As we said our day at Machu Picchu was great with a few minor downfalls.  The first being the 4:30 wake up to get to the train station on time for the early departure.  The second being that it rained for most of the day when we were at Machu Picchu.

We took a lot of pictures (approx 350) during the day and it would take us forever to load them here.  So for the time being here is some of the ones we will post.

Getting ready for the fun 4 hour train ride ahead of us…  Note this photo was taken at 5:45am :), can you tell that everyone is excited to see Machu Picchu? 

The next two photos were taken at the entrance of Machu Picchu

 The next two pictures were taken inside of Maccu Picchu.

 

Below is where everyone was listening to our guide tell us stories about the Incas and the city

Entry way to Urban Sector of Machu Picchu:

The Temple of the Three Windows, this building only had three walls and the windows had views of the rising sun. It is thought that this is where they probably gave offerings durning religious rituals to the “Pachamama” (Mother Earth).

This is a photo of what is called the Principal Plaza

Here is a photo of the Temple of the Sun.  The reason it is called the Temple of the Sun is because of how one of it’s windows faces Southeast and the other faces Eastern.  Durning the winter solstice (21st of June) the sun shines directly though the Eastern window, which durning the summer solstice (21st of December) its shines though the Southeast windows. 

Unfortunately, it was not a clear day.  Otherwise this rock, called the “echo rock”, is carved to look like the mountains behind it.  The Incas worshipped the mountains because it provided water for them to live.

April testing out the Inca door ways.  Wow April is soo tall!!

Behind the picture of us you can see the mountain, Huayna Piccu which means “young peak”, that is in many of our Machu Picchu (meaning “old peak”) pictures.

So this pictures I (Eric) am going to call an unknown or a building with two circle stones in the ground :).  The guide claims that one of the circles is bigger than the other one and it is a place where the Incas worshiped the sun and the moon (note the two circles on the ground).  The circles would have water put in them since they were not allowed to look dirctly at the sun durning the solstice.  However, in one of the books we have it said that this place since it was in what most people considered the industrial district.  So because of that it was probably a place were pottery was made because of these two stones. 

In this photo you can see the Terraces that were generally used for argicultural purposes.

Entry way to the City of Machu Picchu as we were exiting to head to higher grounds. 

Photos of Machu Picchu from higher ground.  Remember the tall mountain in the background is called Huayna Picchu.

April and Jim were dead set on trying to find the Inca Bridge that they saw signs for.  However, after walking on a trail for about 10 min (through the Jungle mind you, and seeing not a single other person) Eric and Madeleine forced April and Jim to gave up.  We looked in our book when we were back on the train and they did say that it was a 40 min walk.  Guess we will have to save the Inca Bridge for next time 🙂

Not quite sure how this happend.  But in the course of saying we would take a picture of the guy in this photo with the girl he was with.  They wanted us to takea photo of them.  So we then thought they would just take a picture of us.  However, the message must have gotten lost in translation because the guy stayed in our picture as his friend took all of our picture.  Can you say “No Comprendo??”

Here is a photo from Machu Picchu looking down on the city below.

Not really sure if any of you want to know.  Lets just say on our train ride home all of a sudden some music was being played over the speakers and this guy was running up and down the train car dancing.  April covinced him to dance on Eric which she thought was pretty funny!

 

So next time we make it down to Peru I (Eric) think that we are going to have to hike the Inca trail to Machu Picchu.. any takers… Matt Walker, Michael Walker, Ryan Gott?? 

We are leaving now to travel to the Colca Canyons for the night.  We are not sure what the Internet access will be while they are there but hope to touch base with everyone later tonight!  Love to all back home and talk soon!!