It's a nostalgia-inducing thing nowadays to get up at 4:00am. But today the reward for such early-bird-diligence was greater than normal -- a chance to walk around Machu Picchu before the sun peered over the Sun Gate and lit this amazing place with high altitude light.

One of the leading theories to date is that Machu Picchu was primarily a research and experimentation station for agriculture, and the terraces we sat ourselves on to wait for the sunrise attest to that.
It's late and we're sleepy -- Mike and Margaret and I all fly to Lima tomorrow to fly to the states at various times on Thursday. Might not get a chance to post any more until I'm back stateside on Friday. (A concept that both warms my heart and strikes me as bizarre. Go figure!)