Midnight in Machu Picchu | Relaxing Travel Story For Sleep

Hey, Jeffrey here, and welcome back to Night Falls. I'm sure you've already gathered this about me, but I love traveling. I was extremely lucky to spend over two years on the road after uni, India, Nepal, China, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, the list goes on. It really felt like the University of Life and was such a joy to meet so many wonderful people and to experience so many new cultures. We're going into a bit of traveling tonight. I'm going to tell you about the time a campfire debate over who built Machu Picchu swept my friends and me onto the path of time. Our journey carried us deep into the Andes, where we hiked the Inca Trail, watched the city come alive in its full glory, and listened to the gentle whispers of the mountain spirits beneath the stars. Before we begin, here's the quick ad break that keeps this free content possible. To go out free, subscribe via the link in the show notes. All right, now back to Night Falls. The day had gotten off to a gentle start. Bundled up in hats, coats, and gloves, Alastair, Devani and I gathered wood for the campfire out in the pine forest. Always quiet, say, for the crunch of the grass beneath our boots, and there was something magical about the way the earth glittered beneath the first frost of the season. The first frost of the season, the first of the season, was the first of the season. Glittered beneath the first frost of the season. We returned to Lyra, who was busy ladling out mugs of hot chocolate to help us thaw out. All was peaceful around the campfire until Behiti, who had been spending more and more time in the clearing and wonder, found themselves at odds over who built Machu Picchu. Historically speaking, and on the very same topic, Wanda had never steered us wrong. Our bookish friend's knowledge of the past was almost encyclopedic. Ordinarily, we would all have considered Wanda the most qualified to speak on the matter, but Behiti, having joined us from the past thanks to the Fall's magic, had been alive at the time. So we listened to Wanda list the facts, bring out her books, and point to them as proof. Then we watched Behiti shaking her head in disagreement. Behiti was citing stories she had heard thousands of years ago of beings that lived deep in the Andes, in Machu Picchu, long before the rise of the Incan Empire. Wanda and Behiti were two sticks stuck in the mud. Neither one of them was willing to concede, and so, before the sun dipped below the horizon entirely, Behiti suggested we take the path of time all the way back to the birth of the settlement to see for ourselves. Devani was up on her feet and ready to go before we had even had time to discuss it. With winter drawing in and the temperature dropping, we were spending more and more time at the fireside, and she had grown restless. Alistair was willing to go wherever Behiti went, and whilst Wanda didn't much care for adventure, she cared a great deal about being proved right, and was willing to forego her evening reading by the campfire. Lyra yawned, sitting beside the campfire, always seemed to make her drowsy. I'm quite fine just where I am, she decided. Are you sure you don't want to join us? Wanda asked, hopefully. No, no. Lyra insisted. Someone has to stay back and take care of Otto. I suppressed a smile. I wondered who she thought she was convincing, for it had been established weeks ago that Otto was, in fact, thousands of years ago. The schnauzer had been traversing timelines and finding his way through the veil to the other world, right under our noses for years. As we set off down the path of time, the campfire was still in the air, and the campfire was still in the air. The campfire was still in the air, and the campfire was still in the air. As we set off down the path of time, and the sun began to set, I couldn't blame Lyra for wanting to get an early night. I stifled a yawn and took a deep breath in, and out, reminding my tired muscles that I would be asleep in no time at all. The path of time felt long that night. As we took each bend in the track, the temperature seemed to rise. By the time the hedgerows on either side of us opened out, the air felt as warm as it had in the middle of the summer that had just slipped by us. The magic might have dropped us off at the top, wonder lamented, staring up at the trail we still had to hike if we wanted to make it through the mountains to Machu Picchu. The magic that fizzled in the air in nightfalls was known for playing tricks and attempting to ruffle feathers wherever it could. That night, as Wanda set one foot in front of the other and muttered about unnecessary cardio, I got the sense it had succeeded. The Andes stretched impossibly into the heavens. They made the mountains that crowded around nightfalls seem more like humble molehills. The scent of eucalyptus was heavy in the air, and the earth was a little soft underfoot. It seemed as though summer rain had just stopped falling. When we reached the foot of the first mountain, Wanda pulled out the map she had packed and did her best to unfold it. Bohiti set off ahead of us, not bothering to check the directions, and that was the first sign that perhaps she knew more than we had given her credit for. Wanda spun on her heel, compass out as she determined which path we ought to take up the mountain. It looks like we need to head that way, she deduced, pointing toward the track Bohiti had disappeared down. Wanda narrowed her eyes on Bohiti's back as she and Alistair walked hand in hand ahead of us. We got a shuffle on so as not to lose them, and though Bohiti clearly knew her way around the Inca trail, Wanda either wasn't ready to forego the map, or wasn't yet willing to go through the fuss of folding the oversized paper back up. The mountains were stripped as we walked along the first ridges. The colours were caused by geological activity thousands of years ago that exposed layers of different mineral bands, Wanda explained. They'd been smoothed out, having weathered the elements for a millennium, but you can still see the red clay rich in iron oxide, the quartz that appears almost white, the green clay full of magnesium, and