From Douglas Bernon's article, Reveries on A Walk to Machu Picchu.
Posted on January 21, 2003 10:08 AM. Filed under: history & archaeology.Machu Picchu, Peru’s famous Lost City Of the Incas, is perched in a high mountain valley ringed by towering peaks. This ancient holy city is about the same distance south of the equator as Barbados is north. Depending on our altitude, we’ve been slipping up and down through a series of microclimates: cloud forest, grassy plains, high sierra, rain forest. Think orchids, jungles, and glaciers, all in the same picture. Once, much of Peru was laced with narrow Inca highways, wide enough only for a walker and his burdens. Many think the trail was a pilgrimage planned as a narrative experience, a complete work of art in which truths are revealed progressively in nature’s changing dramas, culminating with the mountaintop setting and elegantly crafted stone temples of Machu Picchu. Seems right to me. [continue]