountain called Huayna Picchu rises lush and symmetrical, girdled by terraces similar to those carved out by farmers all across the Andes. Huayna Picchu, “young peak,” is the most familiar backdrop for this magnificent setting. Machu Picchu, “old peak,” looms above the entrance gate. For most visitors, the old peak serves as a handy perch for gazing at the spectacle of a place no one really knows.

I could see -- and feel -- what my friends meant. Some 600 years before, people built this city in the jungle at the behest of Pachacutec, the ninth Inca emperor. The arrangement of structures, plazas, terraced fields, symbolic carvings and impeccable Incan stonework looks as if it had been intended as some kind of message. There are those who believe this is where the people known as Incas first came into being -- mystically, of course. Signs and symbols and subtle pointers have fascinated anthropologists since the site was discovered. They mean something, but no one knows exactly what. Still, their presence in such a beautiful collaboration between man and nature causes goosebumps.

I doubt if Machu Picchu would be anywhere near as striking if it stood beside the highway in the valley of the Rio Urubamba. Instead, it was hidden in a hanging valley of its own and not discovered until 1911, a situation that adds immeasurably to its aura. Even now, Machu Picchu is accessible only on foot or by buses that rumble over 4 miles worth of twisting road, finally arriving at the site, 7, 872 feet above sea level. A cable car to the top has been proposed. Purists hate the idea.

Before boarding a bus, most visitors ride the train from Cuzco, about 75 miles away and 3,000 feet higher than Machu Picchu. The trip takes 3 1/2 hours because the train must slowly advance and retreat over switchbacks to surmount the hills that cradle the town’s outskirts. After that, the tracks gradually descend and follow part of the long hollow known as “The Sacred Valley of the Incas,” an area also rich with the remains of prehistoric palaces and forts. Last stop: Aguas Calientes and then all aboard the motor coaches.

Hardy visitors who demand the full Machu Picchu experience might take the three- or four-day trek over the Inca Trail. That 20-mile journey features hardships sure to stir the blood of inveterate hikers: rough pathways, crude encampments, lung-busting climbs and a lack of protection from frequent rains.

No matter how they get there, all emerge to see that same incredible vista stretching across approximately 70 acres.

I was still in a state of wonder when a few weary backpackers huffed and puffed over the last few yards of Inca Trail. They congratulated themselves for completing the journey and for picking a brilliant day to see the ruins. I was simply glad to be there in tandem with the sun and well ahead of the day-trippers.

“That was the hardest trek I’ve ever taken,” one woman said. “I’m glad it’s over.” A man in the group piped up with an Aussie accent: “I think it’s the altitude that’s hard. The trail was fairly level, and it wasn’t as if we had to hold onto roots, or anything like that.”

As they stared at the ruins, the travelers fanned themselves with their wide-brimmed safari hats, chasing away hot air and fat black mosquitoes. The bugs flew in lazy circles, as if the meager supply of oxygen hindered their attack mode.

On that morning, I was there primarily to soak up the mystique, getting an overview illuminated by a rising sun under a canopy of blue sky and fragile clouds. The previous day, guide Beni Rivas, age 80, had led my wife, Juju, and me through the site on a foggy afternoon and tried to explain the details. He had no stake in any one of the theories that surround Machu Picchu, but Rivas knew we would be awed.

As we entered the entrance gate, he said, “Now you are about to have the highlight of your trip to South America.”

The ruins seem to tell a story, but no one seems to know exactly what it is. American explorer and historian Hiram Bingham discovered the complex on July 24, 1911, during a search for the lost city of Vilcabamba. That final Inca stronghold later turned up even deeper into the jungle, leaving scholars to ponder what Machu Picchu could possibly mean.

“I soon found myself before the ruined walls of buildings built with some of the finest stonework of the Incas,” Bingham wrote. “It was difficult to see them, as they were partially covered over by trees and moss, the growth of centuries; but in the dense shadow, hiding in bamboo thickets and tangled vines, could be seen, here and there, walls of white granite ashlars most carefully cut and exquisitely fitted together . . . .I was left truly breathless.”

Other than a few farmers in the area, no one had been aware that the jungle city existed. Off and on for the next four years, Bingham and a team of archeologists, sponsored by Yale University and the National Geographic Society cleared away the vines and cataloged their find: 100 stairways with 3,000 steps, 216 residences, numerous graves. Other expeditions followed, making more discoveries, including the skeletons of more than 100 people -- 75 percent of them female.

