In May of 2002, right before my wedding in Ecuador, my family hiked almost 40 km of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru.  It was an amazing experience to walk where they walked and learn about their culture.

I've been trying to decide how best to describe this trip, to maybe, somehow, someway, let you taste the experience that I had.  Sure the pictures are breathtaking, but I know my family would agree that it is impossible to convey in pictures or in words what it was like.  We are extremely grateful to our guide, Lucho, who gave us not only a personal tour of the trail, but historical and spiritual insight as well as to what Machu Piccu really was to the Inca.  

My mom bought a book called Exploring Cusco written by Peter Frost.  His description of the trail and the city itself helps to put it all into perspective together:

 "Few relatively short hikes in the world can offer such variety of scenery, so many staggering views, such a mix of jungle and high sierra.  Certainly no other walk known to man will lead you along an ancient highway from one secluded ruin to another, each in a breathtaking setting, each almost perfectly preserved, offering shelter, solitude and views that no pen or camera can ever adequately record.  And of course, no other hike in the world ends with a climactic descent into Machu Picchu.

Walking this trail it is impossible to doubt that the entire experience was planned--there was nothing happenstance about the stunning combinations of scenic and man-made beauty.  The Incas wanted those who walked this way to reel in awe as they crested the passes and rounded the corners.  They designed the trail like a dramatic narrative, with a series of troughs, slow build-ups and climaxes, each greater than the last, until the stunning finale, when travelers look down from Intipunku upon Machu Picchu, shining on its stone isthmus between two great peaks, far above the Urubamba river.

The Inca Trail and Machu Picchu are rarely, if ever, considered in this light: as a complete work of art--perhaps because there is no work of art in our civilization on anything approaching this scale.  And yet it can be argued that it was a work of art, rather like a gothic cathedral, with its intended purpose: to elevate the soul of the pilgrim on the way to Machu Picchu.  In this author's view, the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu was a pilgrim's route; its destination, a sacred city."

Amen.