“Alellanchu,” we wave at the little girls peeking out from behind an adobe wall. You’ll still hear the Inca language, Quechua, on the Inca trails. We’d brought this greeting along for a ten day pilgrimage to Machu Picchu.
Ah-lay-yan-chu: Hello.
The girls giggle. They both have long black braids. As per tradition, they’re fastened in a loop, like reins.
One yanks the other’s rope of hair.
I imagine this happens a lot.
“Alellanchu!” They yell and chase each other up the hill as if we’re at only at sea level. We’re at nearly 3,000 metres.
Day 1: Hike Cachora to Santa Rosa Bajo
Ahead looks more like a topographic map than a route we’re about to follow.
I’d received a bird’s eye view as our taxi hugged the cliff on the ride to the trail head. Now, hearing the cab fade away, the silence of being nowhere sets in.
The adventure begins.
Lou fumbles a piece of chocolate cake into her mouth. The pin point turns had plastered it to the side of the take away container.
“Let’s hike to Machu Picchu for my 25th!” The idea began just a month earlier.
“This one, obviously.”
We’d selected the longest Inca trail in the guidebook: 10 days from the epic ruins of Choquequirao to the world wonder of Machu Picchu. Glaciers, waterfalls, villages, and lonely Inca ruins awaited our company every day.
“Huah!” I hoist my trekking backpack onto my knee.
“Ooooof,” and then slide it over my back.
I tug the shoulder straps, then loosen them a bit. I pull the backpack forward so it won’t bounce on the way down. Then, my favourite part, I yank on the hip belt while gyrating my hips side to side.
Finally, the 15 kilo pack is held up by my legs.
“Let’s go! Vamos!”
One foot after the other we slide down over 1,000 metres, through a burned down forest into a sun scorched valley.
A red bag blows from atop a broomstick: chicha, fermented corn alcohol, the Inca beverage of choice. It seems fitting that you still can get it here.
We didn’t take a tour. We were seasoned hikers, with gear and a guidebook. Oh, and a stubborn enjoyment of being uncomfortable.
We wanted to give the unknown and unexpected an opportunity to join us. They were good company.
I’m walking across the dirt dry valley floor when I notice the silence. There aren’t footsteps behind me.
“Can we stop?” Lou calls. I almost stumble.
Infested with sandflies.
That’s our guide book’s opinion of this valley. It was the one place we were not going to stop.
I look at the tall, athletic figure slumping in the heat behind me. Her eyes shimmer unfocused, mirrors for the mirages all around.
“Please?” She asks. I realise I’ve never heard her ask for help.
We set up camp.
Lou tucks in early, feeling better in the cool evening air. Heat at elevation sets with the sun. I scrub pasta from our plates, dazzled by the trail that day and the emerging one above.
The Milky Way, la Vía Láctea, is the path that walks the sky every night. Valley walls shelter me from any earthly light. I set my lens to ISO 3200, 13/1, f/3.2.
Click. Click. Spots of light dance through the trees and then pop up on the LED screen. It feels like I’m capturing celestial fireflies.
There’s got to be at least one shooting star. Lou could use a wish right now.
I wait.
None cross the sky.
Day 2: Santa Rosa Bajo… again
The morning after.
I slide Lou’s sleeping mat under one arm, and carry a bottle of water in my hand. I set up a bed in the back of a park ranger cabin. My skin relaxes in the cooler air between the adobe walls.
Lou stumbles in slowly and melts into her mat.
Now, most people feel pretty awful the morning after their birthday, but this wasn’t a hangover.
The night before, I heard hard, fast footfalls and then lurching behind the campsite.
“Never drink donkey water!” Lou cries waving a limp fist at the thatched ceiling.
We’d filled our bottles at a tour group rest stop yesterday. It smelled egg-y even after treating it with our fancy UV water filters.
Five minutes later, we watched as it slopped out of the mouths of thirsty donkeys directly into the basin. I’d poured mine out and risked dehydration. Lou had not.
“It’ll all end in ruins,” I’d joked as we started the trek. I meant Machu Picchu.
I fear the terrible joke had gone 1,000 metres down too far.
“Ouch!” I swat at the clouds of sandflies, killing one while three others land. I’ve already hosed myself down with Lou’s Australian strength 80% DEET bug spray.
I once had some 7% DEET that leaked, melting a panda shaped USB stick into a malformed zebra.
Yet, after passing a few hikers in shorts, legs raw with bites, I didn’t hold back on the spray.
Too bad the sandflies didn’t seem to melt, or to mind.
I perch on the horse bridge above the river in hopes that the breeze and lack of sand will keep the bugs away. An old hand-pulled cable trolley awaits some curious tourist below.
The mountain peaks loom over, watchful. They are the Apu, Inca mountain gods. Thankfully, they’re said to be protective and caring, most of the time.
I scratch my bleeding ankles. Damn it! Even suspended above the river, I’ve slapped ten bugs in the last five minutes. I hope this counts as a blood sacrifice.
The bridge divides the trail in two, the path winds out of the valley ahead and behind me.
One way leads back to the start, a trail head in the middle of nowhere. The other points onward to Choquequirao ruins and beyond, into an even deeper nowhere.
Today from the valley floor, I can’t see where tomorrow will lead.
“Oh Apu, please let her be ok,” I plead and go to check on Lou.
The simple things.
Lou takes a few careful sips of water. She drinks it as if she’s playing roulette, flinching for the trigger. We exchange looks more than words. Her eyes are brighter and more focused than before, but her lids are still at half mast.
I slouch into a seat at the ranger’s picnic table. Ducklings leap around my ankles, snapping up every fly they can catch.
Fact: Ducklings are more effective at sandfly defence than DEET. Although they might be equally less portable.
No one camps here, the bugs have kept it clear. The valley’s silence aches to be broken.
“This is cotton,” a fluffy wad appears in my hand. Enter the chatty park ranger. I’d talked to him about Canada last night, and Lou this morning.
“The owner planted a cotton tree, he also brought the ducks,” Chatty says.
Thank the Apu for that. The ducklings peep and squeak as their mother collects them in a pile.
“What’s that?” I ask. Within the cactus garden with the cotton tree, walls spring up.
“Wanna check it out?”
We peek inside the fancy new buildings. A stainless steel exhaust hood, six burner stove, and big wooden bar give away one’s purpose.
“Climb through here.”
I step through a window into the next structure. The rooms have bed frames and bunks, but no mattresses yet. Giant wooden fan blades wait to keep guests cool.
I consider it practice for future ruin exploration.
Can buildings be abandoned if they’ve never been inhabited?
“80 million dollars were invested… To build a highway or gondola or whatever they say they’re building now to bring tourists here.”
“That was years ago,” he shrugs.
I’d heard this before. Same story, different project/country/accountability. There were always promises and investments, but the locals barely paid attention anymore.
Money and timelines seemed to vanish, pieces emerging years later, kind of like the ruins.
“Hungry?” Chatty asks.
“Yea,” I’d forgotten lunch in the heat and flies.
“I never get to cook for anyone! Here, take a seat. Have some tea.”
It’s amazing how quickly kindness can lift even sun blind, fly bitten despair. I grab Lou some more water and give her the cotton to play with.
Her eyebrows do their what-were-you-up-to dance.
“Dinner date? You really have a way with rangers,” she winks.
“Yea, you’ll be fine,” I toss the bottle into her hands.
Outside, I sip sweet tea looking out at a glowing, wild garden. It’s full of green cactus and their blushing red fruits, tuna. Below me, the ducklings go back to work on the bugs.
I imagine the area packed with tents, selfie sticks, and buses of day trippers ignoring their guides as they trample the flora and fauna to take photos. Breathe.
At least the sand flies will be well fed. I shudder.
Machu Picchu awaits at the end of our trek. A “lost city” so heavily trafficked, you now get a designated time to enter (and also to get kicked out). Trains carry anyone with a ticket in and back out again.
It can be a day trip. A “Yea, I’ll meet you at Starbucks around 7. I’m just dropping by Machu Picchu in the afternoon,” trip.
Choquequirao ruins demand sacrifice, thankfully, the other type of human sacrifice.
It’s a three day hike in / camp out. And, the ruins sit at 3,000 metres.
Few choose to make the journey. Which is exactly why we’d chosen it.
That and conquering a 4,800 metre pass while using the Andes as a natural StairMaster every day.
We’d walk with modern day Inca along their ancestors’ trails. We’d stay with locals. We’d discover ruins we’d never heard of.
And, we’d have time alone with the ghosts and our imaginations.
Hopefully, the journey would take the pressure off of Machu Picchu. If we couldn’t have those experiences there, we’d have them on route, no worries.
If we continue. I sigh.
“Buen provecho,” eat well Chatty says.
He’d prepared Peru’s staple dish: rice and beans.
As the sun sets, Lou walks out, empty water bottle in hand and sleeping mat under arm.
