Machu Picchu (Peru) (AFP)

The Inca citadel of Machu Picchu found its first tourists on Monday after remaining deserted for eight months, an isolation reminiscent of that which was its own for four centuries until its rediscovery by the American Hiram Bingham in 1911.

The first visitors to enter the site on Monday were a French couple and a Chilean couple, the day after the official reopening celebrated with an Inca ritual ceremony.

"We are very happy to be here today," Véronique, a French tourist who declined to give her name, told AFP.

She was surprised by the coronavirus pandemic in Peru in March as she traveled to Latin America with her husband and two children.

"It was a surprise to find that we were the first international tourists to enter the site," Juan José Garcia, a 34-year-old Chilean who has lived in Lima since March, told AFP.

"It is a chance to be able to be here without many people", rejoices his wife, Victoria Moran, whereas before the pandemic approximately 3,000 tourists frequented daily the site, classified in the heritage of the humanity by Unesco in 1983.

For health security reasons, only 675 tourists can now access the site each day.

On Monday, the majority were Peruvians.

Faced with this gradual reopening, some hotels in Machu Picchu pueblo reopened on Sunday, but most are still closed.

The Sanctuary Lodge, the only hotel located in the mountain, 50 meters from the site entrance, has reopened.

The establishment, where the price of a room is around $ 1,400, will receive its first tourists on Tuesday.

Previously, it was necessary to book with one to two years in advance, reminds AFP its manager, Michael Leitao.

- Indian "brother" -

Peru has been very hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic: more than 900,000 cases have been recorded, including more than 34,000 deaths, in this country of 32 million inhabitants.

At the entrance to the site, visitors and guards are subject to temperature control and tourists are required to keep their distance.

On Monday, the first visitors to the stone citadel, whose name means "Old Mountain" in the Quechua language, climbed trails bathed in mist.

The latter finally dissipated, allowing travelers to admire from the heights the sanctuary built during the reign of Emperor Pachacutec (1438-1471), then abandoned during the collapse of the Inca Empire.

It is this mist, which regularly covers the mountains of Machu Picchu, which allowed the citadel to hide from view for four centuries, until its "discovery" by Hiram Bingham (1875-1956) on July 24, 1911 .

While chatting with the locals, this Yale University professor had learned that there was an archaeological site in the mountains, but without suspecting that it would be so grandiose.

He then launched an assault on the mountain, guided by a child: "Who could believe what I had discovered?", Wrote the explorer decades later in his book entitled "The fabulous discovery of the lost city of the Incas ".

If Hiram Bingham was the archaeological "discoverer" of the site, historians point out that the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was its "poetic discoverer".

The reopening of the citadel coincides with the 75th anniversary of the writing of the poem "Alturas de Macchu Picchu" (Heights of Macchu Picchu) which helped to make the Inca city known to the whole world at a time when neither the television or internet.

Pablo Neruda had climbed the mountain in 1943 on the back of a mule, three years before the site opened to tourism.

In 1945, he wrote this poem which pays homage to the forgotten Native American "brother" who built it: "I come to speak through your dead mouth", writes the poet, crowned in 1971 by the Nobel Prize for literature.

© 2020 AFP