Friday, February 13, 2015

Inca Trail - Peru

The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu is on the bucket list of many hikers and adventurous travelers. My friend Miguel went to Peru last year, went to Machu Picchu but didn't he didn't hike this four-day trail. 
When he sent me this card, he didn't know that this trail was already added to the UNESCO WHS as part of the Qhapaq Ñan Andean Road System a few months earlier. It was a great and unexpected surprise. 

Foto Colección: Neus Escandell-Tur y Alexandra Arellano
Proving that the journey is as important as the destination, Peru’s famous Inca Trail has been named a new UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014, giving Peru a total of 12 listed sites.
Listed as the ‘Qhapaq Ñan Andean road system,’ the UNESCO site covers a mind-boggling 30,000-kilometer network of 15th-century Incan roads, connecting the one-time Inca capital of Cusco with cities all around Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia and Chile, and all six countries teamed up to apply for the prestigious UNESCO status. Winding through verdant valleys, desert plains and thick rainforest, the trails are an extraordinary feat of engineering, running all the way from the coast to the 6,000-meter peaks of the Andes, and dotted with some of South America’s most impressive Inca Ruins. - in: http://thingstodo.viator.com/cusco-machu-picchu/inca-trail-named-unesco-site/

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