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A JOURNAL
THIS BLOG IS AN ONLINE JOURNAL OF MY EXPERIENCES PAST AND PRESENT IN THE FORM OF WORDS, MUSIC, PHOTOS AND ART
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September 29, 2008 WALKING THE INCA TRAIL - Four Days in January, 2008, PERU
It is easy enough to write about walking the Inca Trail. Actually doing it proved to be a hard, if ultimately satisfying, endeavor. After much soul-searching and online exploration, I booked myself on a four-day Inca trek with an outfit in Peru called Puma Adventures. What would have been an unthinkably difficult task ten or twenty years ago needed only a few minutes on the internet. I made and paid for my Inca Trail entry permit and all my hotel, travel, and trek reservations online. Without the convenience of the internet, I doubt if I would have dared go on the Inca Trail at all. On the 15th of January, I bade good-bye to the M/V Pacific Princess in Callao, the port of Lima, and flew to Cuzco on a TACA plane. I spent four days acclimatizing myself to the high altitude (Cuzco was 3400 meters above sea level). On the fourth day, Delsie, one of trek guides, fetched me at six in the morning from Samay Wasi (Place of Refuge), the hostel where I was staying. She led me to a bus parked at Cuzco’s main square, Plaza de Armas. Other trekkers were already in the bus, catching up on sleep. After picking up our porters, the bus drove us to the Sacred Valley and stopped briefly at Ollantaytambo. I was familiar with Ollantaytambo, having visited its impressive stronghold two days earlier. It was the site of the last stand by the Incas against Pizarro's forces. The bus then followed a glorified dirt road that ran along the Urubamba river until we reached a booth that guarded the Inca Trail park entrance. The place where the trail started was called Qoowayrachina. Park officials manned the booth. Your name must be in a master list of hikers permitted to enter the trail that day. After the formalities, we crossed over to the trailhead via a hanging bridge made of steel. This was a modern replacement of the Inca original that was woven from vines. It was now around noon. The sun shone hot and brilliant Until this trip, I used to believe that there was only one Inca trail. Actually there were many trails that the Inca used over the centuries. These trails ran not just the length of Peru, but all over the kingdom inhabited and ruled by the Incas which includedparts of modern-day Ecuador and Colombia. The most famous trail, designated a Unesco site, is the one that connects Cuzco and various Inca settlements in the Sacred Valley to the city of Macchu Picchu. This is the trail that Hiram Bingham uncovered during his years of exploration and excavation in the Andes. This is the famous Inca Trail. The trail is not a continuously paved highway. At its most basic it is a mere hiking path that follows the contours of mountain ridges, saddles and gullies. Parts of it are just earth and gravel. At some points, steps were cut into mountainsides and paved with undressed stone. Where necessary, it was carved out directly from the sides of granite cliffs, and in one instance, from a cave. Sometimes it followed the beds of streams or waterfalls. As the trail neared cities, retaining stonewalls were constructed to prevent erosion. In some sections of the trail, the steps are so steep that the only practicable way to reach the top is to crawl up like a spider. It is suitable only for foot traffic. Surprisingly, the Incas managed to keep the existence of this trail a secret to the Spaniards. At any rate, the trail, which is well maintained today, would thave been well hidden by rampant vegetation. A note about my companions: there were four young French-Argentinian students (a boy and three girls) , three American men with a jaded look about them, three Danes who said they were factory workers, a Brazilian family of four who spoke no English and me. All in all we were sixteen, counting the two guides Ronnie and Delsie. The porters numbered nine or so. It soon became evident that I did not have the physical stamina to keep up with the rest of the trekkers. Delsie, the pretty guide, brought up the rear and kept me company as I panted up steep inclines. The guidebook described this half-day’s walk as easy. For me, it was anything but. After much huffing and puffing I managed to catch up with the rest of the gang as Ronnie was starting to explain the picturesque ruins of Llactapata in the valley below.  We were on top of a grassy plateau, surrounded by mountains. I was expecting Julie Andrews to come swirling out on the meadow à la “The Sound of Music”. On the valley floor the ruins of stone houses and terraces spread out amidst green fields. In the past thatched roofs covered these structures. Now only the walls remained. They glowed pale gold in the afternoon sun. White specks that moved from time to time turned out to be grazing llamas. The Urubamba River wound round the flanks of the mountains. In the far distance, the train that brought tourists to and from Aguas Calientes momentarily chugged into view and then disappeared behind trees, leaving echoes of its plaintive whistle. The view of Llactapata was well worth the climb. It would have been nice to go down and explore the site a bit, but we were too high up the mountain and our timetable did not allow for deviations. In any other country Llactapata would have been a prime tourist attraction. Here, it was only a minor archaeological site, the first among the several splendid ruins awaiting us. The hard climb to the