the sulphur rich sandstone. I marveled at the vibrant colours that stretched like a rainbow over the peaks ahead of us, and as we walked, Wanda and Bohiti fell back into easy conversation. They shared a wealth of knowledge on the ancient Inca, and agreeing that neither of them could ever be truly sure of who lived in those mountains first, their stalemate came to an abrupt end. The first part of our journey was gentle, and after a time I fell into step beside Wanda. Quietly, I felt myself walking off the day. There was something almost hypnotic about that hike. Time drifted away from me, the tension in my chest eased out, and I felt a weight lifting from my shoulders. It's easy to tend, and draw your shoulders up to your ears when the cold sweeps in, but that walk had me releasing and relaxing in places I didn't even realise I was storing tension. The body is designed to brace against the winter, but with the Peruvian sun burning hot in the sky above me, all that tension was simply melting away. Midday became mid-afternoon, and still we walked on. We didn't stop until we reached Yagta Pata. Yagta Pata is thought to have been a place for ceremonies and agriculture. Wanda read from the textbook she had obviously committed to memory as we set our bags down and surveyed the ruins. The stone terraces that still stood on that flattened off part of the mountain shifted something in my mind. Looking at them, it was so easy to imagine the Inca people going about their day-to-day lives. They had doors like any other buildings would have had, and gaps in the stonework that would have functioned as windows. Beyond those cobbled terraces, the earth dropped away in perfect steps that had been carved into the mountainside. Even now, with the help of JCBs and high-powered drills, altering the landscape on such a scale would be considered quite the feat, but for the Incas to have moulded the earth in such a way so long ago felt almost incomprehensible. The enormous steps led down, down, down into the valley below, creating flat shells that people would have been able to grow food on. If you look ahead, you'll get your first view of Machu Picchu itself, behiti smiled, pointing into the distance. Across the valley, I could just make out the rounded peak that shrouds the ancient site, and I was so distracted by it that I almost didn't realise that we weren't alone in Yachtapata. In the time we had been resting up and taking in the view, another group of explorers had traipsed through the stone terraces and began to marvel at the way the land fell away in perfect tears. They didn't belong to the same era as Devani or I, they stood up straighter and spoke more formally than either of us ever had. Their clothes were too old to belong to the modern day, and too modern for them to have been the people who built that settlement in the mountains. Their starched uniforms and oiled mustaches echoed of the early 1900s, and I watched quietly as they discovered those ruins for the first time. For those explorers, born when so little was known about the past, and the history books were all but blank in places, it must have felt inconceivable that such advanced societies could have flourished so long before their own. Keen not to disturb their discovery, we walked on. The trail grew a little tougher on the knees, taking us up steep steps and down rocky paths, where the cobbles that had once paved the trail were half buried, mostly upturned, and made the walk altogether more difficult to navigate. As we picked through those higgledy-piggledy stone cobbles on the way toward Runkurukai, I realized that perhaps it was best Lyra had chosen to sit that one out. When we finally arrived and began to wander around the circular ruin, I was so exhausted I didn't mark the way the walls weren't crumbling as they ought to have been. It wasn't the only way to get to the top of the hill, but the way the walls were crumbling as they weren't crumbling as they ought to have been. It wasn't until my breath had evened out that I began to suspect with every step we took down the Inca trail, we would be taking a step further back through time. Just past halfway along the trail, the circular stone ruins of Runkurukai were supposed to have been missing a roof. They very much had been in all the pictures I had seen before, and indeed, on the route map Wanda was still touting, there was a picture printed next to the landmark on the map that very much suggested I hadn't been imagining things. Runkurukai peered worn, but perfectly intact as we walked in a circle around it that evening. All was quiet, and I might have made the mistake of thinking the place deserted had Wanda not nudged me in the arm and pointed through a gap in the stones. This place was a resting spot for the travelers and messengers who traversed the trail, but Hiti explained as I waited for my eyes to slowly adjust to the low light so I could get a better look inside the building. It was also considered a spiritual stop, somewhere travelers would honour the Apus, the mountain spirit before they made the difficult final part of their journey. Wanda had it as a whisper, for outside the front door, incense burned on a small fire. It was the only sign to alert us that we were intruding. Peering once more through the gap in the wall and into the dim space those carefully cut stones protected, I watched a young man offer cocoa leaves to the mountain spirits to assure his safe passage. The woven tunic he wore rustled as he rose to his feet. