THE HEIGHT OF ADVENTURE

With its ancient ruins and vertigo-inducing topography, the Amazonas region of northern Peru can feel like Indiana Jones territory. On a journey through this remote landscape, Tom Vanderbilt finds all of the thrills-and none of the crowds.

- Tom Vanderbilt

OVER THE PAST FEW decades, Peru has been trying to weightily designate a number of its archaeological sites as "the next Machu Picchu," after the famed Incan redoubt in the country's Sacred Valley. These range from the relatively obscure-like Choquequirao, the "cradle of gold" celebrated as the site of the Incas' last stand against the Spanish-to somewhat better-known places like Kuélap, a huge, walled mountaintop settlement once populated by the mysterious Chachapoya civilization, the fabled warriors of the cloud forest.

The effort to crown new successors stems as much from the desire to attract adventurous travelers as it does from the need to siphon visitors away from Machu Picchu itself, which, prior to the pandemic, was well on its way to becoming a poster child for over-tourism. (The site has gone from fewer than 200,000 visitors a year in 1980 to more than 1.5 million in 2018; by contrast, Choquequirao gets about two days' worth of Machu visitors over the course of an entire year.) Far more people visit Machu Picchu on an average day than ever lived there; one writer clocked a new #Machu post going up on Instagram every 48 seconds.

As someone who shies away from crowds, I reveled in the idea of visiting underappreciated archaeological masterworks in comparative solitude. So, a couple of years ago, I began cataloging on Google Earth the myriad Peruvian places I wanted to visit, the country's riches unfolding at the mere drag of the finger. But when I called Marisol Mosquera, who heads the Lima-based luxury operator Aracari Travel, I got a reality check. There was nothing wrong with my fantasy itinerary, she noted - except that it would take months.