plateau was also a warning of the rigors of the trail ahead. Early on, Ronnie, the chief guide, observing the difficulty with which I negotiated this relatively easy section of the trail, started hinting that I would be wise to turn back and take the train instead to Macchu Picchu. Giving up the trail was no big deal, they said. People do it all the time. People unsure of their stamina. People daunted by their dreams. Foolish fat people who should have stayed at home watching television, living sedentary lives. I had already made it past the first ruin. I had already spent a considerable amount of money preparing for this walk. I was tantalized by accounts of other Inca sites thata were accessible only to those who hiked the trail. Above all, I had a mental picture of me gazing down from the vantage point of Intipunku, the Gateway of the Sun, at the fabled city of Macchu Picchu just as the morning sun was touching it. It was a vision too seductive to resist. I told my guides I’ll take everything one day at a time. I was not ready to surrender just yet. And so I continued on the trail with Delsie, the rest of the pack having trudged well ahead of me. I wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed at being left behind. “If I rushed and tried to keep up with the others,” I told Delsie,” I will die.” She agreed with me. So it was one step at a time. Every few steps or so, I’d stop to rest and re-compose myself. The air was thin, my lungs gasped for precious oxygen, the trail went up and down, and sometimes just remained up for minutes on end. But I paced my breathing. I would express profuse apologies to Delsie for my slowness, and, then, having recovered my breath, press on. I recited mantras to keep myself motivated. Poco a poco se va lejos. Rome wasn’t built in a day. The first step you take is the first step to a hundred miles. OOOOOOMMMMMMMMM…. I fell into a kind of rhythm. I inhaled when bringing up one foot and exhaled when I put down the other. In and out, up and down, right and left. Through it all my mind was bent on denying the limitations of my physique, telling me over and over again that this was not a competition between the others and me, but between the passive me and the active me. It was a contest between my yin and my yang. Besides, something else helped me regain my vigor whenever I faltered. My team leaders had advised me to drink lots of water and chew coca leaves. Local Indians chewed these leaves to stave off hunger and ward off fatigue. You can buy them prepacked in plastic sachets from any convenience store in Cuzco. I did as I was told. The effects were instantaneous and unmistakable. Every time I chewed a batch of coca leaves and absorbed the juice, my lungs revived, my circulatory system acquired a new expansiveness and my limbs became temporarily inured to pain. On hindsight, I now realize that I couldn’t have finished the trail without those masticated coca leaves. On the other hand, months later I would lose a molar because the acid from these same leaves had eaten into the tooth, necessitating its extraction. But this was all in the future. The coca plant is an integral part of the culture of the Andean peoples. Dried coca leaves are used for brewing a tea called maté. Maté tastes like green tea with an undertone of guava and an aftertaste of seaweed. It sounds vile, but it is actually quite relaxing and refreshing. Drunk and chewed, coca is not addictive or illegal. The type of coca that the law has a problem with is the infamous extract called cocaine. Cocaine is produced by the introduction of an alkaloid substance such as acetone into quantities of leaves mashed and fermenting in vats (presumably in the jungle and guarded by gun-toting guerillas). I was told that chewing coca with a carbon substance, such as wood ash, can produce the same effects as ingesting cocaine. I never tried this combination. I continued to walk on, by degrees, by steps.  The fleet-footed Indian porters cheered me on as they passed me by with their immense loads. I took no offense when, from to time, I’d hear the word “Gordo”, which was certainly directed at me. They kept encouraging me to hurry on (“Vamos! Vamos!”). I sensed that I had become a kind of mascot to them, the ONE -WHO- IS- ALWAYS- LAST- IN- THE- PACK. I must say a word about the Quechua porters. They are an astonishing people. Their stamina is phenomenal They carried loads (tents, chairs, pots, pans, food, gas, everything) up and down the trail at full stride. On the trail they had right of way, and everyone else must stand aside to let them pass. They had to set up tents and prepare meals before everybody else arrived in the camp. Most of them were farmers from various parts of Peru who took up portering to supplement, or even supplant, their income from agriculture. They were friendly and cheerful and, because they spoke the Quechua language, virtually incomprehensible. I caught up with my companions as our party paused for tea. The porters set up a tent at the base of a cliff beneath a rocky overhang. Tiny crimson orchids sprang from clefts in the rocks. The Peruvians call this orchid wiñaywana (“Forever Young”), but I recognized them as the familiar epidendrum. I also started seeing red trumpet-like flowers, the qantuta,Peru’s national flower. When I first heard the name, I though, hm, one man's flower is another man's whatever., because the term meant something else in Filipino, and it's not a flower. Trees sported beards of light, silvery moss. Wild ginger, birds-of-paradise and heliconia thrust up from between swordlike leaves. White narcissi lined