“Well, you don’t get that on the tour,” she says.
Together, we walk back to our tents for a hopefully less eventful night.
Day 3: Santa Rosa Bajo to Choquequirao
Breakfast for the Princess.
Lou stands up, stuffing her sleeping bag into its sack. She accepts a cup of tea from me.
“No, I’m good. I don’t want to risk eating yet,” she says to the oatmeal.
“Chau, suerte!” Bye, good luck, we wave to the rangers.
The morning is a slow start, but damn we’re hopeful.
“I’m being a princess, I know. But, I need eggs,” Lou says 20 minutes into the hike.
Granola bars? No. Oatmeal? No. Chocolate? Definitely not.
Eggs.
Hmm. We’ve got an epic upward journey to complete after a late start. The stove is buried deep in the backpack and we only brought enough gas for a few days.
And yet, we’re continuing on.
Lou is walking and not vomiting. She’s soldiering up a steep path with hours ahead more. And, the clouds of sand flies have thinned to a mist.
Eggs don’t really seem like such a big ask.
As my mind switches to solutions, the path delivers one.
“Let’s ask the man at that mini shop,” I point ahead.
A small clay stove appears around a switchback. The tiny booth has seating, shade, and a small selection of pop and chocolate bars.
Farmers turned entrepreneurs line the Inca trails, which is great for tourists and locals alike. Today, this one is our saviour.
“Can we use your fire for a moment?” I ask, buying chocolate and a Gatorade knock off.
“Uh, sure, go ahead,” the shop keep looks us up and down.
He watches us set up and once he realises we won’t burn the place down, goes back to the stand.
My friend throws down her backpack and digs out the frying pan and eggs.
She gets scrambled eggs without needing the gas or stove.
You never know when the solution to your problems, or a tiny clay stove, is waiting around the next bend.
Tea party at 3,000 metres.
Today is “possibly the most difficult day on the trail,” according to our guidebook.
I stand on the ridge, looking down the dizzying scribble we just ascended. How did I get here? I blacked that out.
Laundry hangs on lines, homes double as hostels with hand painted signs on their walls, and fields of corn surround us.
It sits alone, as if plucked up by some giant hand and placed here high up in the Andes.
I walk up the stairs to the Park Ranger station ahead.
“Time to work your magic,” Lou’s eyebrows dance again.
A round older man in a khaki suit invites us to sit and have water.
“It’s about another forty minutes to the campsite,” he says.
“We don’t have an official map but you can look at this,” he smooths out a hand drawn map of the complex.
It could be a sketch found in some long, lost archaeologist’s pocket. It’s folded, crumpled and incomplete, as if lost in the jungle alongside the ruins. We snap a photo with our phones.
“I’m off work, I’ll walk you over.”
We learn that Khaki ranger studied indigenous medicine.
“This,” he points to a leaf that’s white on the bottom. “This is good for pain.”
“This mint,” he sticks some leaves under my nose. “Is called muña, it’s good for altitude sickness.”
“Is there one good for nausea?” I half joke. Lou glares.
“See, those are the terraces, there and there and there,” he points along the hillside ahead.
We stop dead. Grand terraces stripe the mountains, demonstrating the power of human minds and bodies working together.
These steep, densely jungled, rocky mountains gave way to civilisation.
“The site is only around 40% excavated,” Khaki says.
“And, those are the archaeologists’ huts,” he continues.
“Wha?” Our mouths gape.
Did he just show us where to find a bunch intelligent, daring young researchers who have ventured into the unknown to solve the mysteries of Choquequirao?
These people sound like good lunch company.
“There are a lot of bugs. You should come to the ranger hut to cook tonight. We’ll make tea,” Khaki delivers us to the campsite and waves goodbye.
I mentally pencil in lunch with the archaeologists for tomorrow. This evening, we’ve got tea with the park rangers.
“Good work,” Lou winks.
Somehow my social life is thriving at 3,000 metres, 40 kilometres into the middle of almost nowhere.
The good life.
We flop our backpacks onto the ground and follow them.
We’re camping in the midst of Inca ruins, on a terrace. You certainly can’t do that at Machu Picchu.
Finally, we’ve arrived at Choquequirao, a true Inca metropolis.
Yet, I see nothing. I feel nothing.
My muscles remember the hike that my mind cannot.
All of my senses are overwhelmed by one thing: exhaustion, emotional and physical. I can’t will myself to stand.
A tour group arrives on the terrace below, waving their hands energetically and talking casually. They crawl into tents already set up for them. A cook is making their dinner in a dining room yurt to the left.
I jump to my feet and put my tent together in record time. I look over and Lou has done the same. Funny what can motivate you.
We nod at each other, satisfied, and go to the ranger station. It’s tea time and we could use some little luxuries of our own.
The guards huddle around a cell phone screen. One throws up his arms and begins slapping his legs, rocking with laughter. They’re watching clips of Just for Laughs comedy pranks.
“Hey, that show is from Montreal, Canada,” I say.
I’m baffled to see something so familiar entertaining park rangers in the middle of the Peruvian Andes.
Lou boils some noodles and gives her usual talk about how she’s from Australia and not Austria. They sound similar in Spanish, well, in every language.
“Kangaroos,” she says, pulling her hands up to her chest like a tiny mouse. I smile, noting that her impression has grown to include a bounce.
“This is the muña mint tea, the one that is good for altitude sickness,” Khaki ranger says, filling our mugs. The scent of mint and moisture sooth my desert dry nose.
Then, I notice another unexpected scent.
“Popcorn!” We’re handed a big bowl to share. “Thank you!”
One ranger pops kernels over the fire, another still hasn’t looked up from the cell phone, while Khaki chats with Lou about other Inca ruins outside of Cuzco.
You certainly don’t get this on the tour.
I throw some popcorn in my mouth. Our journey is like watching a bizarre, unpredictable, awkward adventure film. I like that.
The rangers have moved to a wall plug to watch their videos. We wave goodnight and step into the evening air.
Within minutes, we tuck ourselves into our tents and fall into dreams a top Inca terraces.
Day 4: Choquequirao ruins
Sleeping through the stampede.
“Morning,” I say to Lou mid-yawn. I slept solidly. Elevation, exercise, and mint tea were the ultimate sedative.
“Wah!” I almost step ankle deep in poop.
“Yea, watch out!” Lou says. “I couldn’t sleep after they stampeded in. What if they’d trampled us?”
She looks at me as if there’s something I should say. I see all the evidence just feet from my tent. I squint, trying to squeeze out any recollection.
“My god, you didn’t hear them?”
I look around, mind and face blank. An entire herd of mules had been trampling, eating, and pooping around my tent for hours last night.
“Wow, that’s some deep sleep. Good thing it wasn’t a puma.”
“I’d be less impressed if I slept through a puma,” I laugh.
The flint flickers and the tiny gas-can stove lights. Lou heats up water. Cooking is simple on the trail when you carry all your food.
The tour group is still in their tents below. The cook whistles while he makes their breakfast. My mouth waters as the salty aroma of bacon reaches our terrace.
“They’re bringing them tea in bed!” Lou’s mouth hangs open. It’s true.
She hands me a cup of instant coffee. We stir hot water into oatmeal mixed with dried fruits and hot chocolate.
“Provecho,” enjoy. We clink mugs and drink with our pinkies out, smugly satisfied.
I’m a terrible person.
“Take the trail on the right and you’ll reach the terraces,” Khaki ranger directs us.
We check the hand-drawn map in our phones. The terraces are right beside the archaeologists’ huts, perfect.
We set out down the big, well defined trail to our right. Down, down, down we descend into the cloud forest. Bannisters and stairs appear.
“Weird,” there’s not usually such luxurious infrastructure.
Today is our time to explore Choquequirao. We’ll spend the morning at the massive terraces on this side, have lunch with the archaeologists, and then have a romantic sunset at the ruins above.
It’s our first day with plans.
Down, down, down. There’s no sign of terraces, and the trail seems to be moving away from where they should be.
Flickers of hope keep my feet moving. Terraces and the hunky archaeologists are waiting around each switchback.
Down, down, down. We can now see the river where Lou got ill.
I hate turning back. I once walked the entire ten kilometre track around Vancouver’s Stanley Park because I refused to turn back. I was smarter now, but I still hate it.
We stop.
“This isn’t the right trail,” we exchange a look that says this and more.
It says that we’ve lost the terraces and any chance of having lunch with the gorgeous, rugged archaeologists we’d dreamed up in our minds.
We pull out our cellphones and search the map photo.
There are no other paths. Wherever we are, no matter how many staircases and banisters it has, simply doesn’t exist.
We turn and walk up, up, up…
My bottom hits the grass back at the campsite, hours and several kilometres later. Hiking can be hard, but disappointment is more draining.
You don’t get an endorphin kick after.
A couple of kittens play in front of us. They come close, but never close enough to pet them. Useless cats.
