Peru → Bolivia → Chile

Dakar Monument (Monumento al Dakar), Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia.

One route. Three blogs. Zero shortcuts.

This journey runs from the Inca heartland of Peru, climbs onto the Bolivian Altiplano, crosses salt, volcanoes, and myths, and ends where Chile gets very dry and very serious about mining. Our in-depth account of this journey is presented in a three-part blog series; links to the three parts are provided below.

Total road distance (including all loops): ~3,800 km / ~2,360 mi
Total rail distance (round trips included): ~86 km / ~54 mi
Highest point: Sol de Mañana — ~4,950 m / ~16,240 ft
Lowest point: Santa Cruz — ~416 m / ~1,365 ft

Manco Cápac: first governor and founder of the Inca civilization in Cusco By Cusco School - Unknown source, Public Domain, Link

The Legend of Manco Cápac and the Founding of Cusco

Here is a story more epic than most Netflix series, and with better altitude. Around 1200 AD, give or take a century because ancient calendars did not come with customer support, the Sun God Inti and Moon God Mama Quilla looked down from the heavens at people living around Lake Titicaca. The divine couple decided to send their son Manco Cápac and daughter Mama Ocllo on a divine intervention mission. Their task was tidy enough: bring law, order, agriculture, cities, and religion. Before sending them off, Inti gave Manco a golden staff called the tapac-yauri with instructions that sounded like ancient GPS: "Use this to find fertile land and set up a kingdom."

Now here's where it gets interesting - Manco and Ocllo didn't just appear out of thin air. They emerged from a netherworld cave called Pacaritambo, which according to legend was located at Tambotoco hill. Imagine their arrival - two divine beings showing up in what's now southern Peru, probably scaring the daylights out of the locals. But they came bearing gifts: civil order, education, arts, and religion (specifically worship of the Sun and fire as gods). They were basically the original cultural ambassadors, teaching people how to use fire (finally, cooked food!), tools, weapons for self-defense, cultivation techniques (bye-bye, hunter-gatherer lifestyle), and textile production (fashionably late to civilization).

Depiction of Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo, the legendary founders of the Inca civilization, teaching the people of the Andes.

Anthropologists classify the legend of Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo as a foundation myth, similar to Romulus and Remus for Rome. The story gave the Inca rulers a divine origin story, which is always handy when a new dynasty needs paperwork from the sky. It may also preserve a memory of the Inca migration from the Lake Titicaca region to the Cusco Valley around the 12th century. The golden staff may symbolize agricultural knowledge: finding land where crops could survive the Andes without filing a complaint.

While Mama Ocllo stayed to teach textile arts and domestic skills, Manco set out across the Andes. He crossed mountains and valleys looking for the right place to plant a kingdom, because apparently founding a civilization also required a serious hiking program. At last, he found a fertile valley where the tapac-yauri sank easily into the ground. That was the divine sign. There he built Cusco, or Qosqo in Quechua, the "navel of the world," and became the first Sapa Inca.

Eventually, Manco and Ocllo had a son named Sinchi Roca, who became the second Sapa Inca. Spanish chroniclers later claimed Manco Cápac fathered hundreds of children, which historians treat with the caution normally reserved for expense reports and fish stories. Cusco's Temple of the Sun, called Coricancha, marks the traditional location of Manco's passage into the underworld. His mummified remains were later moved from Cusco to the Temple of the Sun on Isla del Sol by the 9th Sapa Inca, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui. A statue of Manco was erected in Cusco instead.

There are various, some of them incompatible, versions of this legend of origin of Manco Cápac and the kingdom of Cusco. Some versions say he emerged from Lake Titicaca itself. Others claim there were actually four brothers and four sisters who founded Cusco. It's even possible Manco Cápac didn't actually exist but is a product of mythology cooked up by later Inca rulers to legitimize their rule. But here's what's undeniable: the layers of stone walls at the bottom of buildings on narrow stone alleys still present in Cusco and the jaw-dropping ruins of Inca complexes that we visited away from the city show just how far the Inca civilization had advanced in only three hundred years before being snuffed out by invading and destructive Spaniards.

The 9th Sapa Inca, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, was another towering figure in Inca history. Pachacuti annexed territory beyond the Kingdom of Cusco and turned it into an empire. Pisac, Ollantaytambo, and Machu Picchu all belong to that imperial expansion. Some traditions place Pachacuti's burial under the Temple of the Sun at Machu Picchu.

Spanish destruction followed us through Peru like an unwanted tour guide with a sword. The Spaniards melted down gold artifacts not as art, but as metal, because they considered Inca sacred objects "idolatrous." Centuries of artistic achievement became boring gold bars. Efficient, brutal, and culturally tone-deaf. Humanity does enjoy finding new ways to be ridiculous.

A Country in Violent Socio-Political Unrest

Protesters gathering in Lima during the December 2022 political unrest in Peru.

The image above shows a scene that became all too familiar in late 2022 - thousands of Peruvians taking to the streets in what would become the most significant political crisis since the fall of Alberto Fujimori in 2000. The protests spread well beyond Lima, reaching across the country and hitting particularly hard in southern regions with large Indigenous populations. What started as political maneuvering in the capital quickly became a national uprising with deep roots in Peru's historical inequalities.

We traveled to Peru during a period of violent political protests. Tourists had been evacuated by helicopter during the week before our arrival as the country devolved into massive demonstrations, roadblocks, and airport, train, and road closures. Injury and death tolls of protestors in the forceful government response at the hands of riot police and military forces were mounting. There were news reports of stranded American tourists at Machu Picchu hiking over 32KM along rail tracks to reach helicopter extraction points.

On December 7, 2022, President Pedro Castillo was about to be impeached for the third time when he announced plans to dissolve Congress and install an emergency government, put the country under curfew, suspend and rewrite the constitution and hold fresh elections. Peru’s Ombudsman described this as an “attempted coup d’état.” (CNN). The Peruvian Congress responded by removing and arresting Castillo sentencing him to 18 months of pre-trial detention on rebellion charges. President Dina Boluarte took over with approval of the Congress. Supporters of ousted Castillo, especially among indigenous Peruvians in southern Peru with affiliation to the political left and far-left, felt disenfranchised and organized to protest against the ouster and detention of Castillo, demanding resignation of the new President Boluarte and Castillo's reinstatement. President Boluarte's government reacted by deploying armed forces and Peruvian police whose aggressive actions continued to result in injuries and death. As of January 13, 2023, protesters were attempting to "take over" Lima.

We were continuously in touch with Incarail and we owe our fortuitously successful visit to them. Their advice for us was that there would be a break in protests and trains would run over the Christmas and New Year holidays, that they had repaired the sabotaged tracks, and that our trip with Incarail on December 23-24 was on.

On the positive side, this meant we had the rare opportunity of being among only a handful of visitors and the only hotel guests at places that ordinarily draw 7,000 tourists every day! Imagine having Machu Picchu almost to yourself - that's like finding a parking spot in Manhattan during Christmas season!

During our brief stay in Peru (we left for Bolivia on December 25), multiple locals told us the demonstrations would start back up on January 4, 2023. They were right. As of January 13, 2023, Peru had declared a state of emergency, curfews were in effect, and Cusco airport and train station were closed with tourism suspended.