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In December 1908, Bingham attended
the First Panamerican Scientific
Congress in Santiago, Chile. It was
there that he decided to follow the
old Spanish trade route from Buenos
Aires to Lima, and it was to that
end that he traveled to Lima and
hence to Cusco.
In Cusco Bingham made the
acquaintance of one J.J. Nunez, then
prefect of the Apurimac region, who
invited him on the arduous trip to
the ruins of Choquekirau, thought at
the time to be the site of
Vilcabamba, the much sought "last
resting place of the Incas."
On his return to the USA, Bingham
decided to organize another
expedition to Peru. He arrived in
Lima in June 1911 where he began to
study the seventeenth-century
chronicles of Antonio de la Calancha
and Fernando de Montesinos. The
writings of these two men first
inspired Bingham to seek the last
two capitals of the Inca, Vilcabamba
and Vitcos. Leaving Lima in July,
Bingham returned to Cusco from where
he journeyed on foot and by mule
through the Urubamba Valley, past
Ollantaytambo, and on into the
Urubamba gorge.
On July 23, Bingham and his party
camped by the river at a place
called Mandor Pampa, where they
aroused the curiosity of Melchor
Arteaga, a local farmer who leased
the land there. Through Sergeant
Carrasco, the policeman who was his
guide and interpreter, Bingham
learned from Arteaga that there were
extensive ruins on top of the ridge
opposite the camp, which Arteaga, in
his native Quechua, called Machu
Picchu, or "old mountain".
According to Bingham, "The morning
of July 24th dawned in a cold
drizzle. Arteaga shivered and seemed
inclined to stay in his hut. I
offered to pay him well if he showed
me the ruins. He demurred and said
it was too hard a climb for such a
wet day. But when he found I was
willing to pay him a sol, three or
four times the ordinary daily wage,
he finally agreed to go. When asked
just where the ruins were, he
pointed straight up to the top of
the mountain. No one supposed that
they would be particularly
interesting, and no one cared to go
with me."
Accompanied only by Seargeant
Carrasco and Arteaga, Bingham left
the camp around 10 am. After a short
while the party crossed a bridge so
unnerving that the intrepid explorer
was reduced to crawling across it on
his hands and knees. From the river
they climbed a precipitous slope
until they reached the ridge at
around midday.
Here Bingham rested at a small hut
where they enjoyed the hospitality
of a group of campesinos. They told
him that they had been living there
for about four years and explained
that they had found an extensive
system of terraces on whose fertile
soil they had decided to grow their
crops. Bingham was then told that
the ruins he sought were close by
and he was given a guide, the 11-year
old Pablito Alvarez, to lead him
there.
Almost immediately, he was greeted
by the sight of a broad sweep of
ancient terraces. They numbered more
than a hundred and had recently been
cleared of forest and reactivated.
Led by the boy, he re-entered the
forest beyond the terraces. Here
young Pablito began to reveal to
Bingham a series of white granite
walls which the historian
immediately judged to be the finest
examples of masonry that he had ever
seen. They were in fact, the remains
of what we call today the Royal Tomb,
the Main Temple, and the Temple of
the Three Windows.
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