World's Best Hikes: 7 Insider Tips to Maximize Your Hike to Machu Picchu

 
By Mark Adams, author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu (available June 30, Dutton Books). See more Machu Picchu tips, facts, and photos.

With all the hoopla surrounding the 100th anniversary of Hiram Bingham III’s rediscovery of Machu Picchu on July 24, 1911, there’s never been more interest in visiting the ruins that he dubbed the Lost City of the Incas. The best way to arrive, of course, is by hiking the Inca Trail. (A path, incidentally, that was another one of Bingham’s finds—he uncovered it while exploring the area around Machu Picchu in 1915.) But the days when an adventurous traveler could fly into Cusco on a Saturday and depart for the Inca Trail on Sunday have long since come and gone. Walking the Inca Trail requires equal parts dreaming and strategizing—not to mention a few trips to the gym. Here are a few tips on how to get the most out of your trek.

iPad 2 For Travel: New Travel Apps, iMovie Trip Videos, Battery Life Tips, More

By Mary Anne Potts; photograph courtesy Apple

When the first iPad came out just over a year ago, we were sure it would transform travel: Apple's tablet computer married work and play utilities so well, it rendered a laptop excess weight on a vacation. Thirteen months later, our computing behavior has already evolved drastically. Everyone from VPs to restaurant sommeliers to preschoolers are using iPads everywhere. It did not take long for the tablet to find a place in our lives.

Since the second generation iPad was released a month ago, much has been said about the new lighter, smaller, faster model. And the fact that Apple has added significant new features to iPad 2—such as the front- and back-facing cameras—without raising the price (it starts at $499). Let’s consider what the iPad 2 does to further transform travel with its smaller size, new cameras, innovative new travel apps, and iMovie travel videos.

Finding Machu Picchu: A Look at Explorer Hiram Bingham, A Real-Life Indiana Jones

 
Almost one hundred years ago, on July 24, 1911, a Yale University history lecturer named Hiram Bingham III climbed to the top of a mountain ridge in Peru and encountered one of the most extraordinary sets of ruins on Earth: Machu Picchu. In his new book Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu, the historian Christopher Heaney examines how Bingham got there, why he fooled himself into thinking he’d found the Lost City of the Incas, and what influence Bingham had on a certain whip-toting movie daredevil. Heaney spoke with Adventure contributing editor Mark Adams.

NGA: Hiram Bingham III wasn’t trained as an archaeologist or an anthropologist. His specialty was history. Was it a fluke that he ended up at Machu Picchu?

Christopher Heaney: It was a fluke in the sense that he didn’t set out to look for Machu Picchu. Bingham was really in Peru trying to find the last capitals of the Incas, Vitcos and Vilcabamba.

NGA: Explorers had been roaming the Peruvian countryside for years, searching for the legendary Lost City of the Incas, which they imagined was filled with gold. So how did Bingham end up as the one who made that famous climb on July 24, 1911?

CH: What’s amazing about Bingham is that he put himself in a position where he couldn’t not have reached Machu Picchu. He was really the first person to go into the region and gather up as much oral testimony as possible. Using the names of places mentioned in the Spanish chronicles and maps of past Peruvian geographers, he just went from point to point and never turned down an offer to go look for ruins. He was also working with the maps of at least one other explorer, a guy named Curtis Farabee who was at Harvard at the time.