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They don’t have to have everything on Google.” “It doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable,” he says, “but I do think it’s better to have a surprise when you get there. His friend chips in: “And not everyone has the resources to do what we’re doing.”Īlex, 22, from London is a bit more cynical. “You get to see places before you go there, and in a couple of years they may not let so many people have access here.” “I think it’s sweet,” says Australian Ryan Fuller, 23. Most people seem to be excited by the idea. I expected the Trekker to be viewed with more mistrust, as an invasion of privacy, but the response is overwhelmingly positive. A younger tourist, slightly more familiar with the branding, asks me directly if it’s Google Street View. the Google Earth map? Is that what it is?” asks one man in grey fleece. catching the Trekker on a selfieĪnd it is a testament to Google Maps’ global presence (it has over a billion users worldwide) that most tourists seem to recognise what we’re doing. Dressed in a grey hoodie, with thick rimmed glasses and an uncanny resemblance to the actor Jonah Hill, Corbacho has lugged the Trekker around dozens of Peru’s ancient sites, including Nazca, Tacna and Moquega, since January. Doing the bulk of this work is 30-year-old Julio Corbacho, a photographer and cameraman from Lima.
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It will take seven days of methodically crisscrossing the site to complete the capture. Google Trekker projects are physical challenges.
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It will take seven days of methodically crisscrossing the site to complete the capture Once at the top (after a rest, some Oreos and a sip of mate herb tea) Filip switches the Trekker on, ready to start its mission. We march up to it along an ancient stone path, stopping occasionally to look back at the citadel. Our starting point for the “collect” is Machu Picchu’s Sun Gate – the main entrance through which those who arrive via the Inca Trail reach the site. The Huayna Picchu peak towers behind it like a deep green obelisk. Surrounded by nauseatingly steep peaks, the stone steps, temples and structures of Machu Picchu sit on a grassy plateau as if dropped there from above. The street view “fleet” now includes a tricycle for narrow alleyways, a trolley for the interiors of museums and historic buildings, a snowmobile, for, well, snowy places, and the Trekker, which has been used to map sites such as Petra, Angkor Wat, the Great Pyramids, Everest base camp and the Grand Canyon. While most people still associate Google Street View with the small cars spotted zipping around cities with a camera on top, the past few years have seen Google develop off-road mapping methods. And it’s no surprise that Machu Picchu, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world, has been in its sights for some time. Having mapped more than seven million miles of roads in 65 countries, Google Street View has turned its attention to some of the world’s most spectacular places, creating eye-candy for digital travellers. I’d arrived in Cusco a day earlier, joining the Street View team tasked with collecting the panoramic imagery needed to add the Inca site to its ever-expanding list of locations. The 22kg Trekker comprises 15 high-resolution cameras and takes a photo every 2½ seconds.