MACCHU PICHU

The whole point about Macchu Pichu is that it's difficult to get to. The distance from Cuzco is only 80 km, but distance and difficulty are not the same thing. Saying it's not that far is a bit like saying Shakespeare's plays are only three hours long.

It's due to this difficulty that Macchu Pichu owes its continued existence. The Spanish never discovered it. And the Incas didn't destroy it. The jungle shrouded it. A few local farmers planted crops on its terraces. Locals knew of its existence. But word never got out. Then Hiram Bingham turned up in 1916 and realised he had discovered one kind of holy grail.

Today, there are three ways of getting to Machu Pichu. The easiest is by train. However, the Peruvians realise that this is a gravy train, literally, and it's not cheap. $160 for a return trip to Cuzco. UK commuter prices. The second way is by walking. Doing the Inca Trail. You need to be fit to do this, but more than that, you need time. Because it takes at least three days. It's no doubt the best way to get there, and every gringo worth his or her salt does it, but we were neither fit enough nor did we have the time. So we went the third way, the cheapskate fashion, which is by minivan.

In most countries in the world, the minivan is the predominant mode of transport. Where distances are large, minivans carry enough people to enable the driver to make a profit and everyone else to be able to afford to travel. They are cramped, uncomfortable but essential. There were eleven of us in our minivan plus a driver. Three Colombians, two French, two Italians, one Spaniard, an Argentine, a Uruguayan and a Brit. The Colombians rapidly established themselves as the most vocal. Edwin started talking and never really stopped. This was OK until we hit the passes.

After two hours driving, near to Ollantaytambo, we stopped for breakfast. Where we played a curious game of throwing a coin in the mouth of a bronze frog. Which was a bit like bar billiards. My brother would no doubt have excelled. In the small restaurant, the man working there said that so far it has been easy. Now we were going to hear the tyres scream. The way he said it made it sound as though this was going to be as painful or more so for us as it would be for the tyres.

Sure enough, we began to climb. And climb. And climb. One of the Italian girls, who'd been drinking until the early hours, was on the point of vomiting. We stopped, she recovered, we went on. Up to over 4000 metres. The tyres screeched. Most of us fell silent. The Colombians, all of them Andinos, talked. And talked. And talked.

Finally we began to descend. The body feels these ups and downs and rewards the downward trajectory with a warm feeling, suggesting the worst is over. It wasn't. The tarmaced road came to an end. Four hours and counting, we entered a ravine. On a dirt road carved out of the side, half way up the mountain. The dirt road looked, from where I was sitting at the back, as though it was narrower than the van. Every time we took a bend, which was every thirty seconds or so, the van seemed to swing out over the edge. At every moment I anticipated entering the final shot of the Italian Job. Only nothing was going to stop us going over the edge. The road went on and on. The Colombians didn't even seem to notice. I sat there in the expectation of my imminent demise. Someone asked the driver how often someone went over the edge. He replied that it's better not to ask questions like that.

Finally, after half an hour which felt like six, we began to descend. We arrived in a small town and had a late lunch. The last part of the journey followed the riverbed at the bottom of the ravine. The road was of no better quality, but at least we could breathe. Later, in Paracas, we heard a guide talking to some travellers who were on their way to Machu Picchu. He strongly advised them not to travel by road. The rainy season was coming and there was an excessively high mortality rate.

The end of the road was a place called Hydro, where a dam is being built. Supersized lorries careered up and down. There was a small train station, with a train taking you to Aguas Calientes. (Apparently the train used to pass through the valley we'd driven through, but there had been 'an accident'). Aguas Calientes is the base for ascending Machu Picchu. We didn't have tickets for the train, so we walked for three hours alongside the train track. Suddenly we were in jungle. Vivid flowers, birdlife, nature. We turned a corner and saw, perched up above, high, distant, the outline of Machu Picchu. Night was drawing in when we arrived in Aguas Calientes.

This is why Machu Pichu still exists today. It was created with the explicit intention of being almost impossible to reach. So when the Hispanic apocalypse arrived, it remained protected. Not by soldiers, but by mountains, ravines, jungle and altitude.