the road. I heard parrots. A clear, fast-running brook ran nearby. Huge, weathered rocks the size of cars lay about the campground. We drank maté and ate pancakes. The chef wore an apron and a hat, signs that he was a licensed cook. Times past the porters received a pittance and were left to fend for themselves. No more. The porters received a mandated minimum daily fee and had their own tent. After tea, the porters took down the tent and the trek resumed. Ronnie said that we had to arrive at five in the first campsite because darkness came early in the mountains. This campsite’s name was Wayllabamba, or Place of Good Pasture. He was still hoping that I wouldn’t continue with the trek. I smiled back at him and said nothing. It was six when I did finally make it to Wayllabamba. There was still enough light left to see the ground. Wood smoke curled up from other camps. Ours was the furthest up the mountainside, nearest the head of the trail for the second day’s journey. A light rain started to fall. That night, in the mess tent, we had beer and poached trout and listened to Peruvian music from my ipod. We told stories by kerosene lamp. There was laughter and the occasional awkward silences. We were friendly strangers in a tent, and to the end we would remain so. I talked with the Danes. They seemed to be in their 30’s. They were lean and fit and looked like members of a Jacques Costeau scuba diving team. They said they were factory workers from Denmark. Next week they were going to Ecuador and stay for a week with an Indian tribe in the Amazon. The Argentinean students preferred to talk among themselves, in French. They were somewhat snobbish, but then, they were young twentysomethings with the world at their feet. And they were strong. Ah, to be twenty again and do the trail! The Americans let out that they had been trekking in South America, and so were well conditioned for the trail. One was from San Diego, but that was all I got from him. They were living in an impenetrable Green zone of their own. My guides still had their doubts about me. Ronnie told me next day’s climb was very difficult, and continued pressing me to consider giving up the trail. I told him I’ll decide the next morning. A mist had drifted up the mountainside, obscuring the stars. I had my own tent, and as I lapsed into a fitful sleep, my limbs uncoiling from a fatiguing day, a heavy rain fell. Day 2 WARMIWAÑUSCA (DEAD WOMAN’S PASS) to PACAYMAYU I woke up to the tattoo of raindrops against the roof of my tent. I heard the three American guys giggling in the tent next to me. I had been snoring the whole night, and I must have kept them awake, despite the rain. There was nothing I could do about it. A drab, cloudy dawn greeted us. The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle and then stopped altogether. I went to join the slowly assembling trekkers in the breakfast hut. We had eggs, bread, coffee and of course, maté. Trekkers from other groups were starting to ascend the trail past our camp. There was another control gate that we had to pass through. In a way, this was the real beginning of the trail. I sat beside the three Danish factory workers and told them I might not go on with the trek. One guy said:” Didn’t you say your dream was to walk the Inca trail?” I pondered this question and made up my mind. I went up to my guides and told them I was continuing with the trek. I knew that they had hoped that I wouldn’t go, but having gone this far and spent so much, I asked myself why should I not go through with the whole thing? I had already spent a lot of money preparing for the trek. I had told friends and family I was going. It would be bad form, a loss of face, and most of all, a betrayal of my life’s dream, to have to turn back for no good reason than that I was scared off by discouraging comments by other people. It was Macchu Picchu, then, or bust. Ronnie surrendered to my wish, and instructed Delsie to accompany me. Everyone talked or wrote about the second day of the trail as if they’ve met God or had undergone childbirth. The internet is full of accounts of the hardships posed by this segment of the trail even to the fittest walker. I was soon to find out that these reports were not exaggerated. From seven in the morning till one in the afternoon, I walked as I had never walked before – upwards, constantly. At first the trail was just a dirt road but pretty soon, rocky steps started to appear, and always in the upwards direction. Except for a brief stopover at a camp, we had to follow this ever ascending, seemingly endless, road. Such stones as were laid out on the trail were rough and very hard on the feet. Today’s goal was to reach the ominously named Dead Woman’s Pass (Warmiñusca)at 12 noon, and thence down to the next camp by 5:00 in the afternoon. It is easy to describe the difficulty of this climb. Many of the trekkers were young and strong so they had no problems negotiating the trail. But some of them did eventually turn back because they were defeated, not by the trail itself, but the lack of oxygen that attacks anybody, however lithe he was, who tackles the trail without pacing himself. The air progressively became thinner as the climb progressed to roughly 13,000 feet. Acclimatizing to the changing atmosphere was even more important than making it to some destination on schedule. Disrespect the heights, and your middle name could be soróche–altitude sickness. Symptoms of soroche included blurred vision, a racing heartbeat, splitting headaches, nausea, vomiting, and unconsciousness. Death was an ever-present possibility. Ronnie had