One sits metres away. Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.
My chest is on fire. My shoulders are clenched. I’m breathing shallow and fast.
We’d come this far to see the ruins, and they sent us the wrong way. Why the hell is the trail not marked? Now, we’re exhausted and half the day is gone.
Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.
How could the best kept trail not be on the map?
Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.
“Oh god,” I realise. “I could kick this kitten! I could actually kick a kitten.”
“Umm, yea, we should eat,” Lou agrees.
Hanger is a real dangerous thing. Thankfully, the cure for all exhaustion is the same: food.
With cheese, bread, and chocolate devoured, and the urge to punt fluffy creatures subsided, my mind fixes on the crown jewels of Choquequirao.
Wonders of the world.
Until he appears.
A young, bearded man carrying a trekking backpack walks across the terrace below. He’s hiking alone, like us.
He stops, shifts his weight to one hip, and slings a single hiking pole across his shoulders.
While asking the park guard a question, he poses with one hand draped casually over each end of the pole, arms squared and slightly flexed.
Urggghhhraow. A sound somewhere between a growl, howl, and moan erupts nearby.
It doesn’t seem to be human, coming from some primal instinctual creature.
I point at Lou. She’s already pointing at me. Was that… us? What was once two hardened hiking women crumples into a pile of laughing children.
Surviving had released our inner animals. The guy looks up at us.
“There’s our first impression, guess we should introduce ourselves,” I say.
“Hey, I’m Janyl. Like Daniel, with a J,” we nod hellos.
“I’m from Israel,” he says and quickly interjects, “But I grew up in Ukraine, that’s where my family’s from.”
We pack up our cooking supplies.
“Heading up to the ruins?” He asks, zipping up his tent.
“Yea, ready to go?”
With that, three new, awkward, acquaintances go together towards ancient ruins.
Choquequirao sits saddled over a mountain ridge, like Machu Picchu. Its brick buildings and stone walls define the hill’s spine. The city descends in three steps.
The highest tier is a storage and housing area. The height helps preserve the food.
Atop the centre hill is a giant flat pitch that was once a watch tower (and a great party venue I’d imagine). Behind it lies the main plaza and housing for priests and farmers.
The bottom step is a ceremonial area, with buildings dedicated to worship. From here you can see the mountains, the skies, the glacier, and the river: all the elements of the Andes.
“Just call me Danyl. It’s easier, people do it all the time,” Janyl says.
“Nah,” Lou’s occasional Aussie twang appears. “You ever have a nickname?”
“Not really… my neighbour used to call me ‘Jan Jan’.”
“JAN JAN!” Lou and I blurt.
It’s cute, it’s nice, it’s familiar, just like our new friend.
Janyl, now Jan Jan, blushes and rolls his eyes. A small smirk betrays his scowl, or that’s what we tell ourselves.
Either way, the nickname isn’t going anywhere, so Jan Jan does. He wants to see the terraces on the far side. Lou and I have had enough of terrace hunting, for now.
With not another living soul around, I stroll in and out of rooms with the spirits, the invisible memories of Choquequirao.
The triangular doorways, built to withstand earthquakes, are icons of the Inca. It’s bizarre wandering through roofless buildings, like being inside a floor plan.
What appears to be bricked in windows are actually sacred ledges that would have held offerings and relics.
I stop to look through outside. These giant ruins are nothing more than a rowboat in the sea of Andes.
Lou and I sit and listen to the silence on top of the watchtower hill.
I understand the Inca’s reverence to the Apu, why their homes had places of worship built into them.
“Everything is so much bigger than us.”
Three tourists appear in the ruins below.
With that, Lou and I decide to find some alone-ness elsewhere. At Choquequirao, it’s easy.
The stone llama conspiracy.
Both sides of Choquequirao are adorned with an elaborate network of terraces. We’d missed one side earlier, but thankfully the other side is both more artistic and controversial.
“They’re very, very far down. Like 800 meters straight down,” says Jan Jan.
“Do you have any water?” He asks wiping sweat from his forehead with a wrist.
We hand him a spare bottle and he mumbles “Thanks” as he retreats into the shade of a building.
Despite the now tangible, sweat pouring journey, the sign for the infamous llama terraces beckons us onwards.
I like anytime the words llama and infamous can be used together.
Their infamy comes not from their cuteness but from their very existence. The Inca are famous for their precision engineered walls, but they weren’t big on decorating them.
So why, at Choquequirao, are there 24 white stone llamas dancing within the grey stone terraces? You simply won’t find this anywhere else.
Some believe it’s a hoax, designed to attract tourists to the ruins. Yet, I’d seen earthly shapes like flowers and people assembled in the bricks at other ruins, like Sacsayhuaman near Cusco.
The white stone here is widely available on site and you can’t deny that the Inca loved llamas.
They relied on llamas so much that their entire empire can be mapped out based on where herds were.
No llamas, no Inca.
Lou and I adopt their point of view, passing any plain faced terraces on route.
“No llamas, pass.”
Just as my feet begin to stumble, a baby llama and its mother emerge. They’re frozen in stone, forever grazing on a platform.
“Go all the way down to your left, there’s a small stage and you’ll get the best view,” Khaki ranger had advised.
Unlike this morning, he was right. The complete herd of infamous white stone llamas stares down at us, like murals from the walls.
Perhaps they are the work of a rogue Inca artist replacing grey stones with white.
The mystery remains to be imagined.
Our trudge back up feels victorious this time. As we enter the main plaza again, the well kept grass and perfect blue sky make every view calendar-worthy.
We’ve been rewarded, and thankfully no kittens were harmed.
“Ready for the beyond?” I ask Lou as we brush our teeth at the campsite.
Mrruf. She nods.
“Let me know if you hear any donkeys.”
Between the water and stampede, donkeys had interrupted our sleep both nights.
Jackasses.
Day 5: Choquequirao to Maizal
21 kilometres into the Sun.
“See you on the trail,” Jan Jan calls out.
Lou and I stop to say goodbye to Choquequirao. The trail passes the ruins and continues down the other side of the mountain.
“This is massive!”
A few kilometres later, as if making up for yesterday, a giant set of terraces cup the valley wall. Water pours from top to bottom through aquifers.
We fill (then promptly sterilise) our water bottles. We’re drinking from the very source and channels that Inca would have.
There’s a platform by a water shrine. Perched on the a terrace jutting out above the valley, I feel free. I spread my arms and feel the wind rise from the river kilometres below.
In this waking dream, I’m flying.
Slap. The flies bring me back to earth.
As we continue down, the greenery gives way to another desert valley.
We slide down the sand blasted hills with our feet casting clouds of dust. Unfortunately, these are the only clouds.
In this desert valley, there is nothing but rocks, a river, and opportunity.
“Let’s swim!” Lou says, removing her pack.
“No,” I say automatically. I can’t imagine pulling off these hiking boots. My feet are already seasoned and swollen into them for the day.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to get them back on.
The valley acts like a magnifying glass for the sun. Lou splashes some water my way.
“Come on!”
How often can you go skinny dipping in the middle of the Andes?
I shed my gear and tip toe into a boulder pool. The yellow rocks reflect the blinding sun.
Luckily, for a pale person, I don’t really sunburn. There’s a concept in astronomy called albedo, the amount of light reflected back by a body in space.
The word is very similar to albino. My theory is that by being incredibly white, my albedo is so high that it reflects almost all of the light back.
Don’t stand near me unless you want a tan.
“You look like a little river nymph,” Lou says snapping a photo.
I soak up as much water as I can. It’s 1,500 metres up the barren hillside into direct sunlight.
I wedge my shoes back on, and shoulder my pack. We start the ascent. One foot in front of the other.
Frère Jacques
Frère Jacques
Dormez-vous?
Dormez-vous?
This song from childhood French classes revolves in my mind, burning itself in with the sun. It keeps my rhythm as I step up, up, up.
Sonnez les matines
Sonnez les matines
Ding, ding, dong
Ding, ding, dong
One step, two step. The song repeats. It’s not in my language or karaoke repertoire. Yet, Father John, Frère Jacques, is carrying me up into the heavens.
Alex and Zander.
“Chocolate?”
“Thank you.”
Chocolate breaks are both motivating and sustaining. Plus, we have to eat it before it melts.
I flip open our guidebook to check progress. Unfortunately, it doesn’t measure distance in “number of verses of Frère Jacques.”
The curled damp pages have been penned in with advice like “NO” and “OTHER WAY” by its last bearer, Ann, from Montreal.
She’d been my bunkmate in a hostel. I spent a day showing her around the Sacred Valley where I lived. We’d split lunch at the market and she bought some flip flops.
On the morning she left, I’d discovered a treasure lined table. Bug spray, camp fuel, this Inca trail book, and the most Canadian kindness you can receive, duct tape.
The book contained all of the Inca trails in the valley: long ones, short ones, ones that connected ruins, and ones to hot springs. Best of all, it made them all completely accessible without a tour.
