Tagged With "Inca"

Beautiful photos, Grand Escapes! I'm especially fond of the one of the llama roaming the streets of Machu Picchu. They are the official "lawn mowers" of the park. Machu Picchu after the tourist train leaves and before it arrives is a totally different experience than during the peak of the day. If there's one travel spot you'll want to spend a night or two so that you can enjoy some tranquility before it gets overwhelmed with people, then I'd say this is the one.

Love the blog and pics. I visited Machu Picchu many years ago and had a wonderful time. It was an experience I will never forget. Thanks for bringing back great memories.

Peru is making plans for a cable car link to Kuelap, high in the Andes. Kuelap, centuries older than Machu Picchu, predates the Incas. It's the largest pre-Columbian stone-built city in South America, with over 400 round houses and a 1.5 km stone wall...

Sylvia continues her hike through the Peruvian Andes and comes across a picturesque small town church that has an uncommon system of pest control.

I suspect not all visitors to the site will take the easy way, the cable car. Some, no doubt, will continue to take the route through the villages, precisely because it includes the villages. Not everyone is in a hurry. There may be fewer going that way, or maybe not. As more learn of the existence of Kuelap, a certain percentage will opt for the more in-depth experience and it could conceivably increase the number of visitors to the surrounding villages. I wouldn't be surprised. As with...

And hopefully, not the gondola, either!

Certainly the building of the gondola must have created many good jobs, as will maintaining and running it. And as PM has suggested, more tourism to the area will benefit everyone.

The Great Inka Road, an engineering marvel, 24,000 miles long and passing through 6 Latin American countries, is the focus of a new two-year exhibit that opened this week at the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian in Washington.

 The Inca people of South America's Andes mountains were remarkable engineers.  Unlike Europeans, who used mortar to bond together large walls of brick or rock, Incas carefully shaped and chiseled stones so that they fit together perfectly!

Dan Berlin, the American athlete who last year became the first blind man to hike the Grand Canyon, made the challenging 26-mile trek on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in 13 hours...a feat that normally takes 4 days walking.  

 Machu Picchu is a well known Inca ruin situated on top of a steep granite peak in the Peruvian Andes (2430 m above sea level).  Despite the altitude, its location near the equator provides a warm climate and the hills on which it rests are...

There is something special, definitely mythical, about Machu Picchu, the abandoned Inca city that remained hidden from the Conquistadores.