“Turn Right at Machu Pic­chu: Redis­cov­er­ing the Lost City One Step at a Time" by Mark Adams is a non-fiction book in which the author fol­lows the foot­steps of Hiram Bing­ham III.

Jour­nal­ist Mark Adams has spent a lot of time read­ing and edit­ing sto­ries for travel mag­a­zines. This time he decided to be part of the story and inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions brought against Hiram Bing­ham III by retrac­ing the famous explorer’s journey.

Part travel jour­nal, part adven­ture story and part his­tory les­son, Adams takes the read­ers into the extra­or­di­nary and col­or­ful land of Peru in his search to find out what exactly was Machu Picchu.

One hun­dred years ago today explorer Hiram Bing­ham III found Machu Pic­chu and brought his find­ings to the rest of the world. Mark Adams (web­site), who worked for adven­ture mag­a­zines, used his con­tacts to fol­low Bingham’s foot­steps in the jun­gles of Peru.

I love to read about places I’ve already vis­ited, more often than not I wish I’ve read the book before I vis­ited. When I saw the title of the book being offered by Net­Gal­ley I imme­di­ately asked per­mis­sion to read it.

I vis­ited Machu Pic­chu in 1992, before there was a cap on vis­i­tors and the touris­tic part of the visit was not as oiled as it is today. We had to find our own guide, hired some mules on the way and hoped we had enough food to last us for sev­eral days while we walked the Inca Trail.

At the time I didn’t appre­ci­ate what I was doing, I was young, in shape and fig­ured that it’s a “must do”. Sev­eral years later it dawned on me what I was priv­i­leged to do and priv­i­leged to see and experience.

In “Turn Right at Machu Pic­chu: Redis­cov­er­ing the Lost City One Step at a Time" Mark Adams takes my lit­tle trip a step fur­ther, he actu­ally walks in the foot­steps of Hiram Bing­ham III in places where few have ventured.

The book is in part a funny/serious trav­el­ogue, part smart his­tory and part inves­tiga­tive report into Bingham’s dis­cov­ery all encom­passed in an unbend­ing adven­ture. Mr. Adams, who was not a seri­ous adven­turer at the begin­ning of the trip, did well by sur­round­ing him­self with John Leivers , a pro­fes­sional guide who, for me, was the high­light of this book.

I cer­tainly under­stood Mr. Adams’ annoy­ance with what he calls “Peru­vian Time”. It drove me, a per­son who con­sid­ers being on time as being late, absolutely nuts. There is a whole another issue which Mr. Adams passed on telling about the loose def­i­n­i­tion of “the truth” as well as for­eign­ers being “fair game” / walk­ing ATM machine, all of which sim­ply rang up a wrong nerve with me.

Adams’ jour­ney par­al­lels the one Bing­ham describes in his books "Inca Land" and "Lost City of the Incas". Adams writes a very read­able nar­ra­tive of his jour­ney, Inca his­tory, Bingham’s adven­tures as well as a lit­tle Peru­vian his­tory and cul­ture tidbits.

Being that the first hand research mate­r­ial that is avail­able for the Inca Empire has been chopped and diced by the emper­ors to glo­rify them­selves, Adams does an excel­lent job pulling dif­fer­ent resources to con­jure up the begin­nings of the Span­ish con­quest of the continent.

As I men­tioned, I wish I had this book acces­si­ble to me in 1992, when I walked the Inca trail to Machu Pic­chu. The trail is filled with Inca ruins which I made a point to visit and when I reached Machu Pic­chu I absolutely knew that was the end. How­ever I com­pletely missed the rela­tion­ship of the trail with the famous site.
I guess it's time to start plan­ning to go back.

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