By now, Lou and I were unofficial best friends with the guide’s author, Alexander. We’d taken his advice, checked his notes on timelines and altitude gains, and planned our stops around his suggestions.
Alex was the best! He became our third wheel on the trail. If we got off track, he was there describing the boulders and bridges hidden around river bends.
He was our friendly, no nonsense, dad joke cracking trail guide.
But sometimes he changed, he transformed into Zander.
Zander was a bearer of bad news. Zander got us lost in the bush. Zander forgot to mention certain stretches of trail without water.
Where Alex was our hero, Zander was our nemesis.
I check in with him now. I wonder what’s ahead.
“Completely exposed, relentless switchbacks,” the book reads.
“ZANDER!” We curse the air.
I probably can’t fight a cow.
“The GPS says we’re within one kilometre,” Lou states. She’s good with facts.
Fantastic.
I go on ahead enjoying the higher, fresher air and increasingly green farmlands around. Getting out of the desert I feel more alive and less like I’m going to die.
I walk the thin path, bracing myself between the wall on my left and hiking pole on my right.
“Wahhhh!” A set of horns on a giant square head lunge at me.
I’m reminded of the 15 kilo weight behind me as I stagger backwards.
A noble cow stands guard. Her calf waits behind her.
I clap my hands, wave my poles and clang them together. I make myself big and loud and weird. This was what I was taught to do to scare off a cougar.
Yet, I can almost hear the cow quoting Gandalf: “You shall not pass!”
A mother’s love and protection stand between me and needed rest as the light fades.
“We have a problem,” I stroll back to meet Lou.
“A rockslide, a bridge is out, you’re injured?” Lou guesses.
I explain the true horror ahead.
“Just a cow? Well, let’s see if we can get her to move,” she suggests.
“Maybe this will work. Tshhht Tshhhht!”
I’d heard farmers using this sound to direct bulls down public streets. If it could move giant beasts, perhaps I could speak this cow’s language.
The mom looks at me and turns slowly, not afraid but moving. We follow her at a lazy pace towards the fields ahead.
In twilight, finding the remote, two house village of Maizal seems impossible. It could be anywhere in these forested hills.
Suddenly, a something flickers ahead like a lighthouse.
“Jan Jan!” We yell and run to greet him.
He rolls his eyes.
“What took you guys so long?”
“Stuff,” we mutter. We’re too exhausted and embarrassed to explain the skinny dipping and cow herding situations.
“Hola,” a lady appears. She’s wearing the bright patterns and long fastened braids of the Andes. She’s the señora, the hostess of the house.
“This house is mine, the other is my uncle’s but he’s never here,” she explains.
She’s an entrepreneur. Now that the trail from Choquequirao to Machu Picchu is becoming popular, business is walking her way.
We pay to camp on her lawn with the sheep, and restock our chocolate stash at her store.
Ahhhhhh. The cool night feels like sitting in the river. It pours over me as we eat dinner.
Lou, Jan Jan, and I smoke and lay under the endless stars until the clouds and bugs get too thick.
Day 6: Maizal and Inca town
Everyday Inca.
Rrrrrrrrok. All night the thunder crashes without rain. It’s not a storm; It’s a glacier. The sound bounces off of the mountains, amplifying it.
It isn’t the only thing that had crashed in the night. Poor Lou’s tent pole had snapped.
“Really?” She snipes. “There wasn’t even wind.”
After a couple hard days of trekking and vomiting, and her tent throwing a tantrum, we decide an extra day in Maizal is ok.
The señora passes by with her mule, she’s riding six hours to the next village. She won’t be back for a couple days.
“She mentioned last night that there are ruins nearby,” says Jan Jan. “Wanna go?”
Lou stays to fix her tent while Jan Jan and I take on the trail.
These ruins wouldn’t have a plaza or grand terraces or shrines. We are headed to a village. We’re off to see the remains of the simple life of Inca times.
As we push branches out of our faces, there’s no sign of a clear trail. I’m navigating with the señora’s directions via Jan Jan’s memory.
Take the trail to the left. This left, or that left? There are too many lefts.
Finally, we find a left that works. Within the bushes and brambles and flowers emerges the foundations of human lives. The bricks are big and awkward and of all different shapes.
Trees grow out of the doors and windows.
I step inside a home, wondering who had done so before. Travellers? Messengers to Machu Picchu? A son bringing food for dinner?
The centre of a room has a well worn stone. Someone once kneeled here, grinding grain. In another room, the soil is darker in the centre. A family once kept warm around a fire.
It feels so lived in, so cozy, so human.
I sit down and join them.
How much rice for a woman?
Had the señora really left us with her house? Had we become the sole inhabitants of Maizal?
“How was it?” Lou asks us as we walk into camp. Her tent stands a bit taller and so does she.
“A man is here now, I think he’s the señora’s husband.”
Jan Jan goes up to the house to meet him.
“I’ll see if we can get a deal for dinner,” he says. We’d find out how his “expert bartering skills” held up here.
“I hope he doesn’t sell us for food,” Lou jokes.
“Hey, if we help cook it’s only two pesos,” Jan Jan says. That’s a fantastic deal.
Lou and I wash a few potatoes, the work is slim. The señor is friendly and makes us muña mint tea, snapping up the plant from outside.
We supervise his cooking and chat with him. He went to Cusco when he was younger and it was too much bustle for him. He never went back.
He loves to eat eggs, and loves his chickens.
He flips two perfectly cooked eggs on top of rice.
Buen provecho. Enjoy, he says and prepares another plate.
We spend dinner high in the Andes with someone who has spent little time in anywhere else.
He’s a very chatty man, I wonder if it’s because of the isolation.
It’s not.
“He was really into you girls,” Jan Jan tells us on the way back to camp.
“What?” Lou says.
“He asked before dinner, which one of you would like him. I said I didn’t know,” red floods his face.
“See, I knew he’d try and trade us for food!” Lou says.
Jan Jan shrugs and we settle in for another night, our presence tripling the population of Maizal.
Intestines for breakfast.
Guinea Pigs run across our feet, giggling. Sometimes a happy coo or a surprised shriek erupts from the pile in the corner.
They’re the cheerful breakfast crowd at Chez Maizal.
“These ones aren’t old enough to eat yet,” the señor tells us.
It feels a bit Hansel and Gretel, like he’s fattening up the children.
I look at the cauldron boiling over the fire, and wonder…
Phew. The smell of rice fills the air. I salivate, imagining fluffy rice topped with one of the señor’s cherished eggs.
We’re called over for breakfast, our host plunks sticky spoonfuls of rice into bowls. Then, he piles on fried potatoes and tops it with some kind of meat.
Lou takes a few bites. “It’s beef,” she says.
I get the second scoops, smaller pieces. I start to chew, and chew, and chew. It has an earthy taste. What is this?
“Intestines and meat,” our host confirms. “They’re good for you.”
While Lou got the meat portion, I’d lucked out and got the intestine share. At this point, I start eyeing the guinea pigs.
That one might be big enough…
Day 7: Maizal to Yanama
Upwards into the Abyss.
Lou and I walk into a white oblivion morning. It isn’t fog. We are in the birthplace of clouds.
The morning sun stirs them, creating windows. Peek-a-boo views of mountains and glaciers appear and disappear.
I’m looking at the world through a telescope, the landscape is revealed piece by piece.
“Look, I judge people who play music in nature as much as the next person,” Lou begins an odd disclaimer.
“But, can I have a moment?” She’d been waiting to listen to the Avatar soundtrack.
Vines, mosses, and hanging succulents dance in and out of the mist. Each shade of green throws itself against the grey fog until it breaks through. Reaching, ancient roots hold up the walls of the trail.
She’s right. We are in a different world.
“Let’s do it.”
The classical music plays, and rocks seem to hover in the cloud windows.
“I’m glad I don’t have that kinky tail thing. I’ll hug trees but…”
The terrain switches to rocks and balls of fluffy grass. Leaning rocks form a triangular entrance to an old mine shaft.
I step inside, my cell phone flashlight creates a glowing haze in the air. As the temperature drops inside, the humidity rises.
I shiver in the darkness, more afraid of encountering a person than an animal. We are wedged into the tunnel in our clumsy backpacks.
Ugh. I nearly step in something worse. People are still using this cave… as a washroom.
On that note, we walk back towards the light.
Waiting for the glacier.
“Four!” Lou yells, teeing off a rock with her trekking pole. The distance today is the shortest on the trek. We’ve got nowhere to be and nothing but time.
We look over the ridge, the town peaks out below.
According to Alex in our guidebook, there should be a stunning view of a glacier to our left. But, like everything else, it’s in the clouds.
“Let’s wait for the glacier,” I suggest.
“Could be awhile,” Lou winks.
I smile imagining the glacier coming to meet us for a round of rock golf.