intimated direly that the team carried just a little oxygen in case anybody got sick. He was actually concerned for me. The trick was to take it easy, to let the body adapt to the changing altitude slowly, surely, without strain or overexertion. Take it easy. Let your mind rule over matter. Choose caution over recklessness, patience over impulsiveness. Look around at your surroundings and rejoice. Give thanks that you are alive and hiking in the Andes mountains. Life is good. God is good. I stopped to look at the transcendent scenery around me. I drank in every snowy peak, followed every fog-bound mountainside, tried to identify every flower and lichen, and listened to the soughing of the wind and the melodious rush of clear, mountain water. I remarked on the strange, contorted red limbs of trees that grew only in these mountains, and felt the coolness of the forest as it became more dense and mossy. Catching on to me, Delsie started pointing out flowers, insects, the occasional hummingbird and caracara. I put on my ipod, opting for Mahler, because like this trail, his symphonies went on forever. The music eventually proved distracting. I needed to concentrate on my breathing and pay attention to my heartbeat. I lent my ipod to Delsie.  The path opened up to reveal open space. A rest break in another “Sound of Music” locale. I met several Quechua women who were selling water in this rest area and were starting to pack up thinking there were no longer any trekkers. One of the women saw me take a quick picture of them and addressed me, saying ”Propina, propina.” I bought a bottle of agua sin gas and another one of Gatorade from her, but gave her no tip for the picture. Delsie and I sat on the grass. A clear brook ran through the meadow where we were resting. A little off to one side was a thatched-roofed hut. Nobody was in it at the moment, but people could stay in it for the night. Delsie informed me that our batch of trekkers were the last to be allowed to walk the trail before it was closed for maintenance in February. We ate some chocolate which I had brought in my backpack. Delsie’s petite frame hid a stamina that had allowed her to walk this trail in two days’ time with some vigorous American hikers. When I told her I worked on a cruise-ship, she fancied working on one. Ship’s agencies were based in Lima. She lived in Cuzco. Possible, but difficult. It seemed unthinkable that she would give up the splendors of the Andes for the close quarters of a sailing ship. Others gave up city lives in exchange for these magnificent views. Still, I understood Delsie. Walking the Inca Trail can seem heaven to tourists, but guides have to go home to towns and cities, pay the rent, buy food, live a normal, modern life. They do not live in the picturesque but inhospitable heights of the Andes. There is nothing here but wilderness and ghost cities of stone.  Save for the guides, porters and those who lived in this area, I saw no other Peruvians doing the trail, certainly not in my team. For a European or American, the basic fee of $300 to $400 for a fully provisioned trek, porters and all, may seem ridiculously cheap. To a Peruvian, it was expensive. The number of Latin Americans doing the trail has dropped down as well. Still, that scene of Chè Guevara in Macchu Picchu in “The Bicycle Diaries” could have done nothing but stoke the wanderlust of his fellow Argentinians, who were here in droves. An earnest-looking young man ambled up to us. I had noticed him back in the trail. He had talked briefly with Delsie back then. His name was Ivan. He was a guide and was waiting for a couple of Brazilian stragglers. One person had turned back and two others were on their way, he said. It was hard going for those trekkers and he didn’t know if they could make it up the pass. This was the first time I learned that there were still people struggling up the trail! I felt good about myself just then. I thoroughly empathized with my fellow slowpokes. From where we sat Delsie pointed out the route up to the part of the mountain called Dead Woman’s Pass, the highest point, of the trail.  The series of peaks above the pass bore the profile of a reclining woman with large pointy breasts. She had the nose of an Inca. Later Ronnie told us a lurid tale that he said may be the actual origin of the pass’s macabre name. Many years ago, back in the 60’s, a band of trekkers from Australia came up on the trail. They camped on the promontory that is now called Dead Woman’s Pass. A quarrel broke out between a girl and her boyfriend. Reportedly she was flirting with another guy. In a fit of rage and jealousy, the boyfriend stabbed the girl to death. Did it really happen? Not even Ronnie could tell us for sure. But, as always, there had to be some truth to this tale. An Inca Trail legend, among many others in this dramatic land. And the trail went on, steeper, more unforgiving. I could see the Pass, the partial end of this leg of the journey. The way up looked – was - discouragingly steep, daunting even. For me, there was no turning back. On the way up, I noticed the vegetation change suddenly from the lush greenery of the lower slopes, with its red-limbed trees and mossy undergrowths, to pampas grass and curious succulents springing out of tall stalks. The mountainsides sprang steeper, rockier, more wind blasted. In Alaska, this would be Dall sheep country. I could easily picture bear denning down in caves on distant rocky outcrops. Indeed a rare, indigenous bear lived in these parts, the spectacled bear. I had not heard of any trekker who has seen this bear, much less its spectacles, so