I’ve hiked The Great Wall, stood at the foot of the Acropolis, snaked through tunnels of the Great Pyramids, sat among the giant rocks of Stonehenge, and if I had to, I would trade all these experiences for my first hour at the Lost City of the Incas…

I actually almost missed out on going to Machu Picchu. I started my Argentina/Bolivia/Peru sojourn with five hundred dollars and a backpack thinking this was enough to get me by for three weeks. Now, it would have been plenty if I didn’t start my trip in Buenos Aires whose insatiable nightlife sucked me in and didn’t let go for more than a week straight. Being the most expensive city on my itinerary I spent one too many pesos reveling in it.

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Every traveler I had met in the meanwhile seemed to have just arrived from Machu Picchu and couldn’t stop telling me and my travel mates how we couldn’t miss it.

My finances weren’t looking like they were going to cooperate (which is nothing new) so I dug into my bag of tricks looking for a way to generate some cash and pulled out my 30GB iPod video, a four hundred and eighty Peso value if sold to the right Argentine. Long story short, I booked over sixty-five hours of buses (enjoyed without music) and headed north to Cusco, the former Incan capital.

Being 8,000 feet above sea level nestled high in the Andes Mountains, it was a cloudy entry at the peak of this archeological wonderland. The air smelled of fresh dirt and water vapor, compliments of the clouds enveloping everything around me. I rounded the first left after the entrance and had roughly twenty feet visibility ahead of me.

I proceeded to climb the same steps the Incas did 579 years ago to the sound of water running through their mountain top irrigation system that still runs today. I found the perfect spot to view the ruins from once the clouds cleared and the sun rose, plopped down and fiddled with the settings on my camera.

Slowly, but surely, the clouds relented and revealed the ancient ruins bit-by-bit. All at once I got that “don’t look down” feeling when I realized how high I was. Looking 2,000 feet straight down into the green Urubamba Valley dotted with red wild flowers and the occasional waterfall, made me feel ultimately insignificant. Then the last layer of cloud coverage floated off to reveal the same site Hiram Bingham rediscovered nearly 100 years ago. The view of the entire mountain could not be justified by any photograph I would take that day.

The terrace I was sitting on seemed to make a perfect amphitheater to view this spectacular site by forming a half circle that stretched for more than sixty yards. I found the mountain the ruins actually sit on is surrounded by a river that goes roughly 270 degrees around it with an emerald mountain range jetting straight up on the other side making Machu Picchu the centerpiece of this sacred land. I imagined Incas tending to their lamas and gardens on these terraces with this beautiful scenery as their backdrop.

Of course, the first question was, how did they do it? How did they build a whole city atop a mountain peak with no modern tools, methods, or even a written language to organize such a feat? Peruvian condors soared above grazing lamas, who perfectly manicured the lush green grass where I sat in admiration of these heavenly surroundings. Machu Picchu is by far my favorite place on this planet, selling my precious iPod was well worth it.