Trip the Light Mingtastic: First Things First.

Y'all just want to hear about Machu Picchu, right? Seems like the first thing everybody has been asking about. After all, it's not every day I get to knock off a bucket list item. So please, read my story:

We got up super early, left our hostel, and started trekking in the dark up the trail to the Inca ruins. We had one headlamp with low batteries (nick's-I gave mine away at the bus accident scene), a cellphone flashlight (nick's) and one seriously runny nose (mine). I was still quite ill with whatever strep throat/sinus infection/ black plague I was suffering from since Lima. Aaron woke up with a case of the sissies and had decided it was okay to take the bus up to the top with the elderly, injured and rest of the tourists who had had too many papas fritas (disclaimer: he did end up getting up later and walking up, but he took the road, which was easier, so I'm still gonna call him out). Spirits were high, despite health being low, and we started climbing up the 2 mile, 1200 foot elevation gain (read:straight up!).

Actually, to be fair, Nick barely broke a sweat. I couldn't breathe through my nose and my throat was on fire so I was sucking wind and pouring sweat. Not to admit weakness, I stuck behind Nick as close as I could, moving slower than usual but only allowing myself two 10 second breaks. We started ducking in front of other hikers, one after another and I got amped knowing that we were making good time and were closer than all those clowns we passed behind. After 75 minutes, we emerged at the top, worn and triumphant, to be greeted by..... Four busses unloading tourists at the top of the hill. Quelle anticlimactic.

I was immediately enraged at the sight of all those freshly showered, powdered, pressed tourists happily snapping photos and chattering about their continental breakfast buffets while patiently waiting in line for admission. My ass got out of bed while deliriously ill, just to shlep up a peak in the Andes mountains in the DARK, and I gotta get in line behind these fools?! In ever American style, I started squawking to Nick that surely there HAD to be some kind of expedited line for the hikers. Isn't there SOME recognition for the actively motivated?! Indeed there is not. .... And in a moment of frightening maturity, I came to a realization. Even though I had yet to even lay eyes on that which I came for, I had to recognize that, just like so many cliches before me, the character and merit of my efforts lay in the journey, not in the destination. My reward had already come to me, in the camaraderie and experience of getting there. The meat of the trip would not be the actual ruins themselves, but everything I had and got to do in order to get there. I laughed and shrieked so many times while biking, hiking, rafting, running, dancing, scrambling, and shuffling through the Andes mountains those four days. Even if the destination was overcrowded and foggy, no freshly groomed and well rested cheesy tourist could ever take that from me.

So I shut up and got in line behind the four bus-fulls of people. And blew my nose into my sleeve.

The ruins themselves? They give you such a weird feeling. Have you been to the Grand Canyon? You know the feeling you got the very first time you leaned over to see exactly what all the fuss is about? That pleasant nausea associated with genuine awe and grandeur? Your stomach kind of drops out your butt, your throat closes, and your knees melt into your ankles. You blink through watery eyes and, when you calm down, you come to the realization that, the little human being that is you is so so small in comparison to the wide wide world? It's like that.

Of course, that's the candid stuff. But I gotta educate you, too.
Here we are, Top Ten Fun Facts:

10. the Inca ruins were built in the early 1400s and abandoned near 1532, when Peru was conquered by the Spanish. It remained undiscovered until 1911, when Yale prof Bingham stumbled upon it, hoping to find another lost Incan city. The only reason why we have it today is because the Spanish looked, but could never find it. Miracle, huh?

9. Machu Picchu was a palatial compound, inhabited only by the noble and royal Incans.

8. They used wood expanded in water to break stones. Crazy.

7. All of their structures have withstood multiple major earthquakes. No big deal. The ingredients in grout they used for some of their rustic structures remains a mystery. It has lasted hundreds of years, and appears to have not eroded much at all. No one knows whats in it and why it has lasted so long. Scientists tried to replicate it, and their version wore away in 4 years.

6. The Incans did not read or write. There is no documented record of MP. We don't even know what its real name was. MP is what Bingham named it after the term the locals used to refer to the mountain on which it stood, meaning "old mountain".

5. One toilet in the entire city. Used by the King only.

4. No dirt originally found on the mountain when they started building it. All of the dirt there was carried in from Cusco, 80 km away. By humans. Up the mountain. Insanity.

3. Incans paid their taxes in work. At any given time, there were 2000 non residents up there, working to build and maintain the city, paying their dues to their nation. Interesting concept, should be used in the fat America, I think.

2. They split their priority evenly between sacred and necessity; the city contains exactly 80 residential structures and 80 places of worship.

1. 100th anniversary of its discovery this year. What a fun surprise for us :) Make the trek, it's worth it just for the special stamp in your passport.