Peru: travel books to read before you go

Oct 1, 2010 1:48:06 PM

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This excerpt from Lonely Planet’s Peru guide provides a selection of travel literature to get you in the mood for your trip.

Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru, by Hiram Bingham, is the classic traveler’s tale. The book was first published in 1922, a little more than a decade after the American author ‘discovered’ the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu.

The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland, by Hugh Thomson, describes a filmmaker’s search for hidden archaeological sites throughout the Peruvian Andes and Bolivia. It includes a lot of background on earlier travelers and explorers.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord, by Peter Matthiessen, is a classic, superb and true-to-life novel about the conflicts between the forces of ‘development’ and indigenous peoples in the Amazon jungle.

Trail of Feathers: In Search of the Birdmen of Peru, by Tahir Shah, is an amusing tall tale about what lies behind the ‘birdmen’ legends of the Peruvian desert, eventually leading the author to a tribe of cannibals in the Amazon.

Cut Stones and Crossroads: A Journey in the Two Worlds of Peru, by Ronald Wright, is a comprehensive journey through some of Peru’s ancient cities and archaeological sites, and it comes with helpful guides to Quechua terminology and traditional Andean music.

Eight Feet in the Andes: Travels with a Donkey from Ecuador to Cuzco, by Dervla Murphy, is an insightful, witty travelogue of this peripatetic travel writer’s 2000km journey with her daughter through remote regions, ending at Machu Picchu.