Good Friday combined with full moon to make this a glorious and magical day at Machu Picchu. We awoke at 4:20 AM, grabbed a quick bite of breakfast and were out the door of our hostal by 4:45 AM to begin our 1 ½ hour hike up the stone steps to Machu Picchu from Aguas Calientes. We were joined by no more than 20 other hikers who ascended at varying speeds and we arrived at Machu Picchu's ticket gate with prepaid tickets and passports in hand and joined the queue within 15 minutes of its 6:00 AM opening time. Some 2,500 people pass through this gate daily and so we kept our expectations in check as we fully expected to be accompanied by mobs of people during this day, most of whom actually arrive by bus, many as part of tour groups, a 20 minute ride up the winding road from Aguas Calientes. Fortunately, we visited the information office the previous day and were advised by a kind man as to the tactics that we might employ in order to manage through this. We followed his advice to the letter and were rewarded with an amazing and unforgettable experience.

After entering the gate to the site and walking a couple of hundred meters, we turned left and hiked up the ancient stone path and steps for one hour, away from the Ciudad de Machu Picchu (the ancient city) towards the eastern extremity of the site to Intipunku, the Quechua name for La Puerta del Sol (the Sun Gate), which sits on Cerro Machu Picchu (Mount Machu Picchu) and is where the Inca Trail enters the site . Accompanied by no more than a half dozen fellow travellers, we lingered around here for 90 minutes or so and marveled at the view of Ciudad Machu Picchu below surrounded by its majestic sacred mountains which were so venerated by the Incas as givers of life.

On the evening prior to the hike, in anticipation of this very special and auspicious day, Nat and I each wrote on a small piece of paper short messages of prayer and gratitude to the universe. Before leaving Intipunku, we rolled each of these up and then tied them with thread and beads and placed them side by side in a small opening in one of the ancient Inca walls up at Intipunku. We then sealed the opening with an offering of 5 nuevos soles ($2), a round stone and some moss. While some people offer communion by lighting a candle in church, or through some other ritual of religious significance, this was our way of offering communion.

From Intipunku, we returned towards the Hut of the Caretaker (a 40 minute hike back down the stone path), where many take the classic Machu Picchu photo, and we bobbed and weaved our way through the hordes until we reached the trail that led us within 30 minutes to the Inca Bridge . This is a spectacular, if crazy, peace of work by the Incas that is no longer in use because a traveller fell to his death while crossing it. It essentially consists of a stone ledge which has the appearance of being glued onto a gigantic vertical rock face of a mountain, allowing the Incas to join two cliff hugging trails on either side of the rock face, the second of which leads to some scary place high up on the other side. These people were clearly brilliant engineers and farmers, but they were also a little nuts if you ask me!

We headed back towards the Hut of the Caretaker and found a quiet spot on one of the agricultural terraces nearby where we sat, munched on some carrots and peanuts and just enjoyed the view and the energy for a good while. We finally made our way down to Ciudad de Machu Picchu in the afternoon where we spent some 3 hours strolling through the ancient city, with Huayna Picchu constantly rising over it and us, and surrounded by all of the other sacred peaks, admiring the incredibly sophisticated engineering and rock carving, the ingenious canal work built for the drainage, the astrological ingenuity and the sacred temples.

By the time we got through with the Ciudad, our feet were getting a little tired so we found ourselves a quiet spot on one of the many ancient stone stairways on one end of the site and snacked on an avocado, tomato, carrot and cucumber sandwich as we continued to stare at the whole place in awe.

We hiked back down to Aguas Calientes for about an hour and got a little wet as the rains finally set in by late afternoon (an inevitable part of the experience at Machu Picchu) … but what a great day, a 12 hour energetic one from start to finish, that we will not soon forget. There is a lot of beauty and high energy places in the world, and we’ve been fortunate to see many of them, but this place takes the prize!