The clouds lift their skirt a little, teasing us with the snow cap above.
We bring out water and snacks. Time passes but we don’t care. Today we’re moving at glacial pace.
We take off our packs and picnic on ideas.
We discuss love, being badass hikers, high school, how much we’d love some cheese right now. The topics move from philosophical to hunger.
Bushes of bright purple flowers frame the trail all around. Yellow and white wildflowers wave at us from the grass.
The Inca believed heaven was “an earthly paradise with flower-covered fields and snow-capped mountains.”
“We’re in Inca heaven,” I say.
“Almost, but there’s no glacier,” Lou replies.
Phew.
Our mortality insured, we hike out of almost heaven…
We did it our way.
A woman appears in a field. She’s looking right at us like she knew we were coming.
“You want to camp tonight?” She hollers. “Over here.”
She waves us into her yard. As we walk through the gate a few other señoras lean out from behind their homes. They see that we’re already taken.
“That guy over there said his friends were coming so I watched for you.”
“Jan Jan!” We yell. He rolls his eyes. We’ve made it home for another night.
“Want chicken for dinner?” Our hostess asks. We nod.
As we set up tent, Jan Jan watches the señora walk into the backyard and pick up a chicken by the ankles. The bird seemed more amazed at being upside down than concerned.
“It’ll be fresh and free range,” I say.
“What’s that smell?” Lou asks. We look up.
Meat hangs like festive bunting on clothing lines crisscrossing the path to the washroom. The children start bringing it down, like laundry. It was dried in the heat of the day.
“You don’t get that on the tour,” Lou says.
Needing some time to process the butcher shop we’ve checked into, Lou and I go to grab beers at the local store.
“Hello,” a group of hikers calls out to us. They’re cyclists from Argentina and France.
“I’m biking South America, too!” Lou says, excited to meet her kin.
“We’re just doing this hike as a side trip, we came from Choquequirao today,” a tall, lanky guy says.
“Today?” We ask baffled. It had taken us two days. They crossed nearly 40 kilometres and two mountains in one day?
“We didn’t have much time to check out the ruins. We’re grabbing a bus to town tomorrow, then one to Machu Picchu. Then, it’s back to our bikes,” he explains, hands on his hips, smile beaming.
We wish them “good luck” through hanging jaws and retreat with what’s left of our own badass hiker personas.
“Did they picnic in Inca heaven? Submerse themselves in Avatar? Did they go skinny dipping?” I ask.
“No,” Lou agrees.
By the time we hand Jan Jan a beer, our egos have recovered. Just like there’s nothing wrong with a tour, there’s nothing wrong with running the trail either.
Life is great, everyone can choose their own adventure.
“Cheers,” our trail family salutes to doing the hike, our way.
“Dinner,” our host mom calls us inside with the children. We step into the small adobe kitchen and dining area that’s separated by a hanging sheet.
Two things fill the space, laughter and the scent of a hot, home cooked meal.
A generous amount of chicken and two potatoes sit on a bed of rice, bathed in a creamy tomato sauce.
“Is this what chicken actually tastes like?” Everything tastes like chicken, like savoury salty soup broth meat. Never before had I experienced its distinctive flavour.
And the texture is so moist, so bouncy. Along with the balanced tomato-y, buttery, tangy, sweet sauce, this stands as one of the best meals I’ve ever enjoyed.
“Riciiiiiiiiiiiiiisimo.” I tell our host, dropping off the plates.
This translates to “incredibly delicious” in Spanish. The longer you hold the second “i,” the more deliciousness the word conveys.
She blushes, laughs and brings out tea and instant coffee.
The lines that mark us.
“Good thing it smelled so good in there,” I say sniffing my shirt. It’s been a few days since our river bath.
The home has an outdoor, ice cold shower.
“If you sing it makes the cold easier,” someone once told me.
I step inside the stall and balance my clothes on top of the door. I turn the garden hose handle, body tensed.
“AaaaaAAAAAOOOOOOoooooh,” I belt out opera in octaves. Eventually, my muscles numb enough to appreciate the cooling, and any inflammation chills out.
Giddy, clean, and fed I settle in with our trail tribe at the campsite.
Jan Jan is rolling a smoke. Somehow, in the middle of almost-nowhere, the three of us have formed something familiar. It feels very homey no matter where that home is.
“Where did you get that badass scar?” Lou asks what we’ve been thinking this whole time.
Jan Jan has a classic bad boy scar, separating his eyebrow at the end. Yet, he seems so un-bad boy. Maybe he’d fallen out of a tree as a child. Maybe he got into a fight to defend a friend.
Jan Jan stops rolling and looks us both in the eye.
“Gaza,” he says.
All I can see is the ground. The weight of the shame holds my eyes down, as if I could bury it.
How did I not consider this reason? I’d met countless Israelis travelling after their mandatory service and he fit the age. He just didn’t fit the image.
“I’m so sorry,” Lou and I mutter.
There’s a stiff pause while we wait for something to say that would somehow make it right. Instead, the silence holds, unbreakable.
Jan Jan is kind and calm and patient. He take our bad jokes. He lets us call him by his childhood nickname.
He’s a good bargainer. He didn’t sell us for food. He’s a faster hiker. He always shared his smoke.
He doesn’t consider himself from any one particular country.
And, he has a scar from Gaza.
“Smoke?” I see his extended arm reaching through the silence.
“Thanks,” I say, both to the offer and this pardoning.
Under the stars, our bodies stretch out and melt into the hillside.
The incomprehensible scale of the universe works its magic. It outweighs the immensity of the hike and all of the paths that led us here, to this spot, together.
Day 8: Yanama to Totora
Passing condors.
The 4,800 metres pass awaits us today. It’s the highest point in the hike.
I get Frère Jacques ready.
Lou and I walk down an old path beside a new road.
A man, woman, and tiny dog are leading a donkey into the morning sunlight. Did we wake up yet? They could be a vision from the past.
A rainbow woven textile has been rolled around something and looped across the lady’s back. Both wear big brimmed hats, the iconic style of Andean people.
The valley undulates felted by peat green grasses. Giant stone walls, handmade, flow from the mountain sides to the cut out river below. They divide the valley into quadrants.
“There!” As we round the base of one mountain, a glacier appears in the clouds.
This one looks like it will clear, but today we don’t have time to wait.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Lou and I step up the trail to the pass.
Frère Jacques…
I’ve noticed that elevation begins to affect me at over 4,000 metres. I can see but don’t feel secure in depth perception. I feel constantly off balance. Breathing is easy but it doesn’t seem to do much.
Breathe in, breathe out.
As a child I had asthma, it was triggered by allergies. Unfortunately, grass was the allergen. Grass is everywhere.
I got used to functioning on less oxygen.
When I’d inevitably come down with pneumonia, I became good at breathing deeply, calmly, and steadily.
I never thought of breathing as a skill until I began meditation and now mountaineering.
My diaphragm must be pretty buff.
I pull air deep into my belly, pushing it out a bit faster. Lou and I take more and more breaks the higher we go.
Part way up, we stop and take in some sugar and I restock my coca leaves. These leaves relieve inflammation and, like caffeine, ease blood flow.
They helped the Inca thrive at altitude. They’re certainly helping me now.
I grab a few of the dry leaves and gently chew them, enough to make them wet. I wedge them in my cheek and place a piedra, “rock” alongside them. The rock activates the coca leaves. It makes my mouth go numb.
“Look!” We use less words at this height. The glacier has woken up and cleared the clouds.
We’re the only living souls here to see this moment. My breath is taken away by the Andes.
I feel high.
“We are high,” Lou says.
A great shadow with fingered wings flickers overhead. It’s bald head rests on a ringed neck cushion. It’s the lord of the Andes, a condor.
They live above all other birds, they’re a measure of altitude.
We are high. We’re hiking with condors.
It circles us again, to make sure we’re not quite dead yet, and then crosses the pass.
“Come on!” Lou says.
She’d formed a fellowship with these birds cycling across the Argentinian pampa. Often the only company she had in the endless flat expanses were these vultures, these hideous, magnificent, sacred birds.
Spirits lifted, we reach the pass.
“We started from the bottom… now we’re here.”
We dance and sing giddy with elevation.
I thank the valley spirits and we cross the mountains yet again.
Turkey town.
The trail becomes mundane, as if to give our minds a break from the awe this morning.
It’s amazing but even after five minutes and only a few feet less of elevation, everything feels easier.
We arrive at the river in no time.
“Take the new bridge they’ve built,” Alex tells us in the guidebook.
We reach the end of the road. Cement and steel wires dangle into the river below. Whoa.
“Zander!” We curse.
With homes all around and a community on the other side, there must be another crossing. Cars and trucks come this way.
Now and then we see some tree trunks used to bridge the river. Although the current is low, it’s strong.
We select the least sketchy crossing and hop from rock to tree to rock across the river.
