If I had to chose between Machu Picchu and Ciudad Perdida I would chose Ciudad Perdida. Machu Picchu is like an outdoor museum, with a fine green carpet. And there's no mystery to it, you can go up the first hill and see it all, and it's so perfect! Like a model. Just like the photos. Just like all the photos! And by 11:00 there's so many people there, the world and his dog, his middle aged fat American neighbour and all 60 of his French school children are there. Ciudad Perdida on the other hand is mysterious, you can never see it all, and you can never work out how big it is. And there's no one else there, just you and the 10 or so guys you've just spend three days getting there with. Not that the three days getting there were well spent, the six days of short walks could have been reduced easily to 5 days trekking, or even four days without a stay at the city. Which is another thing, you get to sleep there, which doesn't sound like much, but it really added to the whole trip.A friend of mine in Valparaiso declared that he was depressed one day, and continued "what kind of fucking bastard gets depressed while he's spending a few months on the coast of Chile?" I felt a bit down after getting back today, I had that feeling like when you get back from holiday and think, oh, so this is real life. I know that's ridiculous, but anyway, after having a shower and stepping out the door into the warmth and sun to go to our local drug dealer/brothel for a milk shake (this guy does everything!:) I realised how difficult it is to stay down for even a minute here.
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2 comments:
Interestingly the word "Picchu" actually means "peak".
So we could just call it "Machu Peak".
As for the helicopter flights...
Indeed, it was a bad idea.
But recently the Peruvian Government wanted to install some sort of a cable car to bring tourists up there.
Even the "on-foot" and bus & train-driven tourism leads to degradation... Stones have already started moving from their place and rocks bear the marks of millions of steps every year.
Imagine: 800.000 people enter Machu Picchu every year.
How many steps do the rocks support per year? It could be well over 1 billion.
And Machu translates to bigger, so we can call it Bigger Peak.
I don't really understand your maths, are you talking about the total number of steps on all the rocks?
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