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath in and out, and when he was ready he made his way back to the door. He left the incense burning on the porch and we watched him hidden behind the curve of the building as he walked away. The bright weave of the fabric he wore caught the late evening sunlight and appeared even more vivid than it already was. I might have liked to walk with him and watch him traverse the Inca trail as though it was nothing, as though it was simply something he did twice a week for work. Instead, I stayed hidden. Fressy hastened over the next peak, I knew I would never have been able to keep up. We rested up there for the night. Devani and I were used to sleeping beneath the stars by then. We enrolled our sleeping bags beside the fire, where incense still smoldered and settled on the soft grass for the evening. There was nothing to interrupt the starlight, no street lights, no cars, just quiet. The cosmos practically glittered as we drifted off. The others slept on mats inside. Wanda and Behiti chatted long into the night, going over what they had seen and pouring over the artifacts inside Rinkurukai. It had to have been hours later when, softly, somewhere in my sleep, I heard Alistar's voice begging them for quiet so we could finally drift off. When dawn broke the next day, we embarked on the final part of our journey, and Alistar was the only one who didn't seem worn out by all the hiking we had already done. The sun rose ahead of us and we were lucky enough to reach the famous Sun Gate, just as it crested the mountain peaks and bathed the Andes in its golden rays. There were guards stationed at the stone Sun Gate, ensuring no one who made it into Majapichu was a threat to the community living just beyond the boundary. On the morning of the equinox, the gate perfectly frames the sunrise. Behiti explained, as we stab the gate, the sun rises, the moon rises, and the sun rises. We walked through the stone gate and looked down upon Majapichu. As I watched the civilization below thriving in that mountain settlement, it struck me that there was so much we didn't know about the Inka, so much I wished that someone, somewhere, would have written down or drawn out so that it might have survived the erosion of time. There wasn't even an uneven step to be seen on our final walk down to Majapichu itself. The stonework was pristine and unmarred by time. Whilst I had thought the uphill stretches would be the most tiring parts of the hike, by that point, even navigating my way downhill felt like quite the challenge. My mind and body were exhausted and so our progress was slow. I could faintly hear Kwechwa, the language still spoken by the Inka, echoing around the mountain basin. I didn't need wonder or Behiti to tell me that Majapichu was built as a royal estate and designed to house and host the Inka elite. My school textbooks had covered as much. The books, however, had failed to convey what life was really like for those residing on that mountaintop. I'd always imagined Majapichu to be a quiet place, one where workers kept their voices down to avoid disturbing the nobility, but it was teeming with life. There was none of the brutality or coldness that I associated with ancient nobility. There was only kindness and community to be found when we finally reached what should have been the ruins of the settlement. That night, the path of time had treated us to a version of Majapichu that was still a buzz with life. By our standards, we were looking out over nothing larger than a village, but to the ancient Inka, Majapichu would have been considered a city. That night, we witnessed one of the new seven wonders of the world being built. Much of the city was already standing, but stonemasons were still cutting rocks into shape in the quarry. The Inka people didn't rely on mortar to hold their buildings together. Instead, each and every stone was cut so precisely that they sat snugly together. Although the city was built on not one, but two fault lines and was often troubled by earthquakes, the earthquakes themselves proved to be no trouble at all for the city. Without any mortar to crumble between the stones, they would simply jiggle in place until the earth evened out again. I had to assume it's ingenious construction had been a part of what helped the ruins survive for so many centuries. The strongest of the residents varied those heavy stones up toward the stretches of land where terraces were still being cobbled together. The Temple of Condor stood complete, a priority to the people who had put their faith above all else. All around us, the ancient Inka people were building, forging their way into the future. There were stones to cut and lay, lands to carve out and flatten off, seeds to sow, pastures to fertilize, and llamas grazing peacefully on the grass and preventing it from overgrowing. As the fog rolled in, it felt as though there was something almost magical about Machu Picchu. We wiled away the day, watching the Inka create history before our very eyes. The people that bustled around us were doubtless inking. You could tell it by the stunning weave of the clothes they wore and by the language they spoke. I thought that might be enough to end any debate on who built Machu Picchu and prove Wanda right, but I certainly wasn't going to be the one to bring it up again when she and Behiti seem to have put that matter to bed. When the sun finally set and the stars made themselves known, it was easy to understand just why the Inka had chosen that mountaintop as the place to make their home. There was nothing convenient about Machu Picchu. It took days to make the journey there, and it was almost entirely cut off from the rest of civilization. But suspended amongst the stars that night, the settlement felt just as much a part of the cosmos as the next constellation over. It was almost midnight, and the day had been a long one. Although Behiti and Alastair still had the energy for a late night visit to the temple, Wanda found herself a deserted terrace to sleep in, and Devani and I settled beneath the stars on one of those enormous stone steps that dropped off into the valley below. I pulled her into my chest and, save for the soft sound of the lamas snoring in the pasture below, all was quiet. It wasn't until I began to drift into deep dreams that I first heard the gentle voices of the mountain spirits calling to me. The deeper I drifted into relaxation, the clearer their voices became. The apus told me of a time before, a time when they had Machu Picchu all to themselves. Wanda had been right, the Inca people were the ones to build Machu Picchu, but they hadn't been the first to call that mountain top their home, and Behiti had known it. We'll leave our story there for tonight. I hope you enjoyed joining my friends and I on our excursion to Machu Picchu. What a magical place. Sleep well and sweet dreams.