Suddenly, we’re walking on streets, gravel roads, but streets nonetheless.
“Jan Jan?” we call. This is the first place it’s difficult to find someone.
Lou and I discover a flowering garden with lovely hosts. We set up camp. Mules are led up and down the roads, their backs bearing what seems to be potatoes.
Suddenly, a group stampedes away. They’re frightened, bolting.
Two giant turkeys, fluffed out and fabulous strut up behind them.
They own this town.
With the setting sun we fade, and the altitude of this morning lulls us to sleep.
Day 9: Totora to Lucmabamba
We only got lost once.
“Jan Jan!” he walks by as we’re packing up camp.
“Hey, I hitched a ride over the pass,” he says.
“Cheater.”
Only one truck had passed us yesterday. A big cargo truck with a canvas covered back. I hope he didn’t hear me singing.
“I looked for you guys, but you never came over the bridge. How’d you get here?”
Huh. Somewhere there was another bridge? Big enough for cars to cross? I blame our blindness on the altitude.
Lou and I start the day following a cow path that runs alongside the road. Walking on a flat, ugly road isn’t as appealing as fields with wildflowers.
And, trees! There are so many trees here. We’ve officially broken the treeline in our descent.
At first the path is clear, the road and power lines are never more than 20 meters away. Then a cliff appears on one side, a bramble forest to the other.
“Let’s try up here, I think we can back to the road,” Lou says.
We’ve reached an impasse.
“I’ll go first then you pass up the backpacks,” Lou says.
We crawl and climb, the power lines taunting us through the trees. But no matter our efforts, the road remains out of reach.
Well, damn.
We’d gotten cocky on the trail. We turn back and walk in silence until we reach the start, a kilometre back.
Lou and I sit and eat peanut butter and chocolate, to cut the hanger and ensure no friendships or kittens will be harmed.
“Well.”
“Well.”
“I can finally turn back willingly,” I say.
“Cows are great teachers,” We laugh.
Chasing waterfalls.
The trail joins the Salkantay route today, our original Inca Trail choice.
We enter the first store and immediately leave, the prices are twice as high as in the remote villages despite the accessibility.
Across the road, campsites with rows of pre-assembled tents await the next groups.
We search for the view of the Salkantay glacier. Found it! As in many of my friends’ photos, today it’s in the clouds.
I’m glad we chose the other pass.
The path cuts into a cliffside forest. Leaves and a breeze from the river below keep us cool, and the trail delivers a reward.
“Wild strawberries!”
The entire wall of the trail is speckled with berries. Lou and I feast like tiny birds, flitting from one spot to another.
“There should be a 300 foot waterfall, somewhere,” Lou says.
“There’s no way we’d miss that?” I ask, unsure after missing the bridge yesterday.
Alex wouldn’t lead us astray.
As if in response, we’re misted by a four tiered waterfall, cutting the trail in half ahead.
No one is around. I throw my backpack down, haul off my shoes and sweaty trail clothes, and stick my feet into the pool below.
This is freedom.
You don’t get this on a tour.
Fruit off the Loom.
“You’ll arrive at a Granadilla orchard,” Alex says. How idyllic.
Granadilla is a type of sweet passion fruit. Unlike its sour cousins, you can eat it right off the vine.
The spherical, orange fruits decorate the vineyard like patio lanterns.
We walk to a little barn with a window shop.
Lou buys a few and hands me one. It feels hollow and light. I tap the hard shell.
“They’re perfectly ripe, you have good timing it’s peak season,” the owner says.
I scratch at the shell with my nails.
“Do you have a knife?” I ask Lou.
Crack. Lou presses her fingertips in a ring around the centre, breaking it in half. She cracks it open like an egg.
“What is this!?” I burst out laughing and crack mine open.
It looks like tadpole eggs swirling around the centre. The seeds are encapsulated in fruit juice.
“Then you just slurp out the inside,” Lou says.
Slurrrrrrrrrrpch. The little beads are refreshing and sweet and somewhat citrus-y.
I wish we had more to crack. This is officially the funnest fruit I’ve eaten.
The butterfly effect.
The zone near Santa Teresa they call selva alta literally translating to high jungle. Everything becomes green and lush. There are waterfalls and hot springs.
The water and volcanic aftermath has an interesting side effect.
“Butterflies, there are butterflies everywhere!” Lou dances ahead on the trail.
With every step, they shimmer upwards. We are trekking through clouds of butterflies.
I take my steps carefully.
They’ve come to eat the minerals off of the ground, made available wherever the water breaches the surface. The path beside every stream is made more magical by the wings fluttering all around.
It’s so perfectly beautiful, like something from a dream.
“Look!” Ahead we see a pile of wings all covering something, away from the water. It looks like a strange flower with a million petals.
“It’s… mule poop,” we laugh.
It turns out that butterflies can make anything beautiful.
Karate kids.
Bunting spills over the streets.
“They’re celebrating our arrival!” We joke as we walk into a real town.
The faded colours suggest a festival had just passed, but also, that this was civilization.
Honk. I move out of the way of the first car I’ve seen in days. Stores and homes and churches and hotels and streets with names surround us.
“Hey!”
“Jan Jan!” We yell.
“I’m just grabbing stuff from the store, I’m camped out down there.”
We go together down to the hotel/restaurant/yard-that-can-be-a-campsite. Inside, locals eat dinner together.
The owner asks if we’d like to eat with their family later.
“Yes, please,” Lou and I set up our tents. Tonight we have a little help from some little friends.
The owner’s son and cousin have been kicked out so the adults can clean up and make dinner.
“My friend is a ninja,” I tell them. Lou stands up as if on command.
“Yea, wanna learn some karate?”
Jan Jan and I laugh as Lou and the boys challenge each other to summersaults, high kicks, and some really impressive barrel rolls.
Our campsite is now an Australian dojo.
As is inevitable, Luis Fonsi’s serenading Despacito spills out of the house.
“Don’t you know the words?” The boys, aged eight and 11, ask.
They belt out statements that adults would blush saying. We learn all about Luis Fonsi’s seduction tactics from children who certainly know all the words, but not their meaning.
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel the same about this song,” I say.
“Dinner,” our new host mom waves us all inside.
“No way, this is my favourite film!” Lou is blown away. Jackie Chan’s fists fly across the TV screen in Shanghai Noon.
I had no idea Lou really was actually a ninja… in her childhood dreams.
How did so much karate fit into one night, in Peru?
I lay down on my thin sleeping mat. Stiff as a board with my back against the ground.
I certainly feel like I’ve fought a few battles myself.
Day 10: Lucmabamba to Llactapata
Starbucks before Machu Picchu.
This morning places us one day away from Machu Picchu.
We could push through, over the Llactapata hill and reach the tourist trap of Aguas Calientes by night fall. Then, race up Machu Picchu tomorrow and be done.
Jan Jan choses this route.
“See you there!” He says.
Or, we could leave later, marvel through the coffee farms at our own pace, wave at the locals harvesting beans, and sip coffee under the same canopy where it’s grown.
Oh, and set up our tents with a view over Machu Picchu and then frolic through ruins still engulfed in the forest.
“I could use a second cup,” I laugh and the official choice is made.
Mmmmm. The coffee shack provides a sampling of bean roasts and local honeys. We sit back and have another round of coffees, 40 minutes after our first.
With each sip, I taste the flowers and earth of the Inca.
The Inca trail that leads up Llactapata is one of the most well preserved segments. Old stones and stairs offer assistance to travellers to this day. There’s something so human about staircases, some sort of charming helpfulness.
Humans innately seek to make the path easier.
We climb Llactapata, the sister hill to Machu Picchu. It’s steep but lined with streams. We sit and listen to them, watching the butterflies dance around each waterfall and pile of mule droppings.
We reach the top timelessly. It seems early, but we feels like we left days ago.
“I run a little store down below,” beams the campground caretaker. “Stop by tomorrow for juice, it’s the one with the white tables.”
“Ooooh, juice,” Lou contemplates. Fresh fruit has been slim on the trail.
We nod and head to the clearing. There is so much air up here, so much sky flowing through the mountains.
In it, countless Apu stare back at us. We are in a place of the gods, in their kingdom.
“Is that…” We focus in on what looks like a rocky ridge across the valley. It sits organically within the scenery.
We wait while the geometric shapes and terraces take shape. As our eyes make sense of the wonder, our minds catch up.
“Machu Picchu.” I speak its name from the floor of my being to the walls of the structures and mountains.
A dream, something of stories and legends, suddenly solidifies into the stones beyond. A picture embedded in neurons meets the tangible physical thing.
Words go silent. We’re here.
In the midst of revelation, I lay down my tent, position takes priority. I’ve spent many nights sliding downhill into a corner in exchange for sunrises and sunsets with a view.
Thankfully, that sacrifice isn’t needed today.
“There’s a sink set up where you can sponge bathe and wash clothes,” the cheerful caretaker says.
