3rd day / Machu Picchu

The big day started with rain and dense fog  between the ridges of the mountains. Not too promising to visit the Peruvian highlight -Machu Picchu- of the trip. 

Started the day with hiking up to Huayna Picchulocated 300 m above the ruins of Machu Picchu.
The entrance to Huayna Picchu (within the citadel) is restricted to 400 visitors per day, in two allocated time slots at 7am and 10am. We took the 7am slot, which turned out not being the best decision. What a nice view....

Machu Picchu in the background

Machu Pikchu (Quechua machu old, old person, pikchu peak); mountain or prominence with a broad base which ends in sharp peaks, "old peak", is a 15th-century Inca site located 2,430 metres above sea level. 

 The Incas built the estate around 1450, but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although the citadel is located only about 80 kilometers (50 mi) from Cusco, the Inca capital, the Spanish never found it and so did not plunder or destroy it, as they did many other sites.

It remained unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham. Bingham asked a Peruvian farmer and innkeeper, Melchor Arteaga, if he knew of any ruins in the area. The next day, 24 July 1911, Arteaga led Bingham and Sergeant Carrasco across the river on a primitive log bridge and up the Huayna Picchu mountain. At the top of the mountain they came across a small hut occupied by a couple of Quechua, Richarte and Alvarez, who were farming some of the original Machu Picchu agricultural terraces that they had cleared four years earlier. Alvarez's 11-year-old son, Pablito, led Bingham along the ridge to the main ruins. For his services he got 1 soles i.e. 0,3 EUR in todays currency.

Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like.

In July 2011, the Dirección Regional de Cultura Cusco (DRC) introduced new entrance rules to the citadel of Machu Picchu.The tougher entrance rules were a measure to reduce the impact of tourism on the site. Entrance was limited to 2,500 visitors per day.

 

At the end we had a nice day up the there, with some moments of clear weather and happy to go back to village in the vallley to have a nice lunch. 

 

One of the Andean region's most popular sources of meat is guniea pig, which was domesticated already before the colonial times.

According to activists, eating guinea pig is good for the environment. "Matt Miller, an Idaho-based science writer with The Nature Conservancy, says rodents and other small livestock represent a low-impact meat alternative to carbon-costly beef. Miller, who is writing a book about the ecological benefits of eating unconventional meats, visited Colombia several years ago. At the time, he says, conservation groups were expressing concern about local ranchers clearing forest to provide pasture for their cattle -activity that was causing erosion and water pollution.
"They were encouraging people to switch from cattle to guinea pigs," Miller says. "Guinea pigs don't require the land that cattle do. They can be kept in backyards, or in your home. They're docile and easy to raise." I did it for the environment.

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