If you arrive in Lima then fly directly up to two-mile-high Cusco, the takeoff point for Machu Picchu (photo by Jorge Sarmiento, www.peru.info), you risk having problems. Peru’s capital is at sea level. The abrupt change intensifies your chances of getting soroche, the high altitude sickness that affects many visitors to the country, despite the endless cups of curative coca tea you’ll be offered. The leaves are from the coca plant, which yields cocaine. Some travelers feel a little better after drinking the tea and may even find that it’s giving them a nice buzz. But for others, nothing helps.
I went up gradually, by land. Travel choices are to go by private car, tour or bus. I took one of the big, comfortable buses that follow each other on the country’s zigzagging roads and are the Peruvians’ main transportation. (Ormeño and Cial are especially good companies; some of the smaller lines are pretty ratty.)
My first stop was Nazca, the site of the mysterious Nazca lines, grooves in the earth with complex animal, bird and human shapes designed by the Nazca, a pre-Inca people. Maria Reiche, a German mathematician who spent her life studying these lines, thought the Nazca created them for an astronomical calendar. Others think they were part of the Nazca’s irrigation system. I saw them from an observation platform. For an even better view, take a ride on one of the small tourist planes.
Next, I traveled to Arequipa, Peru’s second-largest city. In spots the landscape is moon-mountain strange. I realized it was powdered with volcanic ash when I reached Arequipa, sparkling in the sun from the minerals in the city’s buildings. They are made from sillar, a white volcanic rock.
Lake Titicaca was my next goal, by way of Juliaca. The city of Juliaca appears strange, as if all the contractors had just dropped their tools and walked away with the houses half finished. They did: Homeowners don’t have to pay taxes until their houses are completed, so they rarely are. Of course with no tax base, Juliaca’s unpaved streets are a muddy mess, but its people are safe from the tax man!
Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, borders both Peru and Bolivia. On the Peruvian side, near the city of Puno, lie the famed floating islands of the Uros people. I spent the night on one of these manmade islands, staying with a family of three, Martín, Cecilia and their four-year-old, Maria. The islands are woven of totora, the lake’s cattail-like reeds. Martín showed me how the slender reeds are formed into a dense mass, packed together with a peat-like soil. “We use Pachamama [Mother Earth] to bind them,” he said, speaking of their earth goddess.
Strewn with dried totora, the small island was a shaky place to step, but not for the seven families who live on it. The cabin I slept in was also built of reeds, and so was the bed I spent the night on. Note that I didn’t say “slept on.” A recent downpour made it a long, soggy night, but the trout Martín caught was perfectly cooked by Cecilia, and the people on the island were sweet-natured and friendly. One told me that if a neighbor becomes difficult, they just slice off their own chunk of island, and float away.
The next day, I reached the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Colorful Cusco, bright with Inca flags, is the gateway to the valley, and to Machu Picchu. The profusion of trees and flowers in the area is astonishing, and provides a lush setting for the ultimate experience: walking through the great “lost city of the Incas” itself.
The question that always hovers over these “lost” regions is: Lost to whom? The locals always knew they were there. I heard this same point being made when I was at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. An article in today’s New York Times adds light on the ongoing controversy over Machu Picchu. Determining who was the first to “discover” it is interesting to historians, and affects the legal ownership of items that were removed from here long ago, but the eternal, magical mountain rises above all this.
Faced with the triumph of Machu Picchu--that it could be built at all--the crowd of sightseers I was with, who had been raucous and rambunctious en route, fell suddenly silent. All along the way, as we walked through the ruins, we saw evidence of the Incas’ sophisticated civilization and craftsmanship. Master stone cutters, they fit the huge building blocks together without mortar, doing it so perfectly that there’s not even enough space to slip the blade of a knife between them.
The Incas created these structures and terraces for their crops, farming on slopes so steep it seems impossible anyone could stand on them, let alone build them.
Gazing at the majestic work, I at first felt small, diminished by its mass, and then, as I stood there, I suddenly realized we are all made greater by Machu Picchu, this awe-inspiring example of what humans, with skill and determination, can accomplish--no matter the obstacles.
I went up gradually, by land. Travel choices are to go by private car, tour or bus. I took one of the big, comfortable buses that follow each other on the country’s zigzagging roads and are the Peruvians’ main transportation. (Ormeño and Cial are especially good companies; some of the smaller lines are pretty ratty.)
My first stop was Nazca, the site of the mysterious Nazca lines, grooves in the earth with complex animal, bird and human shapes designed by the Nazca, a pre-Inca people. Maria Reiche, a German mathematician who spent her life studying these lines, thought the Nazca created them for an astronomical calendar. Others think they were part of the Nazca’s irrigation system. I saw them from an observation platform. For an even better view, take a ride on one of the small tourist planes.
Next, I traveled to Arequipa, Peru’s second-largest city. In spots the landscape is moon-mountain strange. I realized it was powdered with volcanic ash when I reached Arequipa, sparkling in the sun from the minerals in the city’s buildings. They are made from sillar, a white volcanic rock.
Lake Titicaca was my next goal, by way of Juliaca. The city of Juliaca appears strange, as if all the contractors had just dropped their tools and walked away with the houses half finished. They did: Homeowners don’t have to pay taxes until their houses are completed, so they rarely are. Of course with no tax base, Juliaca’s unpaved streets are a muddy mess, but its people are safe from the tax man!
Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, borders both Peru and Bolivia. On the Peruvian side, near the city of Puno, lie the famed floating islands of the Uros people. I spent the night on one of these manmade islands, staying with a family of three, Martín, Cecilia and their four-year-old, Maria. The islands are woven of totora, the lake’s cattail-like reeds. Martín showed me how the slender reeds are formed into a dense mass, packed together with a peat-like soil. “We use Pachamama [Mother Earth] to bind them,” he said, speaking of their earth goddess.
Strewn with dried totora, the small island was a shaky place to step, but not for the seven families who live on it. The cabin I slept in was also built of reeds, and so was the bed I spent the night on. Note that I didn’t say “slept on.” A recent downpour made it a long, soggy night, but the trout Martín caught was perfectly cooked by Cecilia, and the people on the island were sweet-natured and friendly. One told me that if a neighbor becomes difficult, they just slice off their own chunk of island, and float away.
The next day, I reached the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Colorful Cusco, bright with Inca flags, is the gateway to the valley, and to Machu Picchu. The profusion of trees and flowers in the area is astonishing, and provides a lush setting for the ultimate experience: walking through the great “lost city of the Incas” itself.
The question that always hovers over these “lost” regions is: Lost to whom? The locals always knew they were there. I heard this same point being made when I was at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. An article in today’s New York Times adds light on the ongoing controversy over Machu Picchu. Determining who was the first to “discover” it is interesting to historians, and affects the legal ownership of items that were removed from here long ago, but the eternal, magical mountain rises above all this.
Faced with the triumph of Machu Picchu--that it could be built at all--the crowd of sightseers I was with, who had been raucous and rambunctious en route, fell suddenly silent. All along the way, as we walked through the ruins, we saw evidence of the Incas’ sophisticated civilization and craftsmanship. Master stone cutters, they fit the huge building blocks together without mortar, doing it so perfectly that there’s not even enough space to slip the blade of a knife between them.
The Incas created these structures and terraces for their crops, farming on slopes so steep it seems impossible anyone could stand on them, let alone build them.
Gazing at the majestic work, I at first felt small, diminished by its mass, and then, as I stood there, I suddenly realized we are all made greater by Machu Picchu, this awe-inspiring example of what humans, with skill and determination, can accomplish--no matter the obstacles.