my chances of encountering it were absolutely nil. Off to the side of the mountain flanking the trail, I sensed movement, heard voices among the grass. Somewhere down below, there were people there, a man, a woman, I guessed. Delsie told me they worked for the park service, studying plants. Maybe picking up trash. Delsie said she was going ahead of me up to the pass and was going to wait for me there. I progressed slowly behind her, eyes following her red sweater up the trail till it rounded a bend and was lost from view. Plants and brushes here were short, stunted, clung to the ground. Blue forget-me-nots peeped from mosses. Amaryllis and blue lupine. Alpine flowers. I caught the sound of hooves tramping down the trail. I saw them as they came down from the top of the pass. Llamas! I pressed myself back into the mountainside. One after the other they stamped down, stopping briefly in alarm when they saw me by the side of the trail. They regarded me silently, watchfully from the corner of their doe-like eyes. They were larger, healthier, had creamier fur than the sorry ones I saw being led around in Cuzco by Indian women. I did not know if they were wild or domesticated. I like to think they were wild. A couple of gallops, a slight flurry of dust, and they were gone. The last few meters up the pass were the hardest and steepest part of this climb, but in the end I managed to haul myself off the last step onto the top. I knew that having attained this height I would make it to Macchu Picchu. We celebrated on top of the pass. A porter had been sent by Ronnie to bring us mate and sandwiches. I saw the Brazilian stragglers inching up to the pass. We did not wait for them to make it up, but continued walking down the other side of the pass because a mist had settled in and there was still a long way to go. The fog hid the peak of Salkantay, highest mountain in the Andes. However I could see the hanging glacier on the mountain opposite me. Its name was the Mercedes glacier.  Going down the other side of the mountain brought a new kind of pain to completely different parts of my body. Where the ascent belabored my calves and hamstrings, the descent tortured my knees and pelvis! The entire trail down the mountainside was paved with stones, testimony to the industry of the Incas. They were hard, uneven and irregular in height so each step had to be dealt with in its own way. At the beginning of this journey, we were advised to bring along a walking stick. Now I knew the reason why. Without a stick to support you and give you purchase as you negotiated your way down, you could pitch forward, lose your balance, fall down and break your nose, or worse. Oftentimes, the safest way to walk down was sideways. Although the thickening air and the descent were proving easier on my lungs, my knees seemed constantly in danger of popping out of their joints and my hips to shatter with every jolt down the steps. I met a Quechua porter wearing a yellow shirt He was carrying a plastic bag. He stopped besides a large rocky outcropping. “Hola!” I hailed him. “Hola!” he replied. “Que contiene aquel paquete?” “Comida.” “Para mi?” I asked. “Si,’ he said.
He neither spoke nor understood any English, and his Spanish was severely limited, but the sign language for food was universal.
So Ronnie had sent me more food. How thoughtful of him! Thank you, Ronnie.
As I was about to dive into whatever he had in his goody bag, he kept asking me about something. I understood that he wanted to know what my outfit was.
“Puma,” I said. “Puma”.
“No, no!” he blurted out, merrily closing the container. He was from another outfit. The food was for the others who hadn’t made it up to the pass, the Brazilians.
My stomach growled in disappointment as the porter hurried up the pass with his goodies.
Delsie, who lagged behind me, stopped walking.
She excitedly pointed at something up the mountainside.
A thought flitted across my mind. A spectacled bear,?
I looked up and saw nothing.
She said she had seen deer. They had ambled through the open hillside and then quickly disappeared behind bushes. She was pointing at the bushes. I stared at the them for the longest time, hoping the deer would re-appear from behind them. They did not. Time to move on.
We arrived at the second camp at half past six in complete darkness. This camp’s name was Pacamayu. Here and there camp lights dispelled the gloom. Porters from our team met us. One of them gave me a miner’s hat fitted with a lamp. It cast a good light on the somewhat treacherous path. The camp was situated amidst rushing brooks, a veritable miniature Niagara. When I reached the mess tent, dinner was just being served. My teammates, led by the porters and the Americans, cheered when I arrived. For myself I felt relieved to complete the second day of the Inca Trail without a scratch, without blisters and without soròche. DAY 3 – MYSTERIOUS PLACES IN THE HEART – RUNKURACAY, SAYACMARCA, PHUYUPATAMARCA, WILLAYWAYNA It is said that cowardice and courage are two faces of the same thing and the thing they have in common is fear.
Fear of the unknown is the commonest reason why one does not do anything new, whether its seeing new things or exploring new places.
Fear of the unknown can be conquered and when curiosity takes its place, courage takes over a person who wants to escape the bonds of a mundane, “safe” existence.
When one possesses courage, any leap into the unknown becomes an act of self-affirmation. With a single act of the will one has forcefully plucked oneself from the vagueness of ambition to the reality of living now, in the present.
