MACHU PICCHU, Peru — Darwin Camacho, tour guide and denizen of this place for a quarter-century, gestures toward gaps in the famously precise stonework of an Inca wall.

"The stones are separating," he says, pointing to the fissures between blocks once snugly fit together by craftsmen toiling without wheel or cement. "Something needs to be done about this. ... "

Camacho proceeds to the granite pillar known as the Intiwatana, or "hitching post of the sun," a unique and sacred artifact that was chipped in undignified fashion when a 1,000-pound mechanical arm crashed on it during the filming of an ad for Peru's preferred "cerveza."

"A beer commercial!" Camacho exclaims, pointing his umbrella at the damage. "How irresponsible is our government to have allowed this!"

Machu Picchu, one of the most storied archaeological sites in the Americas, has become a victim of its own astounding success, and now faces threats from overcrowding, landslides, erosion, fire — and greed.

Feeling overwhelmed

The end of a guerrilla war in Peru and relative political stability have provoked a virtual tourist frenzy here. Almost 700,000 visitors, 70 percent of them foreigners, visited the site in 2005 — nearly double the figure from 2003 and marking close to a tenfold increase since 1991. A million-plus visitors a year seems not far off — quite a load for a place that, according to current research, may have housed only 700 people or so during its Inca heyday.

As Peru seats a new president and Congress this year, many will be watching closely to see how much the country's notoriously crooked political structure will stand up to an assertive tourism sector that frowns on talk of restrictions.

"The question is going to be whether Machu Picchu is treated as an extraordinary, nonrenewable resource that needs protection, or whether you use it to get the maximum amount of foreign currency in the short term," said Richard Burger, Inca expert at Yale University and a frequent visitor. "They're going to have to deal with the issue of how much you build it up before you destroy it. And there's no easy solution."

The onslaught of visitors is trampling the place to death — compacting the relatively shallow soil and destabilizing the iconic dwellings, temples, fountains and other structures, experts warn.

A day after tour guide Camacho's lament, the site's chief archaeologist, Alfredo Mormontoy, insisted reports of Machu Picchu's imminent demise, including a controversial prediction of a massive landslide, had been greatly exaggerated.

"There's a certain amount of alarmism out there about the future of Machu Picchu," said Mormontoy, who spent the morning patching a landslide-damaged path to the Temple of the Moon. "We are working hard here for conservation, with the minimum of intervention, and respect for authenticity."

A mystical appeal

To the legions who trek to this dreamscape annually, the mist-shrouded Inca citadel of Machu Picchu mostly lives up to its reputation as an enchanted sanctuary — the "lost city" that Hiram Bingham, a swaggering Yale man with a flair for self-promotion, stumbled across in 1911 while seeking the Inca civilization's final redoubt in the Andes.

The mystique only seems to grow even as Bingham's fanciful claims — among them that Machu Picchu hosted rites involving "virgins of the sun" — have been discredited. Recent research indicates that the site's role was likely quite prosaic, serving as a royal retreat before the ridge was apparently abandoned at about the time of the Spaniards' arrival.

Five centuries later, Machu Picchu has joined the global must-see short list, drawing jet-setters, backpackers, new-agers and regiments of package-tour travelers from Asia, Europe, the United States and elsewhere.

Nestled in the mountainous mist at about 8,200 feet, on the cusp between the steamy jungle and the chilly high valleys, the place evokes mystery. For many, a visit to Machu Picchu is more of a pilgrimage than a tourist stop.

"I waited all my life to come here," said Liliana Diaz, 38, from Bogotá, Colombia, who made the journey by wheelchair, tour guides hoisting her up rough patches. "This is a wonderful moment for me."

Unfortunately, Machu Picchu is relatively small and quite vulnerable, the major structures occupying a scant 25 acres.

A place fabled for its remoteness — a quality that may have helped spare Machu Picchu from the depredations of Spanish "conquistadores" — is today relatively accessible, though no road reaches here.

Almost all visitors arrive via the venerable PeruRail train from passing snow-capped peaks, furious rapids and Inca structures en route.

The beer-commercial incident in 2000 that damaged the Intiwatana underscored the image of a Peruvian government bent on sucking every last buck from its singular attraction.

A threat from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to remove Machu Picchu from its list of world heritage sites prompted Peruvian officials to change course.

A new 10-year master plan shifts the emphasis from development to "sustainable tourism," stressing preservation of land, monuments and cultural heritage.

Many remain skeptical.

"Unfortunately, there are some people whose attitude is, 'I'm doing business now and I could care less what happens later,' " said Manuel Bryce, a consultant to the state tourism agency in the capital of Lima and a former tour operator in the region. "We can't let Machu Picchu become Disneyland."

Belatedly, Peru is making a push to divert visitors to some of its other sites and wonders, including ruins that predate Machu Picchu by a millennium or more. But none has the exotic cachet of the "lost city."

Local resistance

Among the recommendations of the new master plan are capping the number of daily visitors at 2,500 — a number sometimes surpassed during the high season of July to September. But any move to limit visitors faces resistance from the powerful alliance of tour operators, hotel owners and others based in and around nearby Cuzco, which has thrived as the "gateway" to Machu Picchu.

Some merchants fear prolonged shutdowns for repairs and renovation.

Already, trekkers are banned every February from a portion of the Inca Trail, the 30-mile path to the ruins favored by the more adventurous. Trash, makeshift bathrooms and campsites, unregulated visits and occasional muggings have marred the route.

Officials in Lima "must take the needs of local people into account," declared Oscar Valencia, mayor of "Machupicchu" village, a kitschy boomtown in the cloud forest that has sprung up around the Aguas Calientes train station — the sole entry point to the ruins, apart from the Inca Trail. The raging Urubamba River and its tributaries occasionally carry off the precarious dwellings of poor trinket hawkers, killing 11 townsfolk two years ago.

From the village, a transport company partially owned by the mayor buses tourists up a dozen switchbacks to the entrance of the ruins, via a landslide-prone, three-mile mountain road featuring better-not-to-look vertical drops. Beyond the diesel-belching traffic and scarring of the mountain, many worry about the possibility of a catastrophic accident. Proposals for a cable car or monorail system have stalled.

Keeping watch

As the chief archaeologist at the citadel, Alfredo Mormontoy recently was overseeing the repairs on the washed-out trail to the conical peak called Wayna Picchu, which also leads to the spectacular Temple of the Moon. Such maintenance issues, he said, do not mean the entire site of Machu Picchu is likely to be lost anytime soon in a landslide — as a much-discussed Japanese study suggested in 2001.

"Nothing is imminent," said Mormontoy, whose father was a conductor on the Machu Picchu train.

Still, international teams have installed sophisticated monitoring equipment to check for tectonic shifts.

But it is the inexorable influx of people that likely represents the greatest threat to Machu Picchu.

By: Patrick J. McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times www.latimes.com/
Also:
Andres D'Alessandro of the Los Angeles Times' Buenos Aires bureau and special correspondent Adriana Leon in Lima contributed to this report.