Cuzco has a temperate climate with year
round temperatures fluctuating between
14-16°C, with warm days and cold nights. The
rainy season in Cuzco is from December to
March . Machu Picchu has a semi-tropical
climate, with warm and humid days and cold
nights. The rainy season in Machu Picchu is
from November to March, so be prepared. The
wet months are January to April, when roads
are often closed by landslides or flooding.
The best months for visiting Machu Picchu
are from April to October. The High season
is June to August (book well in advance).
At its highest, the trail reaches 4200m
above sea level, so you should spend at
least 2 days in Cuzco acclimatising before
you start the trek. If you don't, altitude
sickness could make your first few days
pretty uncomfortable.
Book your spot a few months in advance. The
number of trek permits issued is limited to
500 per day (including tour guides and
porters). In the high season you'll need to
book 3 months in advance.
It's remarkable that Machu
Picchu was first brought to the
attention of the world in 1911. The
Spanish invaders at the time of the
Conquest and during certuries of
colonial rule, never discovered the
city, and nobody ever led them
there, suggesting that the site had
long since been abondoned and
forgotten.
In the nineteenth century explorers
like Eugenie de Sartiges, George
Ephraim Squire, Antonio Raimondi and
Castelnau never reached Machu
Picchu, although most of them
crossed the Andes to the almost
inaccessible ruins of Choquekirau,
built high above the Apurimac river.
In fact, the outside world simply
stumbled upon Machu Picchu, for it
had never been lost to those who
lived around it. Those same people
eventually led the American
explorer, Hiram Bingham, and his
team to the site in 1911. Hiram
Bingham, now world-famous as the
discoverer of Machu Picchu, did not
initially travel to South America to
explore the land of the Incas. In
fact, the Hawaiian-born Yale and
Harvard educated historian first
journeyed south from the United
States to complete his study of the
great nineteenth century liberator,
Simon Bolivar.
In December 1908, Bingham attended
the First Panamerican Scientific
Congress in Santiago, Chile. It was
there that he decided to follow the
old Spanish trade route from Buenos
Aires to Lima, and it was to that
end that he traveled to Lima and
hence to Cusco.
In Cusco Bingham made the
acquaintance of one J.J. Nunez, then
prefect of the Apurimac region, who
invited him on the arduous trip to
the ruins of Choquekirau, thought at
the time to be the site of
Vilcabamba, the much sought "last
resting place of the Incas."
On his return to the USA, Bingham
decided to organize another
expedition to Peru. He arrived in
Lima in June 1911 where he began to
study the seventeenth-century
chronicles of Antonio de la Calancha
and Fernando de Montesinos. The
writings of these two men first
inspired Bingham to seek the last
two capitals of the Inca, Vilcabamba
and Vitcos. Leaving Lima in July,
Bingham returned to Cusco from where
he journeyed on foot and by mule
through the Urubamba Valley, past
Ollantaytambo, and on
into the Urubamba gorge.
On July 23, Bingham and his party
camped by the river at a place
called Mandor Pampa, where they
aroused the curiosity of Melchor
Arteaga, a local farmer who leased
the land there. Through Sergeant
Carrasco, the policeman who was his
guide and interpreter, Bingham
learned from Arteaga that there were
extensive ruins on top of the ridge
opposite the camp, which Arteaga, in
his native Quechua, called Machu
Picchu, or "old mountain".
According to Bingham, "The morning
of July 24th dawned in a cold
drizzle. Arteaga shivered and seemed
inclined to stay in his hut. I
offered to pay him well if he showed
me the ruins. He demurred and said
it was too hard a climb for such a
wet day. But when he found I was
willing to pay him a sol, three or
four times the ordinary daily wage,
he finally agreed to go. When asked
just where the ruins were, he
pointed straight up to the top of
the mountain. No one supposed that
they would be particularly
interesting, and no one cared to go
with me."
Accompanied only by Seargeant
Carrasco and Arteaga, Bingham left
the camp around 10 am. After a short
while the party crossed a bridge so
unnerving that the intrepid explorer
was reduced to crawling across it on
his hands and knees. From the river
they climbed a precipitous slope
until they reached the ridge at
around midday.
Here Bingham rested at a small hut
where they enjoyed the hospitality
of a group of campesinos. They told
him that they had been living there
for about four years and explained
that they had found an extensive
system of terraces on whose fertile
soil they had decided to grow their
crops. Bingham was then told that
the ruins he sought were close by
and he was given a guide, the
11-year old Pablito Alvarez, to lead
him there.
Almost immediately, he was greeted
by the sight of a broad sweep of
ancient terraces. They numbered more
than a hundred and had recently been
cleared of forest and reactivated.
Led by the boy, he re-entered the
forest beyond the terraces. Here
young Pablito began to reveal to
Bingham a series of white granite
walls which the historian
immediately judged to be the finest
examples of masonry that he had ever
seen. They were in fact, the remains
of what we call today the Royal
Tomb, the Main Temple, and the
Temple of the Three Windows.
As evidenced by his writings, Hiram
Bingham was genuinely inspired by
the beauty of the region he was
exploring.
According to Bingham, "I had entered
the marvellous canyon of the
Urubamba below the Inca fortress.
Here the river escapes from the cold
plateau by tearing its way through
gigantic mountains of granite. The
road runs through a land of
matchless charm. It has the majestic
grandeur of the Canadian Rockies, as
well as the startling beauty of the
Nuuanu Pali near Honolulu, and the
enchanting vistas of the Koolau
Ditch Trail on Maui, in my native
land. In the variety of its charms
the power of its spell, I know of no
place in the world which can compare
with it. Not only had it great snow
peaks looming above the clouds more
than two miles overhead; gigantic
precipices of many-coloured granite
rising sheer for thousands of feet
above the foaming, glistening,
roaring rapids, it has also, in
striking contrast, orchids and tree
ferns, the delectable beauty of
luxurious vegetation and the
mysterious witchery of the jungle.
One is drawn irrisistibly onwards by
ever-recurring surprises through a
deep, winding gorge, turing and
twistng past overhanging cliffs of
incredible height
Above all, there is the fascination
of finding here and there under
swaying vines, or perched on top of
a beetling crag, the rugged masonry
of a bygone race; and of trying to
understand the bewildering romance
of the ancient builders who, ages
ago, sought refuge in a region which
appears to have been expressly
designed by nature as a sanctuary
for the oppressed, a place where
they might fearlessly and patiently
give expression to their passion for
walls of enduring beauty."
Other people saw and even lived at
Machu Picchu before Hiram Bingham
even set foot in Peru, but had
neither the means nor the
opportunity to bring the "lost city"
to the attention of the outside
world. Bingham himself found two
families living at the ruins and was
led to the main plaza by a young
boy. As early as 1894, a local
farmer called Agustin Lizarraga led
one Luis Bejar Ugarte to the ancient
city. This same Lizarraga took his
friends Gabino Sanchez and Enrique
Palma on a treasure-seeking trip to
the ruins on July 14, 1901, visiting
all the accessible parts of the then
uncleared site. When Bingham arrived
at the ruins he found the rock that
the three friends had signed with
their names and the date of their
visit. In his later writings,
however, he downplayed this
discovery.
The three treasure hunters met
Anacleto Alvarez (whom Bingham later
encountered) who told them that he
had been living among the ruins for
8 years, where he grew his crops of
corn, yucca, sweet potatos and sugar
cane on the fertile soil that the
Incas had carried up from
the river valley to build
Machu Picchu's magnificent
300 meter high series of terraces!