From mysterious places in the heart into the mysterious places of the universe, a man can overcome his fears and shout to the world: “I LIVE! I AM ALIVE!” ***************************************************************************************************************** Although the third day’s trail was supposed to be easier than yesterday’s, there was a steep segment that needed to be negotiated. On the way up, I stopped briefly at the ruins of Runkuracay, a semi-circular tambo, or lookout. From its vantage point you could see down to the camp and across to the surrounding peaks. If anybody ever met an accident here or had to return somehow to Ollantaytambo, he would be in deep trouble. Helicopters found this terrain difficult to fly in because of the mountainous terrain and unpredictable updrafts.  Three quarters up the trail I came upon a shallow lagoon and found a convenient rock nearby whereon to rest my heaving self. Hikers grunted up the narrow path, most of them not pausing to regard the lagoon. Eventually, the rest of my team passed me by, ever intent on pushing forward. I waved good-bye to them as they disappeared up the trail. Two Germanic looking elderly hikers passed by.They must have been in there late 60’s, early 70’s. They supported themselves on ski poles. I felt a twinge of shame. Sitting on my rock, I realized that, yet again, I was last in the pack, left behind by everybody else. Or so I thought. Because just then a man and a woman came puffing up and with much moaning and groaning rested on the rock beside me. They were Monica and Juan, from Argentina, and they were fatigued beyond measure, especially Juan who was hyperventilating like crazy. They were the same two persons who lagged behind on the way up the Dead Woman’s Pass. They easily tired like me, and shared my philosophy of taking it easy. They walked and rested when they needed to, like I did. We were thrilled to have found each other. Like souls, like minds, like slackers. When we finally made it up the second pass, we took photographs of each other. We had a good laugh.  We each took our time going down the other side of the mountain.  Walking ahead of the others, I came upon two breathtakingly beautiful Inca ruins. A set of stone buildings presided over the top of a cliff. An incredibly long, steep series of stone steps led up to it. This was the city of Sayaqmarca. It would have been nice to see the view from up there, but really, at this point of the hike, only the most motivated or a confirmed masochist would consider going up anything resembling a staircase. Anyway, I had already been to the top of the pyramid in Ollantaytambo and the stronghold of Pisac in the Sacred Valley, so I had a good inkling of what awaited me there, if I cared to go up. Along the base of this cliff, on more level ground were the remains of terraces, huts and sacred structures dedicated to water. This was the wonderfully named Phuyupatamarca, or “City at Cloud Level ”. The Inca trail in fact followed the contour of one its terraces. Thick jungle surrounded the site and would have probably engulfed it if it wasn’t maintained by the Peruvian park service. As if to confirm the city’s name, a fine mist descended on the city, enveloping it in a gloomy half-light. No wind or bird disturbed the stillness. One sound, though, filtered through the fog: the sound of many streams rushing and gurgling as they descended from the heights, guided by canals into sacred holding enclosures that the ancients had fitted together from finely hewn stone. I imagined these same streams cascading down into the Urubamba and thence to the Amazon. Some part of me sensed invisible fingers from the past touching me, gently reminding me of the souls who used to live here in this remote corner of the world, who tilled the soil and grew crops on these now-barren terraces, who loved and lived and died among these high peaks. They were a people whose existence would have been forgotten had they not left us these haunting structures. We crossed a bridge that was fashioned from a huge, rectangular block of stone barely a foot in width. There were no guardrails. A slip and it was a long fall into the deep ravine below. As we left cloud-covered Phuyutpatamarka, the sound of water followed us. In that lonely place, unbeset by tourists, abandoned by man and oh, so remote, I heard ghostly voices saying: “ Come back, traveler, linger awhile, feel my antiquity and savor my tranquility.” In my heart of hearts, I started to wish that Macchu Picchu would be like this city, silent, undisturbed by other footsteps save my own. Further on down the trail, the sound of water did something else that caught my attention. I stopped to listen. I motioned for Delsie and Ivan to stop. “Do you hear it?” I said. “What?” Delsie asked. “The water”. “ What about it?” “I hear the sound of a stream. It flows, and then stops, and doesn’t resume flowing until after I’ve counted to nine. They did, and it was so. After all these years walking the trail, they’d never noticed the phenomenon. They were as intrigued as I was. “What could be the cause of this thing?” I asked. They did not know. We left that place wondering whether the ancients deliberately built their watercourses in a way that produced this effect. Did the interval of nine between resumptions of the flow have any significance? Was it just a fluke of nature? Either way, it added to the city’s aura of mystery.  