It feels cliché to say “there are no words to describe Machu Picchu.” As a writer, that phrase — “no words” — leaves an even harsher sting. I’m a writer, a wordsmith who freely crafts phrases of impeccable detail, recording everything from life’s biggest milestones to its smallest, seemingly insignificant moments. But visiting Machu Picchu is different: It’s an experience unbelievably difficult to define.

Machu Picchu.

Since I now call Chile my second home and made my way from Santiago to the gates of The Lost Inca City, I turned to the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda for some words:

“Then on the ladder of the earth I climbed
through the lost jungle’s tortured thicket
up to you, Macchu Picchu.
High city of laddered stones,
at last the dwelling of what earth
never covered in vestments of sleep.

In you like two lines parallel,
the cradles of lightning and man
rocked in a wind of thorns.

Mother of stone, spume of condors.
High reef of the human dawn.
Spade lost in the primal sand.

This was the dwelling, this is the place:
here the broad grains of maize rose up
and fell again like red hail.

Here gold thread came off the vicuña
to clothe lovers, tombs and mothers,
king and prayers and warriors.

Here men’s feet rested at night
next to the eagles’ feet, in the ravenous high nests,
and at dawn they stepped with the thunder’s feet onto the thinning mists
and touched the soil and the stones
’til they knew them, come night or death.

I look at clothes and hands,
the trace of water in an echoing tub,
the wall brushed smooth by the touch of a face
that looked with my eyes at the lights of earth,
that oiled with my hands the vanished beams:
because everything, clothing, skin, jars, words, wine, bread,
is gone, fallen to earth.

And the air came in with the touch
of lemon blossom over everyone sleeping:
a thousand years of air, months, weeks of air,
of blue wind and iron cordillera,
that were like gentle hurricane footsteps
polishing the lonely boundary of stone.”
—a translated excerpt from Neruda’s “Heights of Machu Picchu”

Notes from my journal: Mom and I couldn’t have had a more perfect day at Machu Picchu. At 5 a.m., we joined a long line of travelers anxious to catch the first bus from Aguas Calientes to the entrance gates. We arrived before the park opened, and waited with the first group of about 150 people, hours before the thousands rolled in.

As if the city hidden deep in a jungle fortress isn’t mysterious enough — it was Friday the 13th — and the mist was a thick grey blanket that hid the sun rising from beyond the hills.

We hired a local guide at the gate for a private tour of the grounds before our scheduled hike up Wayna Picchu, or “young mountain.” We explored the temple of the sun, king’s palace and farm workers’ homes. We visited the plaza stadium and farming terraces. We hung out with the 17 llamas who cut the grass.

Experts estimate the city was home to 600 Quechuas who never finished their architectural, spiritual masterpiece before fleeing from the Spanish in 1537. Beginning in 1450, they hauled every stone, sanding the surfaces, building the structures, all in line with specific purposes and symbolism for worship. The stone, hand carved like a condor faces east to take dead spirits to a new life. The temples for gods are perfectly sanded, but the Inca (king) resided in only semi-perfect palaces. The people, however, had homes with many cracks and bumpy stones. And it’s all still 75 percent original structures.

The city, which experts still don’t know its name (the mountain is called Machu Picchu, not the city), is even more expansive than visitors see today. Archeologists are still cutting away trees to excavate more ruins, estimating that 10 percent of the city is still hidden. The area is so rich in history, symbolism and culture, yet so much remains to be discovered about the area and how the Inca Empire of Quechua people lived.

After our tour, we lined up for our hike. The rain suddenly stopped, but the cloud cover remained shading us as we started up nearly 2,000 stairs on the steep mountainside. Narrow staircases of crumbling stone steps wound around and up the edge of daunting cliffs, no barriers to stop a simple misstep from turning into a deadly fall. At the steepest parts, thick braids of rope allowed our arms to help pull up our tiring legs. Up, up, up. Eventually, the clouds gave way, in sync with a stunning view of the ruins from afar. The giant city then looked so miniscule, just a patch of stone among this vast natural world of undiscovered, untainted beauty.

As the fancy tour buses started heading out mid-afternoon, Mom and I headed up yet another hill to the watch tower for a glimpse of the “postcard” angle of Machu Picchu and our own photo op. With most of the tourists out of sight, we could fully experience this ancient city without its new-age guests.

I took a few moments to sit in the grass, to breathe, to look, to think.
To press pause.
To feel unbelievably grateful.
To attempt to comprehend what I was seeing and experiencing.
Still, it feels unreal. For me, it’s simply indescribable.

—JDF