Mary Losure, Contributing Writer

It's one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, according to a global contest. Want to see it? It's not hard. These days, the "lost city of the Incas" lies on the end of a well-traveled tourist trail.

Of course, if you're hardy and intrepid, you can hike through the jungle for days, get up at 4 a.m. and see Machu Picchu as the sun rises over the stone city.

But don't let anybody tell you that's the only way worth doing it. The easiest way to get there is by train from the city of Cusco, Peru, then take any of the frequent tourist buses that run between the train station and the site itself.

I first glimpsed Machu Picchu from the window of, yes, a tourist bus, climbing a dirt road that switchbacks through dense tropical forest. Above us rose cone-shaped green mountains, clouds swirling around their summits. We rounded a bend and there against the sky, so high up that I expected to see the summit of another mountain, stood stones piled one on another: terraces and the peaks of houses. I gasped. Really, actually gasped. It seemed impossible that anyone could have built a city in so remote and wild a place. It reminded me of one of my son's Tolkienesque fantasy video games, much as I hate to admit that.

The problem with describing Machu Picchu is that the words that come to mind -- magical, mystical, otherworldly -- have been used so many times they have lost their meaning. But Machu Picchu really is magical. Its stair-step stone terraces crowned with temples echo the form of the mountains all around, as if the city somehow grew from the rocks. Llamas graze where once the Incas grew corn and potatoes.

I had wondered, before I came, if there would be tourists crawling everywhere, turning it into a sort of theme park IncaLand. But I didn't find that to be true, at least on the day (admittedly in the rainy season) I went. People clustered quietly among the buildings or walked along the paths that run along the terraces, but the city is big enough, and the 360-degree view so spectacular, that I found it easy to ignore my fellow tourists. A condor (I think) soared by, against the background of peaks wreathed in mist.

I preferred to explore the city without a guide, following the stone steps wherever they led me: to the temples of the sun and condor, to the observatory, and to the houses where the wealthy classes once lived. At Machu Picchu, there are none of the maps, self-guided tours and ubiquitous explanatory signs that make many historical sites seem like museums. The stones speak for themselves.

With some 2,500 visitors to Machu Picchu each day, pressure has prompted limitations to tourist access. Still, there are parts of the city where you can stand in empty rooms, hear nothing but the rush of the river far below and feel, for that moment, something of what it would have been like to live there hundreds of years ago.

My only regret about my trip to Machu Picchu was that I bought a round-trip train ticket for just one day. Too soon, I had to take the last train out and return to the real world.

Getting There

The nearest airport to Machu Picchu is in the city of Cusco, Peru. There are several flights a day to Cusco, connecting through Lima. Cusco is a red-tile-roofed, Spanish Colonial town with many good hotels in a wide range of prices, all a bargain by U.S. standards.

I stayed in Hostel Casa del Campo, with terraces offering stunning views of the city. The rooms are very clean, the water (normally) hot and the continental breakfast good, but don't expect every single amenity you would find in a U.S. hotel. The rooms, like many in South America, are unheated, but the beds have warm comforters. Not everyone speaks English. But then again, you don't pay U.S. prices, either. I paid $35 a night, but rates vary according to the season.

The train from Cusco to Manchu Picchu is by PeruRail. Tourist buses make the half-hour trip from the train station to the site. In the high tourist season (April through December), it's best to make reservations before you go. But at other times of the year, you can wait until you arrive. Your hotel can easily get your train and park entrance tickets for you, and waiting until you arrive allows you more flexibility to choose when you go to Machu Picchu and how long you stay.

You will need a day or so to get used to Cusco's altitude of 3,000 meters (1.8 miles -- take that, Denver!). Hotels and restaurants everywhere in the city offer tea made from coca leaves to help with altitude sickness. Coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine, are legal in Peru for their traditional use as mild stimulant.

The old city of Cusco, once the capital of the Inca Empire, was destroyed by the Spanish conquerors of Peru, but many of the buildings existing in today's city were constructed on foundations of magnificent Inca stonework, which are instantly recognizable once you've been to Machu Picchu.

From Cusco, there are tours of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, a lovely and fertile valley where you can visit ruins of several major Inca cities that were much less isolated (and so are less well preserved) than Machu Picchu. The ruins at Pisaq include an Inca cemetery where tens of thousands of dead were interred in holes in the cliff face, still visible at a distance. At Ollantaytambo, parts of the old Inca city are still inhabited. Ruins there include ancient seed storehouses, perched high on the cliffs so the wind could dry the seeds.

To learn more about the modern descendants of the Incas, try a visit to a park where six small Andean villages are working together to preserve both their traditional way of life and the distinctive native potato varieties they have grown for thousands of years. The Potato Park, as it's called, is 3 kilometers from the archaeological ruins of Pisaq and is just beginning to develop as a tourist destination. The travel agency that can arrange tours of the park is Personal Travel, which you can reach by phone at (51 84) 22 55 18 if you are in Peru.

Villagers have built a store selling teas, soaps, shampoos and medicines made from herbs and medicinal plants, and a newly-opened restaurant offers traditional Peruvian dishes. Villagers also sell weavings made from wool from sheep, llama and alpaca, some of the finest textiles I saw in six weeks of travel in Peru.

Mary Losure is the co-founder of Round Earth Productions, an independent production company that reports on Latin American issues for radio, print and web distribution. Major funding for the project comes from the W.K.Kellogg Foundation. For more information please visit roundearthproductions.org.