At the top of the mountain, where an attendant will take your $46 ticket, foot traffic is steady and cellphone reception is excellent.
At the bottom of the same mountain, the town teems with pizzerias [and] tourists chatter in half a dozen languages.
Plenty has changed in this corner of the Andes since July 24, 1911, when Yale University professor Hiram Bingham III climbed these slopes with a local farmer and beheld the ruins we know as Machu Picchu.
In the last dozen years, visitor traffic here has boomed, been halted by flooding, then surged again. Peru’s president has prevailed in a tug of war with Yale over artifacts Bingham had collected. Even the name of the town below Machu Picchu’s ruins has been in flux: Though most locals and travelers have long known it as Aguas Calientes, a growing number of businesses and government agencies are calling it El Pueblo de Machu Picchu.
Enduring wonder
Yet the stacked stones and eerie timelessness of the mountaintop endure. To see and feel this wonder at its best, all you need to do is take a series of planes, trains and automobiles, accept the thin air and some high prices, and get up early. The ruins open daily at 6 a.m., and that’s when you want to be there.
If you’re lucky, the morning will begin with thick mist and fleeting glimpses of neighboring peaks, which hang in the clouds like brushstrokes in a Chinese landscape painting. As the sun rises, the scale of the place will bloom and unfold—the orderly boulders, wild orchids, temples and terraces. The llamas nibbling wet grass. The viscachas (cousins of the chinchilla) skittering past the Temple of the Three Windows. It’s mesmerizing. ...
Discussion Questions
- Where was the last place you visited that was teeming with people? Why is it such a popular or busy location?
- Describe the most beautiful panorama you’ve ever seen. Where was it and what made it so spectacular?
- Would you like to visit Machu Picchu someday? Why or why not?
