Machu Picchu Continued Capturing Presidents and Celebrities’ Attention in 2008, including The Simpsons and South Park

Throughout 2008, Machu Picchu and the neighboring city of Cusco has welcomed several celebrities, royalty personalities, and sports stars, as El Comercio reports, including:

• Alicia Keys: received the 2008 year in Cusco and then visited the archaeological site. Click here to watch her appearance in the Letterman show talking about her visit.
• Jenna Bush: visited Cusco and Machu Picchu on January, and also stopped by the Andean communities in Paucartambo, nearby Cusco, as part of her Unicef agenda in favor of local poor children. Click here to watch a raw Associated Press video of her visit.
• Marguerite of Borbon, Infant of Spain: visited Cusco in April and enjoyed a show with Peruvian folkloric and flamenco music before heading by train to Machu Picchu. Despite her blindness since birth, she very much enjoyed it from the windows of the train.
• Canadian singer and composer Bryan Adams arrived to Cusco following his concert in Lima in a private plane, and then headed to Machu Picchu in a helicopter.
• Several Presidents from around the world and political personalities visited Machu Picchu around the Latin American, Caribbean and European Union (ALC-UE) Summit and the Asian Pacific (APEC) Forum between May and November, including the Foreign Affairs and External Affairs Commissioner of the European Commission Benita Ferrero-Waldner; the President of the same organization José Manuel Barroso; the Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk, the President of Guatemala Álvaro Colom; the Chancellor of Slovakia Jan Kubis; the Chancellor of Hungary Kinga Goncz;  and the wife of the Executive Chair of the region of Hong Kong Selina Tsang Pou Siu-mei.
• The goalie and captain of the Spanish soccer team Iker Casillas visited Machu Picchu in July accompanied with a group of children that the sports star supports through an NGO. Together with the former Spanish soccer star Emilio Butragueño, they visited Patabamba to visit children in that community.

And if you are a fan of The Simpsons and South Park, you might recall they “visited” Macchu Pichu in an episode where all the members of the Simpsons family end up at the archaeological site following one of Bart’s adventures, and the characters of South Park visit as they fight against an attack of “giant guinea pigs”.

Click here to watch a YouTube video with The Simpsons episode, and click here to watch the South Park episode.

In 2007, actresses Olivia Newton John and Cameron Diaz (click here to check out her visit while taping for the 4REAL show from my earlier post), the multimillionaire Bill Gates (click here for a video of him attending the Inti Raymi, the most important ancient ceremony praising the Sun), the Princess of England Beatrice, and the actors Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson.

It has certainly been quite a busy city in 2008!