Machu Picchu - "The Lost City of the Incas." It is safe to to say that I have never visited anything so breathtaking in my life. I'd seen pictures, I'd heard about it, but I could not have imagined what it's like to be there in person, looking down at the Incas' impeccably crafted community of stone and looking up to see the Andes poking through the clouds. The Incas started building Machu Picchu in the mid-1400's, but it was abandoned less than a hundred years later during the Spanish conquest, as its occupants escaped to the jungle or died from smallpox. Had the Spanish ever found this place, it would have suffered the fate of so many other Inca sites; what is so miraculous is that it is so intact. In 1911 Professor Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu hidden under thick brush; he'd actually been looking for something else! He was led to the site by Quechuans who were living in the ruins. It was Professor Bingham who gave the place its name, which comes from the Quechua words machu ‘old man’ and pikchu ‘peak’.
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