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Cuzco & the Sacred Valley 8 M AC H U P I C C H U & T H E I N C A T R A I L
(h5:20am-8:45pm). If the ATM at BCP (Av
Imperio de los Incas s/n) runs out of money,
there are four others in town, including one on
Av Imperio de los Incas. Currency and traveler’s
checks can be exchanged in various places at
highly unfavorable rates, so it’s best to bring
plenty of Peruvian currency with you from
Cuzco. Pay phones and cybercafes are scattered
around the town, and there’s a small post office
(Colla Raymi s/n). There’s a medical center
(%21-1005; Av Imperio de los Incas s/n; hemergencies
24hr) by the train tracks.
8 Getting There & Away
There are only three options to get to Aguas
Calientes, and hence to Machu Picchu: trek it,
catch the train via Cuzco and the Sacred Valley,
or travel by road and train via Santa Teresa.
Train
Buy a return ticket to avoid getting stranded in
Aguas Calientes – outbound trains sell out much
quicker than their inbound counterparts. All
train companies have ticket offices in the train
station, but you can check their websites for
up-to-date schedules and ticket purchases. For
more information, see p231.
To Cuzco (three hours), PeruRail (www.peru
rail.com) has service to Poroy and taxis connect
to the city, another 20 minutes away.
To Ollantaytambo (two hours), all three
companies provide service: Peru Rail, Inca Rail
(%in Cuzco 23-3030; www.incarail.com) and
Machu Picchu Train (%in Cuzco 22-1199; www.
machupicchutrain.com).
To Santa Teresa (45 minutes), Peru Rail
travels at 6:44am, 12:35pm and 1:30pm daily.
Tickets (US$12) can only be bought from Aguas
Calientes train station on the day of departure,
but trains actually leave from the west end of
town, outside the police station. You can also do
this route as a guided multisport tour (see p38).
Bus
There is no road access to Aguas Calientes.
The only buses go up the hill to Machu Picchu
(round-trip S50, 25 minutes) from 5:30am to
2:30pm; buses return until 5:45pm.
Machu Picchu
For many visitors to Peru and even South
America, a visit to the Inca city of Machu
Picchu is the long-anticipated highpoint of
their trip. In a spectacular location, it’s the
best-known archaeological site on the continent.
This awe-inspiring ancient city was
never revealed to the conquering Spaniards
and was virtually forgotten until the early
part of the 20th century. In the high season,
from late May until early September, 2500
people arrive daily. Despite this great tourist
influx, the site manages to retain an air of
grandeur and mystery, and is a must for all
visitors to Peru.
The site is most heavily visited between
10am and 2pm. June through August are the
busiest months.
History
Machu Picchu is not mentioned in any of
the chronicles of the Spanish conquistadors.
Apart from a couple of German adventurers
in the 1860s, who apparently looted the
site with the Peruvian government’s permission,
nobody apart from local Quechua people
knew of Machu Picchu’s existence until
American historian Hiram Bingham was
guided to it by locals in 1911. You can read
Bingham’s own account of his ‘discovery’ in
the classic book Inca Land: Explorations
in the Highlands of Peru, first published in
1922 and now available as a free download
from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.
org).
Bingham was searching for the lost city
of Vilcabamba, the last stronghold of the
Incas, and he thought he had found it at Machu
Picchu. We now know that the remote
ruins at Espíritu Pampa, much deeper in
the jungle, are actually the remains of Vilcabamba.
The Machu Picchu site was initially
overgrown with thick vegetation, forcing
Bingham’s team to be content with roughly
mapping the site. Bingham returned in 1912
and 1915 to carry out the difficult task of
clearing the thick forest, when he also discovered
some of the ruins on the so-called
Inca Trail. (Over the course of his various
journeys, Bingham took thousands of artifacts
back to the USA with him; see p490
to learn about the fight for their return to
Peru.) Peruvian archaeologist Luis E Valcárcel
undertook further studies in 1934, as did
a Peruvian-American expedition under Paul
Fejos in 1940 and 1941.
Despite scores of more recent studies,
knowledge of Machu Picchu remains
sketchy. Even today archaeologists are
forced to rely heavily on speculation and
educated guesswork as to its function.
Some believe the citadel was founded in the
waning years of the last Incas as an attempt
to preserve Inca culture or rekindle their
predominance, while others think that it
may have already become an uninhabited,
forgotten city at the time of the conquest.
A more recent theory suggests that the site