There she lies: spectacular, deserted, silent, above the summit of those high mountains, between two scratched peaks of the Peruvian Andes, keeping the secrets of a millennial culture, the Inca. Natives call it Machu Picchu or Old Peak, honoring one of the guarding mountains. The other, higher than the first one, is called Huayna Picchu or Young Peak.

This impressive scenario can be reached by the old Inca trail, which also gives access to Cuzco, or by train. The train has two alternatives: the Indian train that departs from Cuzco between 5-6 a.m., full of people from the region and which takes about 6-7 hours; or the tourists train, which departs everyday almost on time at 7 a.m. and arrives at the Valle de Machu Picchu Station at 10:30 a.m., from there the tourist have to take a bus to the ruins. Almost 30 years ago, travelers made the last part of the trip to Machu Picchu on top of a mule, through a sinuous trail, bordering creepy precipices. Nowadays, people can travel by plane to Cuzco, capital of the ancient Inca Empire, located at 3467 above sea level. From there you go down, whether walking through the Inca trail or by means of a narrow track train along the sacred valley of the Urubamba River. Before reaching the city there is a six hundred meters slope. Currently, the slope is climbed by bus through a narrow eight kilometers long road that has many steep curves. After passing the first curves, Huayna Picchu’s grand peak begins to show, as if the numberless pictures where it appears came to life at that moment. At the end of the road, and once the travelers take a brief rest (in a hotel that slightly breaks the environment’s majestic harmony) a guide leads them across a labyrinth of two hundred houses and temples without roofs.

But, who rediscovered it and to whom we owe the privilege of enjoying this architectonic legacy, which certainly overwhelms us? Hiram Bingham, a young Latin American History professor from Yale in New Haven was interested about the legends around the llacta de Vitcos or Viticos, the last refuge of rebel Incas in the jungle of Vilcabamba. In 1906 he made a journey from Buenos Aires to Cuzco, ending at the spectacular ruins now known as Choquequirao. But Bingham did not let those ruins impress him, because his dreamed Vitcos had to be yet more awesome. In order to continue with his explorations he had to return to the United States to raise money. So then he was able to enthrall the National Geographic Society and Yale University, which became his main sponsors. Finding Vitcos was now not only of personal interest, but it turned into a planned Project.

On July 24, 1991, with two fellow scientists, some Indian assistants and a police sergeant as escort, he began climbing the Urubamba canyon. Finally, after a wasteful and exhausting ascent of more than 700 meters, which took them days to cross the jungle, they arrived to a straw hut where some Indians gave them fresh water and boiled potatoes, and also told them that just around the corner there were old houses and walls. Bingham turned around the hill and astonished by the spectacle before him, realized he had found his dream: the legendary Vitcos. He first saw about one hundred rock terraces, marvelously built measuring hundreds of meters: sort of a huge farm covering the sides and reaching the sky. A thick framework of trees and bushes, plagued with snakes, hid it all. Once he found Machu Picchu, Bingham returned to the United States and hired a number of archaeologists and anthropologists – mainly among them G. Eaton – to make excavations on site. Perhaps the biggest architectonic jewel confined in Machu Picchu is the set of inclined walls. Overhead the city, where the Incas were supposed to worship the Sun, the different temples that comprise one of the most amazing examples of primitive hewn stones in the world, represent the work of generations of artisan masters. There are no two stones alike, each one was carved so as to occupy a specific place, with whimsy angles and precisely shaped bulges that match each other, as if they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Noteworthy are the joint between rocks, which are so perfect, that even the insertion of a sheet or a knife is difficult, and which for that reason did not need any kind of cement. The city’s main streets are made of stairs and the central avenue goes along in consecutive steps from the bottom level, passing by dozens of houses, to the top of the city. The aqueduct, integrated by an ingenious array of fountains that divides the city irregularly from top to bottom, transported the water through a series of rock aqueducts beginning on the springs about two kilometers inside the mountain, to the city fountains, by means of a complex system of holes made on the thick granite walls.

Viewed from the surrounding mountains, Machu Picchu rises to the sky as an unassailable fortress capable of being protected by just a handful of men. On top the two peaks, 700 meters above the tempestuous Urubamba, there are two rock watchtowers from where the sentinels observed the valley and alerted when an intruder was approaching. Two walls, one inner and the other outer, as well as a ditch, complete the natural defenses of the city, besides an intricate system of locks carved on the main gate. This so complex set of protection items suggests the city must have been a very important internal bastion for the Inca Empire and maybe a sanctuary devoted to the cult of ancestors and other religious practices.

One of Hiram Binghman’s greatest findings were the walls of a mansion, neatly carved, with three facing the sunrise, as in the legendary royal house where it is believed the first Inca departed to establish his dynasty. The whole city soars to the sky to peak on the traditional Inca Sun Clock, which measured the seasons. In a ceremonial rite at the time of winter solstice, the priests tied the Sun to a plinth, all carved in one granite block leading from a platform.

At the peak of the Inca Empire there were schools in all provinces of the kingdom, where the most beautiful girls were trained to serve in the ruler’s or his noble’s houses, as well as to perform in certain religious ceremonies. The conquistadors destroyed many of those schools, and maybe a group of surviving girls were secretly taken to Machu Picchu. But the women began to die as the years passed, the jungle began to cover the temples, and there was no one left to tell the true story of the city.

Machu Picchu will continue to bewitch entire generations, as its mystery was buried taking away a whole culture. But that legacy will remain ageless showing that humans are capable of conquering