Again our team had stopped for lunch in a rest area of many brooks and glades and again I made it just as spaghetti was being served. Spaghetti? What could be more civilized than being served a plate of spaghetti in an area where to even lug a casserole, let alone the gas with which to light up a stove, seemed unthinkable. But that was what my Inca trek was, an actual moveable feast where tables, chairs, tents, gas, pots, pans, jugs of water, backpacks, bags of food, cooking oil, cups and plates and cutlery, anything that brought comfort to a group of travelers from all over the world, were bundled, carried, unpacked, set up, bundled up again, re-carried by a group of sturdy hard-working Quechua over a trail that could break the spirit of a lightly-backpacked dilettante, like me. The porters did this every single day of the three and a half day trek. Perhaps they were the greatest wonder of all on this adventure. The trail that greeted me after lunch was a fairyland of carpet mosses, multi-colored flowering plants, waterfalls, highland bamboos, towering trees with trunks and branches overgrown with lianas and laden with all kinds of bromeliads and orchids. I was now walking through a temperate rainforest. Here the trail looked like a garden path in an ecosystem delightfully lush beyond description. Thousands of feet below the forest would turn into humid Amazonian jungle with lots of poisonous critters, but up here the air was cool, and thankfully, no snakes were in sight. I did see large caracaras flying from one tree to another. I heard a peculiar birdcall from a bird I could not see. It started from somewhere and then would be answered by some other bird from somewhere else. The strange thing was that the call would be answered in a musical interval of a second. Intrigued, I started answering a birdcall, and would be answered a semitone to a full tone below the one I just made. In time, I was having a jolly conversation with a bird or birds that seemed to be following me down the path. When I caught up with Delsie and told her what I was doing, she said,”Oh, that sound is not from a bird. It’s from a tiny frog. There are many of them around here, especially after the rain.” I never did see the frog/s, but I once had a similar experience in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I used to frequent a coffee shop there called the Café Papyrus. In this coffee shop, I heard a strange chirping sound. I looked around the shop. No bird. No cage, either. A recording, I thought. After hearing the same sound every time I visited the coffee shop, I finally asked the girl in charge what it was. “Oh,” she said,” that’s from a tiny frog, a coquì. The coqui lives in that potted plant there.” And there it was, clinging to the underside of a leaf, tiny as a thimble, the Puerto Rican coquì with a sound mightier than its size. “Ku-ku-ku-kweeee!” At a certain point of the trail, there was a natural cave on the side of a granite cliff that the Inca engineers had widened into a tunnel. The wall inside the tunnel was smoothed to an astonishingly fine finish. Certainly this was all done by hand, by whatever means the Incas so ingeniously used for their own ends (sand, cornmeal, meteorite). The question that must come to anyone who goes through this tunnel is why the Incas took the trouble to buff up the wall. Why not just widen it and be done with it? Did they expect anything, bad or good, to happen to them if they did not do a more artistic job at it? Kingly displeasure or divine retribution? Then again, consider the Nazca lines. The ancients drew gigantic figures in the Atacama desert that can only be seen from several hundred feet up the sky. Whatever practical purpose they may have had (some suggest they indicate water reservoirs underneath the desert floor), first and foremost they were probably made as an offering to some celestial being, a sky-living god. Something like this must have motivated the engineers of this tunnel. A cave with a smoothly carved interior thousands of feet up on a cliff in the Andes would be somewhat incomprehensible, even incredible, for anyone who hasn’t actually passed through it. Yet it is there to see for anyone willing to undergo the foot-smashing, knee-jolting, backbreaking rigors of the Inca Trail. I managed to arrive in the third camp while there was still light. This time, nobody broke into applause at my entrance. I had arrived just a few minutes after the three Americans. An accomplishment. But then the Americans had dawdled, had actually gone up Sayaqmarka, and taken plenty of photographs. This was to be our last night in camp. Tomorrow, we would wake up well before down, at 4:00 AM precisely, in order to reach Inti Punku, the Gate of the Sun, in time to witness the sunrise over Macchu Picchu. During the night, after a repast of pizza, spaghetti and a delicious soup made from a type of edible lupine (ordinary lupine is poisonous), Ronnie introduced the porters to us, and passed the tip hat. Each of us hikers expressed our thanks to the porters for their hard work. I especially gave thanks to them for their encouraging words as I labored up the trail. “Gracias a todos que me han dicho “Vamos! Vamos!” They laughed. Most of them were leaving the next day after breakfast, job accomplished. The rest of us would hike down to Macchu Picchu and take the bus later in the day to Aguas Calientes, and then the train to Ollantaytambo and the final bus to Cuzco. Day Four- MACCHU PICCHU  I woke up, like everybody else, at a quarter to four. It was dark, but stars were visible in the sky. This time, it wasn't raining, although the air felt wet. After a gulp of matè and a bite of pancakes, we were off, gingerly trodding the narrow paths between tents, being careful not to fall off the sides of the uneven terraces on which the camps were set up. The other teams were also on their way. Everybody was jostling to be first at the control gate to the Macchu Picchu part of the trail. After being seen through by the controllo, we filed into the misty forest. It wasn’t such an easy jaunt, as the literature would have the armchair traveller believe. It was a fairly hard climb, muddy and slippery in the foggy dawn. As usual, everybody else got past me, including Monica and Juan! Delsie and I arrived at Intipunku , the Gateway of the Sun, at around seven, well after most every trekker had passed through. No one was there except two other hikers who sat on a stone ledge, gazing at the valley below. They said they were from Northern California. Intipunku was a temple-like enclosure. Roofless now, it combined the functions of