Bingham returned for the last time in 1948 to take part in the dedication of the switchback road that bears his name. By then, Machu Picchu had become a huge archeological question mark. Who were the people who built it? Why did they build it? What was its significance?

Rivas, our guide, offered to give us his favorite theory, but, he cautioned, it was theory only. The citadel was built in the mid-1400s by a culture that had no written language. Incas may have abandoned Machu Picchu early in the 16th Century, decades before the Spanish conquest that began in 1532. Spanish chroniclers, piecing together Incan history from the stories of Indian elders, never learned about Machu Picchu. Maybe their informants didn’t know it was there. Maybe they chose not to tell.

“The Spanish never got here,” Rivas said. “They were looking for the last capital of the Incas down in the canyon, and they didn’t realize the existence of this place high up here and in the jungle.

“In the opinion of the majority of the archeologists, the city built here was sort of the religious capital of the Inca empire. It is widely believed to be religious, because in the excavations of personal tombs, most of the bones belonged to women. In Inca times, in the important religious centers like this, there were always more women than men.”

The preponderance of female skeletons and the many slate and obsidian objects -- possibly religious tokens -- found at the site during early excavations have reinforced religious theories. It’s believed that specially selected women, “virgins of the sun,” were stationed in sacred sites to serve the Inca rulers. An estimated 600 to 700 people lived in Machu Picchu. The surrounding agricultural terraces and scattered cisterns could not have sustained the sort of major capital imagined by those, including Bingham, who insisted Machu Picchu was “the lost city of the Incas.” Sometime, perhaps in the 16th Century, everyone fled. Theory has it that there was not enough water and farmland to sustain a growing population.

Rivas led us through the ruins, adroitly mounting steps and ducking into nooks and crannies. We examined the Temple of the Sun from a distance. Barriers surrounded the round, tapering tower to protect an interior filled with the finest stonework in the entire complex. In every structure, Rivas pointed out holes that might have supported poles for torches or hangers for decorative objects. We looked at niches where mummies may have been placed in the traditional knees-to-chest position for sacred ceremonies. We peered through exquisitely crafted trapezoidal openings in the Temple of the Three Windows. They framed the large main plaza, a broad lawn where archeologists believe markets were held and the men played a game similar to field hockey.

Every portion of the site has a name: the Urban Sector, the Fountain District, Temple of the Sun, the Royal Sector, Sector of the Quarries, the Upper Group, the Lower Cemetery, the Industrial Sector, the Jails . . .

There are many more, all pieces of a puzzle that has never quite come together. An obelisk near the royal compounds has been identified either as a sundial or an indicator to divine optimal growing seasons. A slab on the floor of an area known as the Condor Group resembles a map of the South American continent. How the Incas would have figured out the shape of their land no one knows. Coincidence? That seems to be the prevailing scientific opinion, but, of course, opinions could change.

We poked around in the Palace of the Princess, the only two-story structure in Machu Picchu. Rivas pointed out the stone slab with indents for pillows that served as the base of a bed, the trapezoidal door with deep niches for protective log barriers, the shelves that might have held the things that a princess treasured.

Clearly, we were tiring of all the speculation. “This must be the shelf where she had her phone,” Juju said. “Yes,” Rivas replied in the spirit of the game, “and here was the television and the record player.”

It was irreverent, yes, but in a way the jokes made Machu Picchu more real. People lived and died here. They pursued their labors, their amusements and their beliefs.

Back at the hotel, we leafed through the thick guest book in the lobby. Inscriptions had been signed by Leonardo di Caprio, Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. One visitor sketched a cable car and thereby cast his vote in favor of that highly controversial proposed “improvement.”

A note signed by E. Benjamin Bingham said: “Each time I return to Machu Picchu, my grandfather, Hiram Bingham, who died when I was a boy, becomes more alive for me. It was his destiny to uncover this mystery center, which now is drawing people from all over the world. He could not have done this without the people of Peru. He listened to the many stories he heard and took them seriously.

“Others may have dismissed them as dreams or fantasies, but he followed the stories to this place. Now each modern person who comes here with an open heart has a chance to deepen their own story. The meaning of life is visible in the stones, for those who have eyes to see.”