Three times the size of Machu Picchu, and hardly anyone goes

Here's the Choquequirao fact I can't quite get over. Often called Machu Picchu's sister city, it was built around the same period and is roughly three times the size, and yet still only around forty per cent of it has ever been excavated. The rest sits buried beneath jungle that nobody has cleared.

The visitor numbers tell their own story. Machu Picchu receives up to 2,500 people a day, easily reached by train and bus. Choquequirao sees around a dozen, reachable only by a gruelling multi-day trek. There's a neat twist buried in the history too, a 1909 mapping trip to Choquequirao is what first drew the explorer Hiram Bingham back to Peru in 1911, on the very journey that led him to Machu Picchu instead. Choquequirao is, in a strange way, the reason Machu Picchu became famous, while staying almost entirely unknown itself.

I painted Choquequirao in watercolour and ink, those terraces still half-swallowed by jungle. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Choquequirao, Peru · Travel Poster