It’s early and hot in the sun. We rinse ourselves out of our clothes and hand them to the elements to dry.
Now, my undergarments have flown in some pretty majestic places lately. I remember them drying in view of glaciers at Maizal days ago.
Yet, now they flutter in the breezes off of Machu Picchu.
“I think my panties might be slightly magical,” I say, half smirking, half waiting for confirmation.
Lou raises her eyebrows.
It’s confirmed. I’m high on life (and thus my panties are magic).
Better than this?
“Are these it?”
“Are there more?”
Walking the dirt trail between dense trees and undergrowth, we see square stones sticking out of the earth. Inca ruins or simply boulders? We’ll never know.
Although Llactapata looks out over Machu Picchu, the humble ruins remained in its shadow until recently.
We reach the first buildings. Their stone walls are held up by primitive lean-tos. I explore a long hallway where all windows face Machu Picchu. Although we’re kilometres away as the crow flies, the Inca were expert surveyors.
“I wonder if Machu Picchu ever looked like this?”
Tree roots embedded in the grout seem to hold the rooms together more than the lean-tos.
Llactapata’s position, storehouses for food, and shrines suggest with may have been an important rest stop for those on route to Machu Picchu, ceremonial or practical.
We take our rest and continue down the trail. The path opens into a field and a lower campsite complete with a restaurant. We’re greeted by donkeys but no people.
Rain begins to fall while the sun shines behind us, pouring onto Machu Picchu like a spotlight. Without it, the ruins would be hard to detect, just another boat within the waves of the Andes.
“Let’s grab a beer,” I point to the restaurant as the rain picks up.
There are few places as amazing as a hill overlooking Machu Picchu to grab a cold one.
Lou and I jam ourselves under an eaves trough on a bench outside the restaurant. We don’t even want glass between us and this view.
The señora comes out with two cold beers, the picture on the can is Machu Picchu. She sits and chats with us about her daughter, the crowds that come by, and how she’d been to Machu Picchu but preferred the view here.
“Normally, this place is full from the Salkantay treks, but it’s Thursday,” she says.
We’re lucky. Lou and I crack open our beers.
Rain pours off the eves directly onto our kneecaps, soaking us to our feet.
Does it matter? We’re drinking cold beers overlooking Machu Picchu!
Our cans make a dull thunk.
“Salud!” Cheers!
Could it be more magical?
A shimmer appears to the right, a hologram on the pouring sheet from the sky. Seven colours, the entire spectrum we can see.
“There’s a rainbow… over Machu Picchu,” we stutter.
“No way!” We jump up, hug, and clang our cans together another time.
Yes, yes this is the most magical place on earth! What’s more jaw dropping than a icon of civilization, situated in a rolling mountain landscape, with a rainbow on top?
As if in response, the air to the left of the ruins begins its own subtle shimmer.
“No…” I mouth.
A second rainbow dazzles on the other side. A frame of natural phenomenon surrounds the relic.
I take photos to make sure it actually happened. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll all have been a hallucination.
Lou and I nearly dance back to our campsite.
A group of Americans hiking the Salkantay route are sitting around a fire… beside our drying underwear. We make tea and join them.
“How were the ruins below? We got in late today,” a girl asks, wrapped up in a sleeping bag.
“My scale of amazing just upgraded,” I say.
From now on, the universe has to compete with “double rainbow over Machu Picchu fantastic.”
Day 11: Llactapata to Aguas Calientes
The slow train to civilisation.
I slap at the buzzing device beside my head, eventually finding the “stop” button. I spin around in my sleeping bag, and worm my way to the front. It’s freezing cold at elevation until a couple hours after sunrise.
Ziiiiiiip. I try and be quiet, opening the door. Nope, no world wonders yet. They’re still one shade in a gradient of greys.
I tie back the tent flaps and wait. Soft light grows all around the mountainsides and their colours awake. Sunrise overlooking Machu Picchu is subtle, but the morning light brings clarity we hadn’t had the night before.
“Your tea, M’Lady,” I call into Lou’s tent with a faux British accent.
“Tea? In bed?!” Her face hangs open.
“Thank you,” her eyes seem shinier than usual.
“You chose the right tour,” I wink.
I don’t know what it is about tea in bed, but there are things we all hold dear. What I do know is that when you learn what they are for other people, do them. There’s no greater joy.
We descend from the heavens to the tiny restaurant/convenience store/rest stops at the bottom.
The one with white tables… none of the have had tables so far.
“There!” Lou sees the shop of our cheerful campground host.
“Hi girls!” The cheerful owner beams at us. “Want some juice?”
She’d read our minds.
Lou sips orange juice and I opt for papaya. A lady comes over with a weighty colourful bag on her back. Cheerful owner invites her to a bench.
She unwraps the blanket bag and papayas, avocados, and even a watermelon spill out. We look up, the whole trail is an orchard of produce.
“Try this,” the owner hands us tiny, finger-shaped avocados. “Just peel off one end and squeeze it out, there’s no pit.”
We eat the strangest, smallest, and most flavourful avocados I’ve tried. Cheerful owner buys some fruits and refills our giant glasses of juice.
The Americans wave as they walk by. We’re in no rush to reach the Las Vegas of Peru.
Aguas Calientes, the city below Machu Picchu, is the first literal tourist trap I’ve heard of. There are purposefully no roads in, or out.
You have two options: pay an extortionate amount to take a quick train ride or walk 11 kilometres down the tracks.
The train companies are making bank.
It’s not hurting tourism. There are so many people heading to Machu Picchu that the park has imposed a quota, a limit. You get to choose morning or afternoon to visit the ruins. Often, they sell out.
After trekking the Inca trail in silent exhausted pilgrimage and having entire ruins to ourselves, Machu Picchu will be culture shock.
Point of no return… or entry.
The railway track provides a good space between us and the crowds. Shops have popped up all along them, like a little train village. They have a strange tiki-bayou vibe. Some have full menus, others just sell beer and drinks.
All have a bathroom you can pay to use.
Little by little we get initiated into this new world. We smell them first: perfume, cologne, people who haven’t skipped their hot, daily shower in years.
Then we see them, carrying brand new North Face daypacks that haven’t seen their first hour of use. These groups are from Agua Calientes, making the most of their morning by walking the tracks.
They arrived by train, probably all the way from Cusco.
Exhausted, and still stubborn, we stumble uphill along the rails. Slow train after slow train passes by, most nearly empty.
“Hola! Wooooooo!” Lou and I yell up at the train workers, pumping our fists.
ToooooToooooo. The trains greet us. Workers smile and laugh, bored with nothing to do.
“Jan Jan!” We thrown our hiking poles across our shoulders and pose, just like the first day we met.
He laughs and mirrors us.
“It was good…” Jan Jan says. Good?
“There were a lot of people.”
He’d been to Machu Picchu this morning.
“I’m glad we went to Choquequirao.”
We hug, exchange Facebook information, and he heads down the train tracks while we turn up them.
“Jan Jan!” We yell once more, waving.
He smiles and waves back. We once more head down our own paths.
Just good?
“DO NOT ENTER,” reads a sign at one end of a train tunnel.
Maybe this is a literal sign.
There is no pass around it. We look over our shoulders to make sure no train is sneaking up behind us.
We storm on ahead. Whatever disaster awaited us, we had chosen it with this trail. Besides, I had to know: was Machu Picchu really just good?
Welcome to Aguas Calientes. The name translates to “Hot Waters.”
“Damn, we’re in hot water now,” I laugh to myself.
Although the English expression seems on point, I hope we’re not in trouble.
The town is essentially a train station. The tracks roll up the cobblestone roads. People run out to meet them, carting off boxes on dollies, bicycles, and push carts.
A few tourists get off and are immediately collected and brought to a hotel.
We check into the first hotel we find, not wanting to go a single step deeper without a shower and rest.
The lady at the desk looks us up and down. We pay for the room.
“What’s the WiFi password?” I ask.
“I need your passports first,” she takes our documents. “It’ll be a few minutes.”
We’re not in friendly mountain towns anymore.
Lou and I step into the hotel’s arched atrium and then into our room. Everything is tile, from the walls to ceilings to floors. It might have been a converted pool, that wasn’t really converted.
There’s a bed off the ground and it’s clean. I miss my tent already.
Lou lays down and I go to shower.
The bathroom looks a lot like the bedroom but with nozzles and shower curtains. I notice the crumbled ball of legs in the corner.
It’s a tarantula but hey, it’s dead.
That’s the level of luxury here. I realise, I have a pretty big comfort zone.
After locating the hot water valve and then turning on the shower, I feel the dirt dislodge from every pore. I didn’t realise how filthy I was. I’d taken showers at most campsites.
I looked clean but after this hot shower, I felt clean. I touch soft skin and wonder what it was like before.
“I need pizza,” Lou informs me. She’s already got a spot in mind. Perfect, I don’t have to make a decision.
