Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time was recommended to be by a walking friend Tony. He had visited Machu Picchu in 2015 and was keen that I read it before my trip in August 2016. Luckily, I was able to borrow it from the Moreland Library in April 2016 and read it in less than a week.
It is a warm-hearted, funny and entertaining account of Adams' journeys in a remote part of Peru to retrace the steps of Hiram Bingham III, the 'discoverer' of the Inca ruins at Machu Picchu. It is also an affectionate portrait of a remarkable man, John Leivers, the Australian ex-pat guide, with his laconic style, meticulous planning and profound knowledge of the Inca sites around Cusco. It is largely thanks to Leivers' skills that Adams survives, humping his heavy backpack hundreds of kilometres in rugged mountain countryside to re-visit the numerous locations identified by Bingham a century earlier.
If there is one key character in this book that never talks, but speaks volumes, it is the stunning beauty and grandeur of the landscapes in which the adventurers travel. With the expertise of Leivers at his elbow, Adams gradually came to the realisation that the Incas viewed their environment on a grand scale, which embraced and interconnected large areas of the landscape in an harmonious and spiritual domain. His final steps on the Inca Trail revealed to him the magnificence of that vision, lost over 450 year earlier with the bloody Spanish invasion.
I finished the book very satisfied and wanting to know more. It came at just the right time, about 2 months before we fly out to Lima and do our own Machu Picchu pilgrimage.
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