I generally have no problem with heights, adrenaline sports, or adventurous travel in general, but what always seems to strike fear in my chest is a drive up a mountainside. This one was a particularly winding narrow road with vertical mountain on one side, and sheer drop-off on the other. No place to turn around, nothing you can do about it if another vehicle is coming down from the other direction.

Honestly the only thing that got me through was just repeating to myself that this driver does this all day every day and that we’d be fine. But my heart was leaping out of my chest. When I had the nerve to look out the window the view was spectacular, but I didn’t take any pictures as I just wanted to get to the top and get off the bus haha.

Thankfully, we made it up just fine.

Embedded within a dramatic landscape at the meeting point between the Peruvian Andes and the Amazon Basin, the 15th Century citadel Machu Picchu is among the greatest artistic, architectural, and land use achievements in the world, and the most significant legacy of the Inca civilization.

The 200 structures making up this religious, ceremonial, astronomical and agricultural center are set on a steep ridge, crisscrossed by stone terraces. Following a very specific plan, the city is divided into a lower and upper part, separating the farming from residential areas, with a large square between the two. To this day, many of Machu Picchu’s mysteries remain unresolved, including the exact role it may have played in the Incas’ sophisticated understanding of astronomy and domestication of wild plant species.

American Hiram Bingham was a Yale history professor and explorer who led a 1911 expedition from Cusco to find the “Lost City of the Incas,” and, with the guide of a local farmer, (re)”discovered” Machu Picchu. Even though some locals surely knew of its existence (and it sounds like there were other international explorers who got there first, including American suffragist Annie Smith Peck), Bingham is the one credited with sharing the knowledge with the world, and his name is all over the place on the site. He eventually became a US Senator.

Aside from taking thousands of artifacts from the site (which thankfully were eventually returned to Peru), he apparently wasn’t a very good guy in general and ultimately was censured by the Senate for lack of morals and bringing the Senate into dishonor. One positive: he apparently was the inspiration for Indiana Jones.

Also known as the Torreon, some believe the Temple of the Sun was used to honor and celebrate Inti, the Sun God, an important Incan deity. When the sun of the winter solstice enters through the central window, it falls directly on the large ceremonial stone. One of the most sacred parts of the Machu Picchu complex, only priests and important Incas were allowed inside.

One of the most sacred sites at Machu Picchu, the Temple of the Three Windows are said to represent the three levels of the Andean world: sky (condor), earth (puma), and underworld (serpent). The windows are aligned to let the summer solstice sunrise shine through at a perfect angle.

The Intihuatana stone is arguably the most important site at Machu Picchu. Known as the “hitching post of the sun,” the Intihuatana has been shown to be a precise indicator of the date of the two equinoxes and other significant celestial periods. Shamanic legends say that when a sensitive person touches their forehead to the Intihuatana stone it opens their vision to the spirit world. Intihuatana stones were the supremely sacred objects of the Inca people and were systematically searched for and destroyed by the Spaniards.

The Spaniards never found Machu Picchu, thus this particular Intihuatana stone and its resident spirits remain in their original position.

Unfortunately, part of the rock was chipped during the filming of a beer commerical in 2000; since then, Peruvian authorities don’t allow any sort of commercial activity near the site.