Ya Gotta Start Somewhere: Places in the world I want to see.

There are lots of reasons I named my Blog, Ya Gotta Start Somewhere.

1. I've always been a procrastinator, but if I can just get started on a project I want to do, I will usually finish.

2. I say this alot when I have a daunting task ahead of me, at work. It motivates me to just find a place to start, and not worry about the outcome.

3. Over the course of the last seven years I have worked hard to change my life, and sometimes my fear of change can stop me in my tracks. If I just surrender and start the change I want the fear disappears(sometimes).

There are more reasons, but we will get to them later.

I love to travel. I love seeing new places, new things, I like watching people in their environment. I also love history, learing about other cultures, their customs, the way the raise their children, their religous and spiritual beliefs. One day I hope to be able to travel to some of the places where ancient, and not so ancient civilazations have made their mark.

Of course that's not the only reason I love to travel. I love being in nature, outside breathing in the air, and the smells. Feeling the sun, or wind, or rain, or snow on my face.

I was going to call this part one in a series, but I think I’ll say it is a continuing story.

The first place I want to talk about, is probably the place I want to see the most. Plus it’s probably one of the places that I will never have the chance to see.

Machu Picchu:

Archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu (meaning 'Old Peak' in the Quechua language) was an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472).

It is located in the Andes Mountains, and is at an altitude of 11,800 ft.

It’s often referred to as the "City of the Incas", it is probably the most familiar city of the Inca World. The Incas started building it around 1400. Carved from the gray granite of the mountaintop the Inca turned the site into a small (5 square miles) but extraordinary city. Invisible from below and completely self-contained, surrounded by agricultural terraces sufficient to feed the population, and watered by natural springs. The city sits above the rumbling Urubamba River, shrouded in the clouds; the ruins have palaces, baths, temples, storage rooms and some 150 houses, all in a remarkable state of preservation.

The Inca had the greatest empire on Earth, when Columbus landed in the New World. It spanned more than 4300 miles along the mountains, and coastal deserts of South America. Starting in central Chile, the empire included most of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Northwest Argentina. This is equal to the land from Maine to Florida. It exceeded the size of any medieval or contemporary European nation, and equaled the longitudinal expanse of the Roman Empire.

The American historian Hiram Bingham rediscovered the city in 1911.

Since then, Machu Picchu has become an important tourist attraction. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like. By 1976, thirty percent of Machu Picchu had been restored. The restoration work continues to this day.

In 1983 UNESCO designated Machu Picchu a World Heritage Site, describing it as "an absolute masterpiece of architecture and a unique testimony to the Inca civilization".

In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll.

The World Monuments Fund placed Machu Picchu on its 2008 Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in the world because of environmental degradation. This is because of tourism, and development of Aguas Calientes a nearby town, which included a poorly sited tram to ease visitor access, and the construction of a bridge across the Vilcanota River, which is likely to bring even more tourists to the site, in defiance of a court order and government protests against it.

In July 2011, the Dirección Regional de Cultura Cusco (DRC) introduced new entrance rules to the citadel of Machu Picchu.The tougher entrance rules were a measure to reduce the impact of tourism on the site. Entrance was limited to 2,500 visitors per day, and entrance to Huayna Picchu (within the citadel) was further restricted to 400 visitors per day, in two allocated time slots at 7am and 10am.

In May 2012, however, a team of UNESCO conservation experts called on Peruvian authorities to take "emergency measures" to further stabilize the site’s buffer zone and protect it from pressure as a result of tourism-related development.

I could go on writing about the history of the site, and the Inca’s, but I’ll let you do that if you want.