Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams

He set out to the Andes to retrace the famous explorer’s steps and in the process to study Bingham’s life and writings as well as Inca history. Mark Adams, working a desk job editing adventure travel stories, decided to find out the truth for himself, at least as much as possible. But there’s no question that he turned the world’s attention to South America and Inca history, and that he may have done even more-inspired the Indiana Jones stories. Now in 2011, his claim is disputed, and he is accused of stealing historical artifacts and trumpeting up a “discovery” of something that was never actually lost. One hundred years ago on July 24, 1911, explorer and Yale lecturer Hiram Bingham excitedly cabled the US from Peru about his discovery of an ancient site, potentially the “lost city of the Incas.” That site was Machu Picchu, or “the old peak” in the local language of Quechua, a city of architectural grandeur and ancient temples. Gregory McNamee, the author of Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals and other books, has climbed many lower peaks in the Alps and Rockies.This book cover is incredibly beautiful and designed by Nancy Resnickīook Review from 5 Minutes for : Not so Mark Adams: Giving thanks and credit where they are due, he paints a lively portrait of a place that Hiram Bingham almost literally put on the map.

That said, Turn Right at Machu Picchu is a pleasingly oblique approach to travel writing, which has morphed into a minor industry of Big Adventure Books whose authors somehow never get around to acknowledging all the sherpas and Passepartouts who smooth their way through tangles both geologic and bureaucratic. Adams could use a little more of O’Hanlon’s sense of the sublimely absurd, as well as his ease around a sentence. The undisputed world champion of rueful - and goofy - adventure narrative is Redmond O’Hanlon, whose Into the Heart of Borneo may be the funniest travel book ever written. Oxygen may be scarce there, but irony seems in ample supply, as Adams gently twits the “never-ending parade of New Age kooks” who had arrived there long before him (and who even now generate unceasing demand for cosmic package tours). Though untested at such high and treacherous altitudes, Adams acquits himself well on the trail - he survived to tell this story, after all - and does a creditable job of interweaving Bingham’s account with his own as he climbs into the clouds.Ītop Machu Picchu, that great ancient citadel vaulting high in the sky, the author experiences the requisite, though genuine, epiphany.

But there are ugly blisters to contend with, and always the risk of succumbing to traveler’s tummy or (getting serious now) toppling into some bottomless canyon.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams