The recently-completed bridge at Santa Teresa crosses Peru’s Vilcanota River but has created a divide that may put one of the most famous archeological sites in the world in peril.

On March 24, 80-foot-long span was inaugurated at Carilluchayoc near the town of Santa Teresa. From there it is 20-plus-kilometer hike to Machu Picchu, the famed lost city of the Incas.

Government cultural experts said it could bring too many tourists to the delicate Inca ruins. Residents of the city of Santa Teresa say it’s a critical step to open their region to tourism and provides needed access to markets.

The bridge was constructed despite a court order and a litany of protests on the part of the Peruvian government and environmentalists. Like most issues in Peru, the debate over the bridge is difficult to separate into distinct shades of black and white.

Currently, the only way to access the Machu Picchu is by the train operated by the Bermuda-based Orient Express Hotels Ltd. since 1999. A ticket from Cusco to Aguas Calientes – the tourist trap of a town that has sprung up at the end of the line – will run you between $76 and as much as $450.

In November Santa Teresa Mayor Reynaldo Vargas defied a local court injunction demanding a halt to construction of the bridge. One of the key reasons to push the construction of the bridge was due to the "monopoly" of PeruRail.

The bridge opens a route to Machu Picchu that runs partly along the abandoned tracks of the railroad. Not necessarily the ideal route but one many budget-conscious backpackers would gladly take on.

“It’s a door to our development and all the people are happy,” Vargas told The Associated Press in March. “Three or four years ago in Santa Teresa it was a novelty to have five or six tourists, but now we are receiving 200 tourists a day.”

But that has many people interested in conserving the site rather worried. A UNESCO report in 2004 found that Machu Picchu – by far the most popular of the places listed on the United Nations list of world heritage sites – is being imperiled due to the increasing tourism.

“Being placed on the list means there has been such a degradation of the site that the very qualities which make it a world heritage site are being damaged, perhaps irrevocably,” a UNESCO spokesman told the Guardian newspaper in 2004.

Despite that concern, UNESCO refrained from including Machu Picchu on its list of “World Heritage in Danger” sites last year but the organization is planning to evaluate the impact of the bridge on the site this summer.

The site see more than half a million visitors each year with as many as 2,500 a day during peak periods – a number the Peruvian authorities have drawn as a cap on the maximum amount it will allow to enter daily.

The price foreign visitors pay to access to the site itself has doubled in the past year to $40 per entrance. And there have been reports in the Peruvian press that the government is planning on upping the cost of a single entry to the ruins to $100 for foreigners.

And it isn’t just about the tourists. A BBC report on the project pointed out that the bridge will slice the 15-hour trip to Cusco from the village to about three – opening new markets for Santa Teresa’s agricultural produce.

“This is a very complicated issue,” Norma Barbacci, Director of Field Projects at the World Monument Fund in New York told Smithsonian Magazine last month. “Every time you open a road or a railway, it’s not just the bridge, it’s all of the potential development.”