Cusco, Machu Picchu
South America

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Cusco Guide

Best Season: May to September is winter and the dry season in Peru's Andes mountains. It's clear and sunny, with a comfortable daytime temperature - though nights can be chilly, especially in Puno. January to April are the really wet months, making the Inca Trail particularly difficult and disappointingly soggy and foggy.

From Puno to Cuzco [Cusco] there is a popular 12 hour train journey across Peru's altiplano, with travellers locked in their own railcar by guards, past dozens of white Andean peaks and hundreds of brown llamas.

East of Puno is the half Inca, half Spanish town of Cusco. Built in the shape of a Puma, with the hilltop fortress of Sacsuhuayman as the head, Cusco is one of the world's prettiest towns and certainly Peru's. White walls, three storey colonnaded buildings with terracotta tiled roofs and lots of woodwork make up the private sector, while the top section of many public buildings is Spanish colonial but the lower half is solid Inca stonework. In one case there is a stone that weighs 30 tons, has twelve sides, and fits perfectly into the middle of a wall of similar stones. Or was it 12 tons and 30 sides? Whatever, cement was never used and it is still impossible to get a knife blade into the cracks between the stones.

Food in Cuzco is acceptable, especially if you are fond of Italian cooking as most of restaurants seem to be pizzerias or bistros. Hotels range from quite expensive to very cheap while celebrations both big and small regularly offer bizarre spectacles.
We stumbled into a firework show where men were holding up bamboo frames shaped - among other things - like ships and planes, loaded with rockets, which they fired at each other from short range. The encore was to put on paper mache bulls heads with variously fused rockets in place of horns and lunge repeatedly at the crowd, firing rockets at random.

Packed with history but little traffic, Cusco alone would be worth a trip to Peru, but it is also the gateway to a sight that is on a par with the Pyramids at Giza, Machu Picchu [aka Pichu]. Five hours by train, or a few days walking on the exquisite, precipitous Inca Trail gets you to this 'Lost City' of the Incas, Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu Guide

The Spanish looked for, but never found South America's premier ancient site, Machu Picchu. One explanation is that since the Incas never discovered the wheel or had knowledge of horses, the roads to smaller towns were simply trails the width of one man - not unlike garden paths back home - and transportation of goods was accomplished by very fast and fit porters. The Spanish Conquistadors refused to believe that such narrow tracks - estimated to stretch to 14,000 miles [22,000 kms] could lead to anywhere important.

The Inca Empire started in the Peruvian highlands around 1200 AD, expanded to cover territory as far north as Ecuador and south to what is now Chile and Argentina.
The Inca warriors were particularly effective because - unlike other powerful tribes at the time who killed or enslaved anyone in their path - the Incas tended to give conquered people the opportunity to join them [or die!].
The Incas, much like the Aztecs in Mexico, were conquered more by Spanish trickery and disease than by force of arms. The Spanish colonised Peru in 1533.

No one knows why Machu Picchu exists though research suggests that it was either a sacred city or a summer refuge for the rulers of Cusco.

One of the world's most remarkable archaeological sites, Machu Picchu was built about 1450 AD by the Incas and supposedly discovered by American archeologist Hiram Bingham in 1911, though the current thinking is that - with the knowledge and assistance of the Peruvian government - a German adventurer/mining prospector, Augusto Berns, found and looted the site in the late 1800s.
Some of Berns' papers from 1887 described 'significant rustic buildings...closed with stones, some of them carved, which will undoubtedly contain objects of great value, and form part of those treasures of the Incas.'
Berns' paperwork also showed that he had permission from the Peruvian authorities to 'exploit an Inca huaca' [sacred place] and Berns' maps of the area support the Machu Picchu discovery theory.
Bingham found various interesting artefacts there, mummies, ceramics and so on, but nothing of intrinsic value, and in fact mentioned 'one mining prospector' in his book, Inca Land.

Machu Picchu sits pretty on a tabletop mountain, circled by a river and a chain of mountain peaks. Original thatched roofs are long gone but the metre thick stone walls of all kinds of buildings from palaces to pissoirs still stand, deserving a lot more time than the usual day return tourist trip. Two days here is just enough.
Machu Picchu is only accessible by train or on foot via the 3/4 day Inca trail, though a short and winding road takes train passengers up the hill to the site from the rail terminus.
Trains run from both Cusco and Ollaytaytambo in the Sacred Valley, but walk the full Inca Trail if possible, though it takes some organisation. The easiest way is to find a tour operator in Cusco and let them sort out the permits, porters, tents, food and guides but try to book this in advance, especially in the June-August high season.

So if you've done exotic Asia and want to see something wildly different, and have at least two weeks to spare, consider Peru. For many travellers it's not the easiest country, but it's the best. And make that trip sooner rather than later if you're interested in Machu Picchu's mobile homes. Buen viaje.

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