Before the trip

Young Che Guevara rides across South America by motorbike. Shot in Cusco, at Machu Picchu and on Titicaca — half the frames are from our first days.

The Atacama: astronomers search the world’s driest sky while women search the same desert for the remains of their loved ones. Watch before day 14 — you’ll understand why the desert looks the way it does.

A film crew shooting a Columbus movie in Bolivia gets caught in the Water War. About how the country we’re spending a week in actually works.

Golden Bear at the Berlinale. The Peruvian highlands, Quechua, post-war trauma — anything but a tourist’s view of the country.

How ad men won the plebiscite against Pinochet. The Chile we fly into at the end of the route largely grew out of this story.

Machu Picchu, sacrifices and Inca gold. Exactly what we’ll see on days five and eight — watch before Cusco.

On the conquest. Formally it’s Mexico, not Peru, but the machinery of Spanish conquest was the same — seven years after Cortés, Pizarro repeated it with the Incas.

The third great civilisation of pre-Columbian America. It isn’t on our route — the Maya lived in Mesoamerica — but alongside the Incas it completes the picture of what the Spanish found.

A tour of exactly our first-week stops — Cusco, Machu Picchu, Vinicunca.

Forced-perspective shots, the mirror after rain, sunset on the white field. Watch beforehand — there’ll be no time to invent compositions on site.

What to see in San Pedro and what sunset looks like in the Valley of the Moon — our day 14.

The canyon-bowl city from a cable car — Bolivia’s cheapest thrill ride.

Look for medical breakdowns, not blogger tips: this is a topic where mistakes cost a lot.

A sober idea of what two hours on foot at 5,000 m means — better than any description.

The definitive account of what happened between Pizarro and the Incas. After it, Sacsayhuamán and Ollantaytambo stop being just stones.

A journalist retraces Hiram Bingham’s route a century on. Lively, funny, and it answers who really “found” Machu Picchu and how.

Mid-century Lima, radio soaps and absurdity. The easiest way into Peruvian literature.

Twelve cantos written after Neruda climbed to the ruins in 1943. An evening’s read — and it comes back to you in full on site.

The road diary of a 23-year-old student. The same route, only seventy years earlier.

The continent’s foremost Andean band. The world knows their “Llorando se fue” as the Lambada, though it’s a Bolivian saya.

Violeta Parra’s “Gracias a la vida” is Chile’s second anthem. Jara was killed a week after the 1973 coup.

Charango, quena, zampoña — the sound of the Altiplano you’ll hear live on every square.

The Afro-Peruvian coastal tradition: cajón, vals criollo. Nothing like what they play in the mountains.

The melody was written by Peruvian Daniel Alomía Robles; the world learned it from Simon & Garfunkel. You’ll hear it twenty times on this route.