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TRAVEL Bloomberg Pursuits January 29, 2018

achu Picchu is one big chipped it while shooting a beer com- area along the Urubamba River,
marketing myth. At least mercial. After that, Leo explains, the flanked by Cusco and Machu Picchu.
that’s how our guide, Leo, government recognized that it needed The Sacred Valley gets its name not
puts it as we wander the breathtaking to regulate the country’s most famous from religious mythology but from
fog-shrouded Inca ruins. First off, he heritage site before it could begin pro- its agricultural and cultural richness.
says, the 600-year-old city wasn’t hid- moting any others. It took 17 years. Here, petite Andinas (the women of
den: Otherwise, why would there be Meanwhile, an expansion of infrastruc- the Andes) wear intricately patterned
seven gates to get in? Second, it was ture brought ever larger hordes to this skirts in saturated hues, wide-brimmed
hardly the last remaining Inca cita- single, barely protected spot. ornamental hats, and thick braids. Men
del: There are two others you can see Peru received 3.3 million tourists work primarily in construction or as
with the naked eye from Machu Picchu in 2017, a number it aims to double shepherds, guiding flocks of fluffy lla-
when the weather is clear, if you know by 2021. International visitors can fly mas and alpacas through the region’s
where to look. Despite the mist, we only through Lima, making it the third- rugged terrain as it morphs from snow-
spot one in the distance. most-visited city in Latin America. capped mountains to altiplano (“high
As we walk through the mazelike Beyond Machu Picchu, travelers typi- plains”) to Andean jungle. The only
ruins, Leo continues his impassioned cally spend two days in the capital and thing in the shepherds’ path is the odd
rant. The Peruvian government doesn’t another two in Cusco. Peru travel spe- Inca ruin here or there—and there are
know how to safeguard its resources, cialist Marisol Mosquera, founder and many of them, from the experimental
he says, pointing to a sundial called president of Aracari Travel Consulting, farming terraces of Moray to the hill-
Intihuatana—“the hitching post of the says only 5 percent of her clients get top temples of Písac.
sun” in Quechua, the local indigenous under the skin of the Sacred Valley— In 2017, Peru’s gross domes-
language. In 2000 a television crew an archaeologically dense 60-mile-long tic product was forecast to increase

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