THE INCA TRAIL, PERU THE USUAL: THE ALTERNATIVES: ALSO TRY:

Few icons inspire as much emotion as Machu Picchu. Your first sight of the sprawling Inca citadel from the Sun Gate is unforgettable: it seems to have been whittled from the very rock by a divine hand. And the trek to get there is just as exhilarating. The 43km Inca Trail is a testing route snaking past ancient ruins and across slopes carpeted in cedar, intimpa and laurel. It also requires forward planning: only 500 permits per day are issued for ‘the’ Inca Trail.

Some companies offer a five-day alternative rather than the typical fourday itinerary, staggering campsites and starting later in the day to avoid logjams on the trail. But there’s more than one Inca trail: some 30,000km of stone-paved tracks, comprising a vast network known as the Qhapaq Ñan, spider out from Cusco through Andes and Amazon to the far reaches of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire. This network allowed the empire to thrive, but also paved the way for its destruction by enabling the Spanish conquistadors to access all areas with ease.

The 74km Salkantay Trail, another surviving section of the Qhapaq Ñan, offers a back route leading almost to Machu Picchu (unlike the ‘real’ Inca Trail, it doesn’t arrive at the Sun Gate. Tougher on the feet than the more cultural Lares trek, walkers rise up through lowland jungle to ascend one of the sacred peaks of the Inca, but this is all just a prelude to the Inca sites at Llactapata and, eventually, Machu Picchu.

Many sections of the Qhapaq Ñan have been lost, eroded by livestock, but some are being resurrected as hiking routes. One such is a new five-day trek through the Cordillera Blanca to Huánuco Pampa, the ruins of an Inca administrative centre scattered across a windswept plateau at an altitude of 3,700m. 58 wanderlust.co.uk March 2019

( Hardy hikers follow ‘the’ Inca Trail to the 15th-century citadel of Machu Picchu; ( left ) less-known tracks built by the Inca empire offer fine trekking through the Cordillera Blanca

El Mirador, Guatemala The remains of the greatest Maya city of the Pre-classic era lie deep in the jungle of northern Guatemala, a testing 40km trek from the remote community of Carmelita. Hike through lush forest, pausing to explore the ancient ruins of El Tintal before following a huge Maya causeway to the main attraction: El Mirador, dominated by the 70m-high pyramid called La Danta ( left). wanderlust.co.uk

March 2019