Hiking past sacred Inca peaks in the Andes

Our hiking group had reached the highest point of our trek through the Andes to Machu Picchu. Now our guide was leading us in a Quechua ritual. We took turns placing stones in an apacheta pyramid over herbs and bits of chocolate bars, offering them to Apu Salkantay, the spirit of the mountain sacred to the Incas. Its ice-covered peak shone above us, spotlit by the sun.

Three days earlier in Cuzco, the region's gateway city, I had watched hundreds of people carry glittering statues of Catholic saints in procession around the main plaza, past rippling baroque churches and whitewashed houses with carved wooden balconies. In another three days, I would see the dawn's first sunray fill a stone window in the 550-year-old Temple of the Sun at Machu Picchu.

The Incas' "lost city" is one of the world's iconic destinations, with over 1.2 million visitors in 2015. But to absorb the mesmerizing historical and spiritual significance of this region, I first explored Cuzco's fusion of native traditions and colonial heritage, and then trekked with locals through the steep 4,500-meter mountains surrounding it.