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Machu Picchu has the most famous and highly visited Inca ruins in Peru, but there are literally hundreds of alternative excavated sites throughout the country that have the added bonus of solitude as you stroll among these astonishing historical outposts.

This site sits above the highland town of La Union, on a huge flat high altitude plain called Las Pampas. Apart from a few particularly aggressive local dogs, the hike up there was idyllic. Blissful silence with expansive cloud formations evolving across the sky. The ruins themselves have stonework the equal of their more famous relative, as witnessed in this entrance, and I had them entirely to myself. Looking out from the raised central platform was a simply exhilarating moment, when I could almost imagine the awe of Hiram Bingham and his contemporaries.