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Elena wanted her father to see the terraces before he decided the trip had been only a photograph . He had talked about Machu Picchu for years , and a picture of it hung on the kitchen wall at home . The real place sits in the mountains of Peru . UNESCO lists it as a World Heritage Site , and the site does not let people wander in whenever they feel like it . Their ticket named a time . She had explained that on the way up , and he had frowned , as if a clock were an insult to a ruin . She understood the frown . She also understood the reason . So many people come that the paths and the stone wear under their feet . A set time , and a marked route , keep one morning from becoming a crowd with nowhere to stand . Ahead of them , another group was already on the path . Behind them , the next group had not been let in yet . The mountain was busy , and it was still possible to hear the guide . They stayed on the route he named . He did not rush them , and he did not let them step off onto the grass . When her father lifted his camera at the first wide bend , the guide waited , then pointed at a wall where the blocks sit tight against each other , with no mortar in the joints . " Look at the fit , " he said . " People made that long before anyone queued to see it . " Elena watched her father lower the camera . He had wanted the wide view from the postcard . What held him was smaller : one terrace , the line of stone , the drop beyond it . She thought of Venice and of Angkor Wat , places where the number of visitors has also become part of the strain on what people came to see . She kept those names to herself . This morning was only this mountain . They finished the route while their time still belonged to them . At the last lookout her father put the camera in his bag . He did not touch the wall . He stood close enough to see the seam between two stones , then looked at Elena as if the picture at home had been a rumor . That was the visit she had wanted . Not a longer day , and not more of the site : one careful look that left the stone where it was .
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