Continuing on out tour of we headed down another steep set of stairs and came to an unusually shaped building ruin which was both a temple and an astronomical observatory. The Temple of the Sun stands out architecturally because it's so very different in its architecture from the surrounding angular buildings.
The Temple of the Sun is a small semi circular stone building, constructed around a large boulder platform which is 1.2 m by 2.7 m in size. Wonderful views of the Sacred Valley below can be seen from the temple area. During the summer solstice, the sun shines through purposely built temple windows and the sunlight aligns with both the boulder within the temple and the tip of a nearby mountain peak. It's design is similar the one in the Sun Temple in Cusco.
The two trapezium-shaped windows have been strategically placed for making the astrological readings that the Incas relied heavily upon for predicting and planning their crop planting, harvesting and religious ceremonies. One window facing 65° is called the "Solstice Window" because it captures the rising of the June solstice sun. The second window, facing 132° was used by the Machu Picchu's priests who were guided by reading the paths of the night constellations. How advanced these people were. Remember our breakfast visit to a palace-mansion of a former Inca princess where a retired professor showed us the Inca calendar? Well now it is more meaningful to us when we have seen first hand, some of the "instruments" used by these clever people to calculate and record the days, years and seasons as they observed them.
Throughout the rest of our tour the clouds we had seen earlier began to bank up, blanketing the skies and threatening to shower on us. As we began the last phase of our visit to Machu Picchu the shadows cast by the clouds were a welcome relief from the blazing sun that had beamed down upon us all day. We walked past more building ruins, high walls, along terraced mountain trails following the exit arrows towards our first point of entry into this citadel site earlier in the day. We were tired but not exhausted, filled with fresh memories of all that we had seen and experienced and then just as we reach the final exit area the rains began to sprinkle down on us.
What greeted us through the wet were 'thousands' of tourists either arriving to begin their tour or even more bedraggled, tired tourers standing in a single line strung along the narrow roadside that went as far as we could see into the distance.
We donned our plastic capes and joined the L 0 N G queue line waiting for the buses to take us back down the hairy mountain road to the mountain valley town of Aguas Calientes, where we had arrived by train earlier in the day when the sun was shining with not a cloud to be seen in a deep azure blue sky. Now the skies were a misty white, the mountains heavily fogged out of sight and with raindrops showered gently down upon a plastic coated caterpillar line of tired tourists. We probably spent about 45 minutes in the queue, chatting about our experiences and patiently awaited our turn to board the bus. By the time we took our seats the rain had really set in and we prayed for a safe return journey down the now slippery, sharp, hair-pinned-bend roadway. It was very misty as we descended down the mountain and the bus windows fogged up so we were not able to see the steepness of the road or the deep ravines that we passed by. We were thankful for God's provision of a careful driver, a well maintenance bus, His protection and our safe arrival in the hemmed-in valley town of Aguas Calientes where only light rain drops were falling. 