“Machu Picchu is the only place that still takes my breath away,” our guide Luis says quietly, as our small group gapes out over one of the wonders of the world. The only thing in the big blue sky is the just-risen sun, and its early morning light falls over jagged peaks, lush cloud forest and the cascading buildings and terraces of Peru’s most famous Inca ruins. The last few days in the Andes have been literally breathtaking, thanks to the mountains’ high altitude and reduced oxygen, and now it was figuratively true, too.
We’re at the midway point of Intrepid’s nine-day Classic Peru trip, which has taken our group of eight from the colonial cobblestones of coastal Lima into the Andes, with stops at the sprawling Romanesque city of Cusco and the glaciers, jungles and plains of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Machu Picchu is the headline act, and its performance doesn’t disappoint.
Getting here was its own adventure. After meeting up and getting to know each other in Lima, we spent the afternoon exploring the city’s basilica of San Francisco and its underground catacombs. The next morning, we took an early flight inland, towards Cusco – the sprawling former Inca capital, 3400 metres above sea level, which now serves as the gateway to the Peruvian Andes.
Most people come to Cusco so their bodies get a chance to acclimate to the lower oxygen – altitude sickness is dangerous, and Luis monitors our oxygen levels each morning to make sure we’re not dipping. While we waited for our bodies to get used to the conditions, we had plenty of time to wander around the city’s old town. We visited the imposing ruins of Coricancha, the most important temple in the Inca Empire, and stopped for fresh juice at the Mercado San Pedro, the city’s most famous market (Luis tells us it was designed by Gustave Eiffel, of Parisian tower fame).
The next day we all bundled into a van for our trip to Machu Picchu: a winding drive through the Sacred Valley of the Incas, packed with pitstops. The Sacred Valley looks like a place that only exists in Indiana Jones movies. Somehow, this simultaneously arid and verdant canyon, split by the Urubamba River, one of the many headwater sources that eventually become the Amazon River, manages to be a coherent mosaic of different environments: desert, fields, jungle, ice. Everywhere you look, the valley is riddled with traces of Inca culture, from the terraces for maize and potato agriculture carved into the hills, to the ruins strategically perched on rocky outcrops.
That day we fed llamas and alpacas, tried empanadas fresh out of a hulking oven, and had lunch and learned from a Quechua community Intrepid has been supporting for almost a decade. On the itinerary this was billed as a “travel day”. Talk about an undersell. It was one of the best days I’ve ever had travelling. In the evening, we arrived at the town of Ollantaytambo for the final leg of the journey: an impossibly scenic ride in a Hogwarts Express-style train to Aguas Calientes, the town next to Machu Picchu, where we would go early the next morning.
At the Machu Picchu lookout, after we take approximately one million photos, Luis leads us into the citadel, stopping along the way to tell us the story of how this Inca icon, forgotten for centuries, was rediscovered just over a hundred years ago. We happen to be here on Inti Raymi, the winter solstice festival of the sun, the most important date in the Inca calendar.
Luis explains that the Incas treated the winter solstice like the new year and considered their emperor to be the “son of the sun”. He points out Machu Picchu’s famous Temple of the Sun, which has a window specifically oriented so that, one day a year, at sunrise on the winter solstice, sunlight will beam through it and onto a ceremonial stone inside. Then he tells us about how, when he was a teenager, back when security was much looser, he and a friend snuck into Machu Picchu, exploring the ruins before crashing there for the night.
I’ve never been more jealous of anyone in my entire life.
As our group ambles around, Broadsheet photographer Brook James and I try to guess how many times Luis, who’s from Cusco, has been to Machu Picchu. Brook reckons 50. I’ve done a bit of quick arithmetic, and I’m guessing, when you factor in his age and his job, we’re looking at closer to 200. “Luis, how many times have you been to Machu Picchu?”
“Today is my 401st time here.”
Missed it by that much. No wonder he knows it so well. As we continue to take in the ruins in their panoramic splendour, I find myself completely agreeing with what he said earlier: you can come to Machu Picchu hundreds of times, and it will always take your breath away.
But if Machu Picchu and the journey there are the Classic Peru trip’s entrée and main course, dessert has plenty in store, too. After the breakneck speed of the first few days of the trip, the Intrepid itinerary wisely makes the day after Machu Picchu a choose-your-own-adventure situation. Most of the group takes that free time to hike up to Rainbow Mountain, another of Peru’s ludicrously beautiful natural attractions and one of many optional add-ons to the Classic Peru trip. Brook and I, meanwhile, relish the chance to spend the day sleeping in and exploring Cusco.
This gives the batteries a much-needed recharge, and the next morning (another early one) we take the bus to Lake Titicaca: the world’s highest navigable lake, at over 3800 metres’ altitude, on the border of Peru and Bolivia. Again, the “travel days” are a surprise highlight. The epic all-day drive takes us deep into the Andes, where sometimes all you can see for miles are dramatic mountains and herds of wild alpacas. Our new friends, drained from their scenic climb the day before, spend most of the drive passed out. Brook and I are glued to the windows.
No one tells you about how many gum trees there are in Peru. They were brought over about a hundred years ago and are now an essential building material. The effect is disconcerting: as we gaze out over the glory of Lake Titicaca, the view is framed by eucalyptus. If it weren’t for the ubiquitous backing track of distant pan pipes and everyone wearing colourful Peruvian knitwear, you would think you were in northern Tasmania. For the coda of our Classic Peru trip, we take a boat to the famous Floating Islands, where the Uros people, who originally built islands out of reeds on the lake to flee the Incas, still live centuries later. That evening, instead of our usual hotel set-up, Intrepid has organised a homestay with a community that lives by the lake. We talk to them, eat with them and, in a special highlight, get destroyed by them in a scenic sunset volleyball match on the shores of the lake.
The next day we say goodbye to Luis, fly back to Lima, and all go out for a farewell ceviche and Pisco Sour as our group tries to process what we’ve just experienced together over the past nine days. Usually you’d be lucky to get a single unforgettable memory out of a holiday. Somehow, in just over a week, we’ve managed to cram in more than we can count. People have asked me, since getting back, about my favourite moment, but the truth is it’s hard to pick highlights. Peru was like an album where every song could be the single, and I can’t wait to go back and play it all over again.
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Intrepid. Intrepid’s Classic Peru tour is a nine-day, eight-night guided trip that includes all transport and accommodation. Starting and concluding in Lima, it covers all of the locations above (and more). Discover more here.
