Winter Solstice in a Georgia Summer

All trip we have been leading up to the trip to Machu Picchu and late on Thursday night we finally arrived. We stayed in a hostel in Aguas Calientes, which is at the base of Machu Picchu Mountain. We got up at 5:00 am on Friday morning to catch a shuttle bus to the entrance gate. I was amazed that even with the travel problems caused by the landslide the day before that there was still a long line to get into the site. Since we had been "training" for this day for the past three weeks we were able to briskly walk past a lot of the people on the way into the site. I made sure to stop and get a picture of the trapezoidal doorway that frames Huayna Picchu.

My main focus that morning was to get to the Temple of the Sun. Its hard to miss the Temple of the Sun when looking at a map because it's the only room on the site with a semicircular wall. On the wall there are three windows, one of which the sunrise came through at a prefect angle on Friday, the winter solstice (June 21). The light that came through the trapezoidal window made a rectangle which was split in half by a rock in the center of the room. I am doing my senior project on the probability that this occurrence happened on accident. The Incas seemed to have done nothing on accident and I hope to use some prior classes in Probability & Statistics to show this is true.

        After meeting back up with the rest of the group we got on own private tour of part of the site by our very own Dr. Ryan Brown. The most interesting thing that he pointed out were various large rocks throughout the site that were carved by the Incas to look like the mountains in the distance. The Incas thought of the mountains as deities and so these might have been seen as idols of the different mountains. The largest of these was called the Sacred Rock and it was a popular photo spot of most of the tourist. The best part was the Dr. Brown pointed out that this one was not as great a fit to the outline of the neighbouring mountains. He suggested it may be a better fit to Salcantay, which is the highest mountain in the region and is just outside of Cusco.

In the afternoon, Matt, Joey, and I of course went exploring the site. We hiked up Machu Picchu mountain which has an elevation of 10,112 ft. The hike to the top was mainly stairs but, the 360* view from the top was priceless! (760) After we got down to the Inca trail which eventually leads into the site, we hiked to see the Inca Bridge. This was one of the most impressive things at the entire site that we saw. Just looking at the cliff made me nauseous. The wooden bridge itself is small but, the work to lay the stones on the side of this rock face must have cost some of the workers their lives. The combination of walking around the site in the morning and hiking the mountain in the afternoon wore all of us out. I think we all were asleep that night the earliest of the whole trip.