The high road to Machu Picchu
Each year thousands of hikers, dogged by mosquitoes and altitude sickness, make the four-day trek to this Incan wonder of the world. Jeremy Freed sought a more civilized route to the summit
It’s Monday morning at Machu Picchu and by 10 a.m. the site is already crowded. The footpaths that snake up the mountainside terraces are lined with elderly Americans in cargo vests, Aussie backpackers taking selfies with llamas, GoPro-wielding honeymooners and a significant number of dreadlocked hippies.
Among the first things one notices is this: Age, nationality and wildly divergent opinions on bongos aside, we who seek the summit can be easily divided into two distinct groups.
There are the hikers, tired and sunburnt, lugging their packs around the ruins, boots caked in dust and mud, looking disoriented and perhaps a bit sad. Their fatigue is understandable: To reach this sacred site by foot requires a four-day trek along the Inca Trail, through cloud forests and over high mountain passes, sleeping in tents, swatting mosquitoes, squatting over holes and fighting altitude sickness. It is, some say, the adventure of a lifetime, a walk in the footsteps of the ancient Incas, culminating at the ruins of their most spectacular surviving temple.
“Many feel that the only proud way to arrive at this place is the Inca Trail,” says Carlos Castillo, our guide arranged by the hotel. There was a time in my life when I would have been swayed by such reasoning, that the hardest way has to be the most meaningful. As I’ve grown older, however, I’ve embraced the fact that life can be just as meaningful without jungle bugs and sleeping on the ground. Especially on vacation. Which brings us to the second group.
Those who don’t feel the need (or have the time) to hike the Inca Trail, which includes me and my travel companions, are clean-scrubbed and energetic, our runners spotless, expensive cameras at the ready, unburdened by heavy packs and aching limbs. This morning I woke up in a king-sized bed to a view of mountains, toffee-coloured in the morning light, over my private patio at the Tambo del Inka hotel. A reflecting pool sparkled in the foreground and the air smelled pleasantly of eucalyptus and woodsmoke. Breakfast was a buffet fit for an Incan king: eight kinds of toast, six kinds of fresh juice, a wide array of eggs, pancakes, house-baked pastries, preserves. A gluten-free station. “Café, senor?” my waiter asked, delicately unfolding my thick, starched white napkin. “Si, gracias,” I say, using 50 per cent of my Spanish vocabulary, “muy bien.”
Machu Picchu is the greatest surviving example of Incan architecture, a massive complex of temples, farms and residences nestled among snow-capped peaks. The Spanish conquistadors, when they arrived here in the 1500s, did their best to dismantle the Incan civilization by force, destroying temples and palaces, melting down ornate golden idols and plundering everything in sight. Because the Spanish never found Machu Picchu (its residents, receiving word of the Spaniards’ arrival, are thought to have fled, the jungle covering their tracks in a matter of years) the ruins stand as a testament to the complexity of the Incas’ civilization. They were keen astronomers with a 365-day calendar; they built extensive aqueducts; they raised crops on a complex system of mountainside terraces and worshipped gods of earth, moon and sun. Machu Picchu showcases all of this amid spectacular scenery, making it both a wonder of the world and by far the most popular reason to visit Peru.
Tambo del Inka, operated by Libertador and Starwood, is situated in the nearby Sacred Valley, whose Urubamba River winds its way into the mountains and around the base of Machu Picchu’s peak. Aside from the high-thread-count sheets, indoor/outdoor swimming pool and Gold from the Gods Body Wrap spa treatments, Tambo’s key selling feature is its private train station, from which we board the blue Perurail Vistadome to the sacred city. Over the next three hours the train winds its way past simple adobe houses and women in tall hats tending flocks of sheep as the sun rises over lush green mountains on one side, the river flowing languidly on the other. We nap and read our books, sipping coca tea (a local remedy for altitude sickness) while nibbling on pastries and admiring the valley’s bucolic splendour.
The train stops at Ollantaytambo, where there’s a trackside espresso bar with WiFi, before arriving at Aguas Calientes, the gateway to the sacred city. Some choose to hike the last stretch of the Inca Trail from Aguas Calientes, a steep hour-long climb of stone steps and switchbacks through thick jungle, but clearly we’re not on that trip. Instead we board an air-conditioned bus that judders up the side of the mountain, precipice on one side, vertical face on the other, and reach the summit in 20 minutes.
We wander the ruins, taking photos of each other against the stunning vistas, and peppering Carlos with questions about the Incas. We visit the Temple of the Sun, with its reflecting pools for observing the sky, and the Temple of the Condor, built around a natural stone formation depicting a bird in flight. The day is clear and warm, the sky brilliantly blue against the jagged green peaks. We take photos of ourselves with the sweet-faced llamas that graze on the terraces and rest in the sun overlooking the valley below.
“Now,” says Carlos, concluding an anecdote about the Incan moon goddess Mama Quilla, “It’s time we visit the Temple of Lunch.” It’s barely afternoon, but it has already been a long day, and we have a lunch reservation at the mountaintop Belmond Sanctuary Lodge, where club sandwiches and cold beer await. On the Vistadome train back to the hotel we sit by the windows, sun-drunk and pleasantly tired, watching the setting sun cast its shadows over the valley. Somewhere behind those peaks I picture the hikers coming into camp for the evening, setting up tents and bandaging blisters. Then I think of my room at Tambo del Inka: a handmade Peruvian chocolate placed just so on my crisp, white pillow, a deep soaker tub ready to soothe my tired body. There may be only one Inca Trail, but there are many roads to Machu Picchu, all of them resulting in the trip of a lifetime.
The writer travelled as a guest of Libertador Hotels, Resorts & Spas. It did not review or approve this article.