Picking up from Peru’s Sacred Valley: Inca Terraces, Salt Pans and the Mysteries of Moray. The series starts here: Peru and Bolivia: The Andes, the Altiplano and the World’s Most Dangerous Road.

The train from Ollantaytambo follows the river down through the canyon — green walls rising on both sides, the valley narrowing as the altitude drops. Somewhere along the canyon, the Inca Trail came into view through the window — a thin line of trekkers strung out on the ridge above, days of walking still ahead of them.

Glad not to be walking. 

Aguas Calientes exists almost entirely to serve the site above it. I had Inca Cola on the train, much to the visible disgust of the Peruvian couple sitting beside me.

From Aguas Calientes, buses carry visitors up in shifts — five thousand per day, timed entry, designated routes, a system built to protect a citadel that very nearly disappeared from memory entirely. Built in the mid-1400s under the Inca emperor Pachacuti, it was abandoned a century later during the Spanish conquest. The site sat mostly unknown to outsiders until local farmers led an American historian here in 1911. It has been famous ever since. The Americans in the queue were stressed. Listening to them kept us entertained.

Even with the shifts the wait was long.

Janine acquired Nordic walking sticks before departure. At altitude, with thin air and a serious climb, they proved to be a necessity rather than a precaution.

Inside the Ruins

Machu Picchu earns its reputation. Perched at 2,430 metres on a ridge between two peaks, invisible from the valley floor below — which is presumably exactly why it survived as long as it did. The cliffs fall away on all sides. The clouds move through the ruins. Fernando had been here many times and still pointed things out with genuine enthusiasm — young, fit, and still felt the altitude.

At the starting lookout, he turned and said: “It takes your breath away in more than one way.” Nobody argued with him.

We meandered through the ruins. The scale only becomes real when you’re inside it — terraces dropping away, peaks rising on all sides, the river far below, the whole thing built without a single wheel or draught animal to help move the stone. Llamas graze the upper terraces now, doing the job of a lawnmower with considerably more dignity, entirely unbothered by the five thousand people filing past them for photos.

Fernando explained the terracing as we went — layers of gravel, sand and topsoil engineered to drain the mountain’s relentless rain without ever collapsing, a system that has held for the better part of six centuries with no maintenance at all. Whoever designed it was not guessing.

Getting down was worse than getting up. Fernando worked his magic — Janine’s knees qualified us to skip the massive exit queue.

Down in time for a late lunch in Aguas Calientes: llama, served with the hottest chillies I had ever encountered. My face went bright red.

The question on the return train was whether this was the last ruin on my personal bucket list.
It was not. The Mayan ruins in Mexico, apparently, will also be interesting.