Instant Incas

No longer a week’s trek or four hours by chugging train, Inkaterra, top Peruvian eco-tourism company, now offers helicopter service direct from Cuzco to Machu Picchu, the extraordinary pre-Columbian fortress city of the ancient Incas.  Half-an-hour on their five-passenger, non-polluting French-built Allouette bestows the gift of extra time (and strength) to explore the spectacular, sacred, enigmatic sites in the high Andes mountains.

Their Heliexplorer trip is an incredible opportunity to spend 2 or 3 nights in Inkaterra’s eco-friendly, charming Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel, a little village of whitewashed cottages with excellent, authentic food and a unique Andean-style sauna that sit prettily amongst the orchids in the Machu Picchu Cloud Forest.

This incomparable hotel becomes home base for side trips to rarely-visited Choquequirao, the recently uncovered ancient Incan ceremonial site, similar in purpose and grandeur to Machu Picchu.

Click on www.inkaterra.com and then on “Inkaterra Heliexplorer.”