a grand gateway, a rest stop and a belvedere. Like the other stone buildings I had seen so far, it was part of a larger complex of walls and terraces that stretched at no great extent below it. I learned later that when the teams came up to Intipunku right at about the time the sun rose, a thick fog covered Macchu Picchu. Not even a rooftop was visible. Disappointed, they all trudged down to the ruins without having seen the city from this magical point of view. However, we had barely arrived at this lookout when the fog parted, revealing most of Macchu Picchu, its gray buildings springing from the misty, blue-tinted landscape like the bones of gigantic prehistoric beasts. I had a minute or two to savor the heart stopping view before the restless fog rolled in and hid it from view once again. Then it struck me. I had achieved what I had set out to do. I had seen Macchu Picchu the way the ancient Incas traveler saw her, from Inti Punku, the Gate of the Sun, a thousand feet up as the condor flies. My vision had come true. Just before we descended into Macchu Picchu, Delsie told me about an accident that happened along this section of the trail. “See those metal railings?” I saw them. They seemed puny support against the sheer thousand-foot drop of the cliff. “From that spot an American hiker saw a pretty bird. She was a biologist. She leaned against the rail to gain a closer view of the bird. The rail collapsed from under her. She fell to her death. It took a while to find her body in the valley below. They’ve replaced the railing.” I kept to the safe side of the mountain all the way down. There were more ruins along the way -- Willaywayna or Forever Young, as in the Mel Gibson movie. Then, before I knew it, I was walking along a terrace in Macchu Picchu. A serious-looking girl barred us from proceeding any further. This is when I learned that if you are a trekker, you cannot just walk into Macchu Picchu. You had to go down another path and make your way back up to the ruins with the other tourists via the proper park entrance and present your prepaid ticket. I saw a hotel and a restaurant. Buses. Tourists. I felt slightly disoriented. I also felt relieved. I had my passport stamped with the Macchu Picchu logo. POSTSCRIPT  It is not common knowledge, but Macchu Picchu lies at a lower elevation than Cuzco.It is 7900 feet above sea level as opposed to Cuzco's 11000 feet or so elevation. It is definitely warmer though more fog-bound than Cuzco due to its higher humidity. Though the sky was persistently cloudy, Macchu Picchu dazzled. In brief, Macchu Picchu was all the other ruins I'd seen so far combined, refined, enlarged, expanded, made several times grander and then set in the most spectacular setting imaginable, a narrow saddle between two pyramidal peaks. In fact, no other city has a more sublime and dramatic setting then Macchu Picchu. The Urubamba river was visible below, coiling like a large brown snake between jungle-clad peaks that rose abruptly from the river floor. The city was surrounded by dramatic mountain peaks.The terraces here were wider and more numerous. Temples abounded: the Temple of the Condor, the Temple of the Three winds, the Temple of the Jaguar, the Temple of the Sun with its famous sundial, the Intihuatana, which was infamously damaged by a TV crew that was shooting a beer commercial. Thankfully, all manner of commercial activity, not to mention helicopter over flights, have been banned here. I did watch bemusedly as an American woman in her forties dangled a chain of crystals over the sundial. I didn't blame her. There was something about Macchu Picchu, an energy, a mysterious flow of positive ions, near Intihuatana, aka the Hitching Post to the Sun. I was told that Macchu Picchu was a royal sanctuary maintained by the Inca Kings of Peru, and that only women were allowed to live in it. Men did the grunt work, building, chiseling, planting crops and the like, but the women maintained –heavenly boudoirs, if there was such a thing. The thing about women is true; the boudoir is mere speculation, of course. Hiram Bingham spent a lifetime uncovering her splendors. I spent an hour or so trodding her grand lawns, peering into her secret cells, feeling the touch of the divine in her temples, making eye contact with the resident llamas (yup, they were there, grazing on the lawn), and generally marveling at the incredible engineering skills of the Incas. I asked Macchu Picchu’s pardon for not examining her every nook and cranny. For, awestruck as I was by the majesty of Macchu Picchu, I was bone-tired and needed to rest. Four days of trekking had taken their toll on my body. Before I went down to the foot of the mountain, I gave a parting gift to Delsie in lieu of a tip – my 80 gig Ipod. Seeing her delight at the gift was priceless. A few moments later, I saw Ronnie. He wiped back tears – of joy, I would imagine—on seeing me finish the trail. In not so many words, he told me that I’d taught him and others not to take the trail for granted. What was a routine trip for him was a life-changing adventure for others like me who may never get to do it ever again. I gave him a handsome tip. At a restaurant verandah near the park entrance I ordered two chicken sandwiches and a large orange juice. Visitors brought in by buses were starting to clog the park entrance. I regarded the arriving tourists with just a wee bit sense of superiority. They would never know the torment, the rigors, and the joys that I had just experienced. My mud-spattered boots, my sweaty jacket, my walking stick , my body slumped back on the chair in thankful rest, told everybody and sundry of what I’d just done, if they cared to ask. I had dared to walk the Inca Trail and succeeded.  The following video from YouTube by another hiking group (expedition: Exodus) gives a good idea of the pleasures and travails of the Inca Trail! Posted by manniep at September 29, 2008 6:22:09am
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A JOURNAL: Archives for September 2008
