Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time

For years I looked forward to the arrival of the "Best of..." books, and in particular the Best American Travel Writing. Let's be honest: reading and traveling are only two of my very most favorite things to do - and not necessarily in that order - so naturally reading about traveling ranks pretty high. It's a genre I've mined pretty well, from Paul Theroux to J. Maarten Troost to David Quammen. Mark Adams is as good as any of them. I will say it plainly. I loved Turn Right at Machu Picchu.

I have never had any great, burning desire to visit Machu Picchu. This feeling was more or less confirmed a couple of years ago after my parents returned with tales of toilet paper-less hotels, restaurants with dirt floors and, yes, guinea pig on too many menus. I, therefore, rather foolishly determined I wouldn't read Turn Right at Machu Picchu when I first heard about it a year or so ago. But, its cover beckoned to me recently and the paperback version was slim enough to make for good airplane reading.

Much of what makes this book so wonderful is that Adams (like Quammen an editor at a outdoor/adventure magazine) weaves together three stories that, on the surface, are quite unrelated. The central narrative is Hiram Bingham III's early 20th century expeditions to Peru that included his "discovery" of Machu Picchu. (And, yes, Bingham is directly related to the Hiram Bingham of Hawaiian islands infamy. Imperialism coursed through his veins.) In stumbling across the details of Bingham's expeditions, Adams decided to retrace the original route, which entailed some serious hiking/camping/being off the beaten path. As in, for example, a total lack of, uh, facilities (which actually makes for one hilarious anecdote in particular).

The third narrative is of the colonization of Peru by the Spanish in the 1500s. This is, undoubtedly, the most serious; yet, Adams approaches the history, which could be circuitous and hard to follow, with decided humor. (I especially liked the anecdote about the Inca's investiture which includes the description, "Imagine a presidential inauguration held during Mardi Gras, at which the taxidermied remains of Thomas Jefferson and Dwight Eisenhower were incorporated into float themes, and you'll get some idea of the horrified reaction the Spaniards had to this spectacle." p. 70)

What I'm saying is that it does not matter if you've visited Machu Picchu ten times or if you wouldn't go near it with a ten foot pole. Read this book. It's just that good.