Machu Picchu

In order to reach the Machu Picchu Portal of the Sun at dawn from the Inca Trail you have to line up before dawn with the hundred or so other Inca Trail hikers at the Machu Picchu Trail Checkpoint to have your documents checked. Well, maybe not all one hundred of them. I suppose that the Eurotrash and Creepy Norte Americano "Young Adults" who spent the night getting drunk on Cusquena beer at the bar by the camping area and proceeding to piss and puke all over everything expecting the rest of the world to clean up after them (oh yes, you know exactly the type of "young adults" that I'm talking about) didn't wake up until later. I was up and waiting in line, quietly reading my most recent issue of The New Yorker that I had lugged along with my personal gear over Dead Woman's Pass. Once you get through the check point you are hiking up those steep steps again through the dawn's early light under arches of exotic orchids to the Portal of the Sun. Once you are at the Portal, spread out below you lies Machu Picchu. And it is everything that it has ever been cracked up to be. From the Portal it is all down hill past the llamas to an ancient city filled with wonders like elaborate rooms and buildings carved from stone and laid out in perfect alignment with the compass. I will now stop wasting my words trying to describe it. Just believe that it is there and hope that you will see it some day.