The Inka Jungle Trail & Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu is located in the Sacred Valley, but it warrants its own chapter here.

It was discovered by European civilization when American Hiram Bingham stumbled upon it in 1911 while looking for Vilcabamba (site of Manco Inca's last stand to the northeast).

Bingham was led to the citadel by a local who lived below. A small number of farming families inhabited the site.

The Inka Jungle Trail is not the classic Inca Trail. The latter is better-known, at a higher elevation, and has several archeaological sites along its way to Machu Picchu. It was the route used by the upper class (nobility and priests). I took the Inka Jungle Trail, a lower elevation route that follows the Urubamba River and ultimately merges with Bingham's route for the final ascent to Machu Picchu; it was traditionally used by the lower classes. The jungle route has no waiting list (compared to the 6 month waiting list for the Inca Trail while I was there in peak season), but it does have the smallest mosquitoes I've ever seen that also deliver the itchiest bites -- myself and most other tourists on the jungle route had scabs all over their legs from scratching them in their sleep. (I suspect the legs were most bitten because trail dust diminished the effect of repellent.) Fortunately these mosquitoes don't carry infectious disease.

I went with the company that resurrected the Inka Jungle route, owned by Lorenzo Cahuana

(http://www.inkajungletrail.com/). Lorenzo was very helpful and met me at my hotel when I arrived in Cuzco because I wanted to join the next day's trip.

This route seems to make up for fewer archaeological sites with more fun. Day 1 involves a mountain bike descent from a mountain pass at 12,000 ft into the jungle of the Urubamba valley, stopping at a hostel for the night at 2,000 ft. It's a loss of 10,000 ft in 5 hours -- more than 6 inches of elevation per second. The latter 2.5 hours were on gravel road (our butts paid for it), but we flew down the first part, some of which is pictured to the left, with the Urubamba along the left margin of the pic.

Right: A weird cemetery along the gravel road in the Urubamba valley. It seemed abandoned, but some of the graves had recently picked flowers in 2-liter bottles.

There were a bunch of Argentinians from another tour at the hostel that night, and the Peruvian national soccer team was playing Argentina. Argentina had just won Olympic gold 2 weeks before. The Argentinian tourists were quite smug, certain of victory, which waned until their team broke a 0-0 tie in the final minutes. Then Peru tied the game with 30 seconds left. The Peruvians in the room were ecstatic, and the Argentinians somberly left for bed when time expired.

Left: The next day we hiked along the Urubamba valley. The trail is etched in the mountainside.

Below right: Me on steps from Incan times on that hillside.

Left: My official guide, Juan Carlos (right), and his friend, Ramon, giving the mandatory Peruvian tour guide thumbs-up pose for a photograph while standing in a coca field. Ramon owns a tour company and was researching the route because he planned to offer it to clients.

Coca is an interesting issue in Peru (as well as Colombia and Bolivia). Peru is second to Colombia in production. The government is pressured by the USA to limit its harvest. However, while coca is the most lucrative product available to farmers, it also has cultural and even religious significance to Peruvians that inhabit the higher elevations -- it alleviates elevation sickness and fatigue. My understanding is that limited production is allowed to preserve such cultural values but no financial support is offered to farmers who are forbidden to grow more of it due to American pressure.

Coca is important to many Peruvians who still practice a religion similar to that of the Incas. These Peruvians believe each mountain has a god, or "apu". There has been a resurgence in their cultural heritage recently -- Quechuan, the language of the Incas, is now a required subject in school. My Sacred Valley tour guide, after confirming that there were no Spaniards on the bus, expressed how angry Peruvians are with the Spanish, who stole their wealth and did nothing to preserve their great culture.

Right: Martin, a monkey with facial hair disturbingly similar to mine, at a rest-stop where we bought refreshments on day 2 along the Inka Jungle Trail.

Left: Crossing the Urubamba by cable car on the way to the hot springs, below, where we camped at the end of day 2.

Left: That night at the hot springs -- Ramon felt pretty rough the next day, but that little Juan Carlos can put it away.

Right: The train at the town of Aguas Calientes (beneath Machu Picchu), that brings the majority of tourists from Cuzco. The train follows Bingham's original route up the valley.

The next day I got up at 4 am and hiked from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu. Right is a pic I took, which shows far fewer tourists than I remember. Hiking up early does beat most of the tourists that arrive by bus.

Being there was an otherworldly experience, because it is such an iconic destination that I didn't know how to feel. It was indeed incredible, but part of me was thinking "is this it?" and was waiting for something more profound. The scenery was certainly breathtaking. The peak in the background is Huayna Picchu, which has a trail to its summit with a limitation on the number of climbers that usually fills by around 1 pm. (I didn't climb it.)

The origin and purpose of Machu Picchu is still a mystery. The Spanish never learned of its existence. The fine stonework there is evidence of its significance. Competing theories hold that it was a pre-Conquest retreat for emperors, that it was a post-Conquest attempt to restore the glory of the Inca Empire, or that it had even been abandoned by the time of the Conquest.

Peru got into trouble with UNESCO, which threatened to strip Machu Picchu of its "World Heritage Site" status if Peru didn't do more to protect the site (http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/454). In fact, an important stone involved in calendar determination was damaged during a beer commercial, and a recent Peruvian president (who happened to be the first Inca descendent to win the Presidency) held his inauguration in Machu Picchu's plaza, landing there by helicopter, which required removal of some of its stonework. Fortunately, UNESCO's pressure has persuaded Peru to abandon the plans for a cable car to ferry tourists to the site from the town of Aguas Calientes.

Right: Looking down toward Aguas Calientes. The Temple of the Sun, the only round structure at Machu Picchu, is in the foreground.

Above: All the stone at Machu Picchu was quarried from the site.

Right: How I finished my visit to Machu Picchu . . . more commercialization. The making of a Bollywood film featuring the most famous actress of that genre (according to a Japanese tourist in my group). This occurred at the "Upper Agricultural Sector" depicted in the map above.

I watched them shoot this choreography for over an hour. The most entertaining part was how a blonde "Inca" maiden with a tattoo on her shoulder was gradually shuffled from the front row to the back during rehearsal.

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Below is a map depicting a route linking Machu Picchu and another great Incan ruin, Choquequirao. Unfortunately the right side of the map showing Machu Picchu gets lopped off in publishing.

This is an alternative trip that I hope to do some day. Choquequirao is a cloud forest mountaintop Incan fortress that is half-excavated and said to be almost as spectacular as Machu Picchu. It is hardly touristed. It is in the lower left quadrant of the map above and depicted in a pic below that I got from the web.

Lonely Planet's "Trekking the Central Andes" (on the last page of the Peru chapter) describes a trek from the town of Huancacalle, in the top left of the map, to Choquequirao and then from there on to Machu Picchu.

One can also trek to Vilcabamba, the mountain stronghold that Manco Inca fled to after his defeat at Ollantaytambo, by a trail heading northwest from Huancacalle. (Vilcabamba is just off the top left edge of the map.) Vilcabamba is supposedly not as impressive as Choquequirao or Machu Picchu, but a trek combining all 3 sites originating in Huancacalle (from where a guide and porters can be hired) would take 17-18 days. Lots of up and down at high elevation, but a unique experience.

A fuzzy pic of Vilcabamba that I took from the web.