Machu Picchu Pre-trip to Amazon River Cruise Jan 15—20, 2011
Posted by Steve Hilty
Steve Hilty
Steve Hilty is the senior author of A Guide to the Birds of Colombia, and the recently published Birds of Venezuela, both by Princeton University Press. Other credits inclu...Related Trips
This short itinerary provides a dramatic contrast to the steamy lowlands and overwhelming biological diversity of the Amazonian cruise which follows. This is a tour through high mountain valleys carved from powerful rushing rivers, a trip through high Andean grasslands and, most of all, a trip through history. It is, by all accounts, a region of colorful markets and of remarkable people dressed in distinctive but regionally varied clothing. Women carry babies, wrapped in bright blankets, on their backs. Men with broad sandal-clad feet, bent under heavy loads, move with a quick shuffling gait, all amidst majestic ruins, ancient terrace-rimmed valleys, and beside puna lakes shimmering beneath ultraviolet skies. Our route took us through traditional villages, past Usnea-draped basaltic cliffs, into mossy woodland inhabited by sprightly tanagers, and among deep, cold valleys where dawn comes slowly to restless hummingbirds chasing retreating shadows in endless pursuit of flowers.
Lago Huacarpay and the high puna grasslands of Abra Malaga provide an excellent cross section of high Andean birdlife ranging from ducks and gulls to multi-hued species such as the Plumbeous Rail, White-chested Sunbeam, and Many-colored Rush-Tyrant. In addition, the hotel grounds around the Machu Picchu Pueblo hotel offer an oasis of birds, flowers, and tranquility amidst a cacophony of hawkers of souvenirs, tourists, noise, and congestion in the little town of Aguas Calientes. The hotel grounds, mined to the hilt with orchids, flowering Heliconia, bird-of-paradise, Centropogon, and dozens of other flowering plants, offer hummingbirds, multicolored tanagers, and other small birds a diverse array of places to forage and seek shelter. Inca Wrens, first observed around the Machu Picchu ruins in 1965, were not formally described until 1985. Curiously, these wrens may not have been present during the years of intensive surveys and collecting following the discovery of Machu Picchu in the first half of the last century.
In our one day in true "high country" we found hummingbirds named "sunbeams" dancing in morning sunbeams, a lovely mountain-finch that came up to investigate our playback in the crisp morning air, and diuca-finches, sierra-finches, and other "finches" which the molecular-geneticists now tell us are really tanagers. We failed to lure the elusive Stripe-headed Antpitta from some of its favorite haunts, but there were three or four lovely Red-crested Cotingas which displayed big crests, perhaps in threat behavior. We ended the day with several groups of cute little Black Siskins and, surprisingly (for me), a pair of Andean Condors soaring over the city of Ollantaytambo. There also were young children, whose few words of Spanish and stoic expressions conveyed their willingness to pose stiffly for passing photographers in return for apples and a few food items—all of this occurring at altitudes above 13,000 feet while a few llamas looked on from a distance.
This land of the Incas is a sensory experience—one to see, to smell, to touch, to feel, and to hear. Images of this distinctive land—its people, music, and wildlife—will be with you for years to come. The combination of birds, scenery, and history is incomparable. The rocky ruins, as always, remain impressionable, mysterious, and evocative—the more so perhaps because so little is known of their origins, and because of the breathtaking location. The ruins of Machu Picchu are indeed one of the world's great travel destinations, but they are, in themselves, just a brief chapter in a long and fascinating history of human occupation of the Urubamba river valley.