Llamas run free at Machu Picchu. My first day photographing the ruins of Machu Picchu, Peru was complicated by mist and rain clouds swirling around the famous mountain that overlooks the site, Huayna Picchu. At approximately 9,000 feet elevation, Machu Picchu spends a lot of time in the clouds. It only added to the beautifully mystical quality of this legendary site. And judging by the incredible amount of stairs at Machu Picchu, the Inca who lived here must have been tri-athletes. Whenever they were outside their homes, they were going up or down large stone stairs to get around. According to anthropologists, the Inca were had a population of master stone masons and stone cutters who were able to perform incredibly precise cuts and to the gigantic stone pieces they worked with so that pieces fit together (without cement or adobe mud) so tightly they were water tight. Even engineers today marvel at the precision of stonework at Machu Picchu, and attempts to duplicate these fits using modern technology have failed. Interestingly enough, the method of moving gigantic slabs of rock around Machu Picchu was almost identical to the way the builders of Stonehenge, England moved those huge slabs some 200 miles from Wales.