Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Inca Road

Pacchanta's Maria Merma Gonzalo practices weaving techniques that have changed little in 500 years.

In a Small Village High in the Peruvian Andes, Life Stories Are Written in Textiles

Through weaving, the women of Ausangate, Peru, pass down the traditions of their ancestors

A local girl celebrates her first communion at the main church in Vilcabamba, an Ecuadorian village that retains its small-town feel despite an influx of foreigners in search of Shangri-La.

Hailed as a Modern-Day Shangri-La, Can This Ecuadorian Town Survive Its Reputation?

Vilcabamba is an idyllic little town—and that's its problem

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Handicraft Heaven: Nine Unique Gifts to Buy Along the Inca Road

Leave room in your suitcase for these irresistible items

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Photographer Yolanda Escobar Jiménez Captures Ecuador's Street Scenes

Take a peek inside Jiménez's visual journals

The Andean cock-of-the-rock display is known for its unique mating behavior and is a favorite of birders.

Why Birdwatchers Flock to Ecuador

Home to the highest density of bird species per acre on Earth, the country is a birder's paradise

Ancient mummified bodies stand guard over windswept deserts near the Nazca and Ica mountain summits.

The Fascinating Afterlife of Peru's Mummies

From inside stone palaces and atop sacred mountaintops, the Inca dead continued to wield incredible power over the living

Aymara people prepare an offering to Mother Earth during the sunrise of the winter solstice ceremony in La Apacheta, El Alto, on the outskirts of La Paz.

In Bolivia's High-Altitude Capital, Indigenous Traditions Thrive Once Again

Among sacred mountains, in a city where spells are cast and potions brewed, the otherworldly is everyday

The Milky Way and moon illuminate a lone tree in the Atacama Desert, Chile.

An Astronomer's Paradise, Chile May Be the Best Place on Earth to Enjoy a Starry Sky

Chile's northern coast offers an ideal star-gazing environment with its lack of precipitation, clear skies and low-to-zero light pollution

Stone steps descend as far as 500 feet into the Moray concentric agriculture terraces near Maras, Peru, crossing a temperature differential of some 60 degrees. Ancient innovators may have domesticated and hybridized plant species here, using temperature ranges to simulate conditions found across the far-flung Inca Empire.

What Endures From the Ancient Civilizations That Once Ruled the Central Andes?

To journey here is to roam through almost six thousand years of civilization, to one of the places where the human enterprise began

Taken by ship to North America and Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, the tiny fruit gave rise to all the many tomato varieties enjoyed today.

Why Is This Wild, Pea-Sized Tomato So Important?

Native to northern Peru and southern Ecuador, this tiny and rapidly vanishing tomato boasts outsized influence on world gastronomy

Rumi Colca gateway, Cusco, Peru, 2014

How the Inca Empire Engineered a Road Across Some of the World's Most Extreme Terrain

For a new exhibition, a Smithsonian curator conducted oral histories with contemporary indigenous cultures to recover lost Inca traditions

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