Machu Picchu is the Inca city in the clouds. It sits majestically on the ridge of a hill overlooking the Urubamba River which flows into the mighty Amazon. It is built in the classical Inca style with dry stone walls holding back terraces despite the earthquakes in the region. The site sits between heaven and earth and amongst the ruins lie hints to ancient astronomical ties between the people and the Gods. The site gives visitors a sense of wonder which is almost intravenous in its impact.

Unless, like one of the Archaeopix admins, you find that something Peru disagrees with you. In that case you’ll need something like this. It’s a toilet. This being Machu Picchu it is no ordinary toilet but rather a royal toilet. The walls as you can see fit perfectly despite the lack of mortar. The toilets of Machu Picchu reveal two eternal truths. First, even the greatest sites in the world must cater for the most mundane human functions. Secondly it’s always a terribly good idea to make sure you have all the necessary injections before you go travelling.

This photo is by pickle.monger and licensed under the Creative Commons Licence by-nc-nd.

To leave a comment, please visit the photo's homepage at Flickr.

Archaeopix is a website associated with the Archaeology Group at Flickr. It picks photos from the pool which are available under a Creative Commons licence. This means at the very least they can be reproduced for non-commercial purposes. For more details about the licence for this image, please visit this page. For more information about this site visit this page.

Recent additions (CC and non-CC) to the Archaeology pool include:

Please check the license of an image before using it. To re-use it, a photo must have a Creative Commons license, or you must ask for permission from the copyright holder.