This post will be mainly pictures because Machu Picchu was so incredible and can’t really be described in words. We went on a two day tour, the first part of the tour involved seeing some llamas, local crafts/textiles/jewelry, and a few ancient Inka sites. The second day was all Machu Picchu.

Here are some llamas we loved. They are such silly looking creatures and their faces have so much personality. This first one makes Garett laugh a lot, so I’ll make him big.

From another angle.

In the textile/pottery collective museum, we learned about the following symbol, here woven on a tapestry; the three steps refer to the Underworld, Earth, and Heaven, with a nice, big, mysterious hole in the center. The long strings with knots on the left are some sort of communication system that has yet to be deciphered. The Spanish burned most of them, so there aren’t too many examples left.

I always remember people telling me that Red Dye #5 (or whatever its designation) was made from crushed up beetles and always took the story as apocryphal. But, if you look carefully at the cacti (it’s a bit hard to see), there are little bumps on them and inside the bumps are beetles. If you smash those beetles, they turn red! And if you add some acid (like lemon juice) the color changes. So many of the bright, red-adjacent colors are created by this beetle! So cool. It’s used in make-up as well. I’m not sure what vegans think about that, actually.

After our visit to the collective, we visited a few Inka sites, the most memorable of which was in Ollantaytambo, built on a series of terraces. Like Machu Picchu, it’s a mystery how any of this got built. The Inka didn’t even use wheels. Maybe rollers or something like that, but because they had no pack animals (like horses or donkeys), everything was powered by humans.

Here are some incredibly fitted blocks. Again, no one knows how they did it. They didn’t have any iron or even really hard metals.

People kept saying aliens created Machu Picchu; even our tour guide, Ulysses, promoted it a little, much to my chagrin–I was looking for other, more substantive theories, tbh. But dude’s theories were a bit dubious overall. Apparently Machu Picchu was partially staffed by dwarfs who were related to the royal family and nubile women would be greeted at the gates of Machu Picchu with the horrific question: “Do you want to have fun or do you want to get married?”

As an aside, Garett’s current offhand theory is that time travel made Machu Picchu possible. When I floated time travel as an alternative theory to aliens, everyone looked at us weird and was like, don’t be crazy.

On the way up the mountain. I love, love the clouds.

Machu Picchu and the mountains.

On our way back on the train, I danced with a Saqra, who is a sort of mischievous rascal usually accompanying the Virgin Mary in parades? That’s doesn’t sound right, but I think that’s right. Rainbows here are patriotic colors.