Land of the Incas

The next location is for the little adventurer in me who would have loved to be an archaeologist if born in another time and another place. The Inca Trail footpath is an ancient Andean passage from Cusco, capital of the Incan empire, through the Sacred Valley, to the 15th-century ruins of the civilization's crown jewel, Machu Picchu, Peru. Cleared from centuries of thick forest growth since historian Hiram Bingham introduced it to the world in 1911, this fabled lost city of the Incas defiantly guards its mystique.

Did it serve as a citadel? An astronomical observatory? A ceremonial city or sacred retreat for the emperor? Why did the Incas construct, inhabit, and then deliberately abandon it in less than a century? How did the Spanish conquistadors miss it? Whatever its intended purpose, Machu Picchu remains the world's greatest example of landscape art, sitting gracefully like a proud saddle between two enormous Andean peaks.

Visitors come to run their hands over the massive, smoothly cut stone, which fit together seamlessly without mortar. Other travelers make it a point to experience daybreak, when the light creeps over Machu Picchu's jagged silhouette and slowly, with great drama, illuminates the ruins row by row, building by building. Most spectacular is the winter solstice sunrise, when sun rays stream through the Temple of the Sun window, setting the stone at the center of the temple ablaze.