On route, we stop to purchase our morning passes for Machu Picchu. “Cash Only” reads the sign, even though they are very expensive.
As well as Machu Picchu ruins, if you want to visit Huayna Picchu, a hill with a moon temple, or Machu Picchu mountain, another hill with another temple, you need separate tickets.
Both have beautiful views over the main ruins below.
“We’ll take Huayna Picchu as well,” Lou says to the ticket desk. We’d wanted to visit the moon temple.
“We’re sold out of both Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu Mountain,” the attendant says automatically.
We’d expected this and planned to stay a few days until we could get in.
“That’s alright, until when,” Lou asks.
“February,” he replies. It was early September.
Not that many more days.
We leave with Machu Picchu tickets in hand.
We’ve officially stepped into Inca Land.
People have suitcases here. Tourists from every continent take photos beside cartoonish statues of pumas and condors and Inca heroes. People walk in pairs or groups without paying attention to others around them.
We dodge selfie sticks and clumps of families, and duck down a side street.
“Menu?”
“Dinner ladies?”
“Are you hungry?”
We dodge the restaurant herders.
“This one, here,” we step inside. A domed clay oven sits in one corner, a full bar decorated with old bottles lines another. A big chalkboard with beautiful lettering announces the specialities of the house and its wines.
The prices are all $10 more than in Cusco, and the prices in Cusco are about $5 more than everywhere else.
A waiter strolls over in suspenders and a collared shirt. His jawline is perfectly framed by a well kept beard. The waiters, men and women, are model-gorgeous.
“Hello, how are you this evening?” Everyone speaks to us in English.
Cheers. We clang together the same beer we’d enjoyed overlooking Machu Picchu. Now that we’re physically closer to the ruins, it feels much farther away.
Thin crust pizza with Gruyere cheese, and a chocolate lava cake later, we yawn. School children pass by in plaid uniforms. It’s going to be an early night, which is good because we’ve got our earliest start yet tomorrow.
We buy bus tickets up to the ruins. We could hike up to Machu Picchu, but the trail is just a staircase that dangerously crosses the switchbacks the buses take.
We’ll show up extra early tomorrow to wait in line for the bus.
They leave at 6:00, we’ll be there at 4:15.
Day 12: Machu Picchu
The other, other Inca trail.
At 4:15 we begin an unexpected hike – to the head of the bus line. After five minutes we arrive.
“I’ll get coffee,” Lou says. People continue filing behind me.
“Why can’t they give you a time with your bus ticket, would it be so hard?”
“I think this is three day old Nescafe warmed in a microwave.”
“Then, they checked us in but still no one was taking our bags.”
I close my eyes.
I’m going to Machu Picchu.
“You’ve been to Torres del Paine?” I befriend a girl beside me in line.
She’s a lawyer from Louisiana who’s planning a trip a National Park I adore.
“I’ve always wanted to go! But, I looked at the back country cabins. Can you get a private room?”
The cabins cost $80 a night for a bunk bed. I remember watching the day pack hikers skipping cabin to cabin while we trudged through, packs filled with food and camping gear.
I smile. That was where Lou and I met, where we first hiked together.
Those warm cabins with $40 breakfasts were absolute luxury.
“No way, share a room? I’d never do it,” she replies.
I’m in another world. Or, just in another way of being. I wonder what she’d think of our unintentionally aquatic themed hotel.
I quickly switch the topic to jazz.
I’m going to Machu Picchu.
At 6:30am we finally board. The line is three times longer behind us.
The bus jerks around the too tight corners in a conga line with buses ahead. Up, up, up.
I get a view out the window on every second turn. My eyes slide into the endless pockets of valleys. The phenomenal view outweighs the mundane.
We arrive.
I pay the additional fifty cents to use the bathroom. I’m about to complain about this, when I see the entrance gate. We’re steps away.
We’re here.
25 Rules for Machu Picchu.
“Do NOT generate turmoil,” I laugh and my heart clenches a little at the visiting rules.
No picnics, no yoga poses, no bags over 20 Litres, no disposable drink bottles, and don’t balance cameras on the bricks. The rules are as rigid as they are oddly specific.
Some tour guides offer services, but I want any small freedom I can get. I’d like to be alone, together with Machu Picchu, if only for a moment.
I push through the hip gate and into a forest of people. Couples wrap arms around each other and pose for “just arrived” selfies. Little kids run off to break all the carefully set out rules.
Two men embrace and pose for a photo, one kisses the other with a loud muaaaah while the other pleads.
“OK now a good one,” his partner scrunches his face.
“A good one this time!” They spin around laughing, the photo forgotten.
I thought I’d hate this moment. Crowds of people paying no attention to anyone or anything else besides their cellphones.
Yet, their excitement and curiosity and joy consumes me: it ignites my own.
We’re at Machu Picchu! We all express it in our own ways.
It’s like being in an airport, in the ecstatic anticipation between arrivals and departures.
Machu Picchu is more than good.
Lou and I power past the groups. We’ll start at the top of the ruins, at the Sun Gate Inti Punku.
We’re mountain strong and take the wide staircase in force. I pass fit young men and women who still haven’t adjusted to altitude.
This is our element.
The Sun Gate overlooks the entire site. We walk the trail practically alone to its stone walls.
We pass through the gate, turn, and then re-enter Machu Picchu.
Now, we’ve officially arrived.
This was once the main entry. It’s fitting to begin here, like the Inca would have.
I picture them stepping through these doors, seeing the grandeur of the sanctuary and Huayna Picchu hill. The construction is awe inspiring in modern times, imagine hundreds of years ago.
The iconic ruins are ever present as the path from the gate descends into the upper grounds. Lou and I follow it and rest lawfully in a “designated rest area.”
“There lots of tours down there,” Lou says. Candy coloured shirts pixelate the crowds as they flow from room to room below. Pink spills into one space while blue fills another.
A llama lays splat on his side beside us.
“He’s given up,” I joke, noting it’s hard to tell if a llama is breathing.
His friend comes up to me and I reach out. He pushes his neck under my hand and continues eating.
“They might be used to people.”
In hopes the groups will leave, Lou and I skirt the top of the ruins and head around back to the Inca Bridge.
The trail is cut out of a cliff with a vertigo-inducing 580 metre drop. There’s sign in/sign out (sign your life away) desk at the start.
Mid-cliff, a wedge is chopped out of the path. It’s a simple, very effective drawbridge. Several giant tree trunks can be laid across for access.
Without them, there’s no way to cross the cliff.
We turn and re-enter Machu Picchu via the secret passageway: the best way I can think of.
Again, we arrive.
As I walk the thin path that was once just a cliff, I realise: This was all just an idea at one point.
“I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free,” the artist Michelangelo said. Now, I understand.
Someone saw a space, saw some rock, and chiselled a world wonder out of it.
Someone saw a holy place amidst the Apu, and set it free.
It was already there waiting for the Inca to discover it and now for us to re-discover it.
The not lost not city.
The lost city of Machu Picchu was never really lost, and it was most likely not a city. The man who claimed to “discover it” was lead there by locals who knew farmers still cultivating the terraces.
Also, the latest evidence suggests that inhabitants didn’t live here long term. Based on the sheer volume of sacred buildings, Machu Picchu was likely a religious retreat for the Inca elite.
It’s an Inca summer home.
The tour groups move in waves, miraculously clearing entire sectors and leaving us alone in the ruins. We get our moments. From above the roofless structures, I look into a maze of once lived lives.
A pile of half cut boulders shows precisely how masons assembled the structures. Their stonework has such perfectly flat sides that they needed no grout. It’s practically air tight.
The bricks aren’t all rectangular either. Clusters of multi-sided irregular bricks fit around central cornerstones. It’s like a giant unnecessary puzzle.
I think they just had fun making rocks fit together.
The triangular pitched roofs mirror the shapes of the surrounding hills.
Machu Picchu holds you up to the sky, exposed to the four sacred winds: North, South, East, and West. If there’s a place to converse with any Gods, it’s here.
I couldn’t tell you which wind brought us. The mess of mountains flooding all around is just like the mess of mountains we started off in.
In the Andes, you can never see beyond what’s right in front of you. Entire cities, jungles, deserts, lakes, anything could be waiting within the rocky ocean. Just like Machu Picchu had been.
Now, we’ve arrived at the end.
Wayward llamas push past us up the staircases as we leave.
“Wasn’t one of the rules not to touch the llamas?”
“Yea, but no one told them,” Lou laughs.
Rain suddenly pours down, as if waiting for our exit. The line for the buses awaits, the same length going down as it was coming up.
“Pisco sours?” I ask. We have no train to catch, we are the train.
Lou and I slide into a surprisingly reasonably priced restaurant. Two stools at the bar that overlooks Huayna Picchu open up.
“Cheers,” everything worked out yet again.
“So, where to next?”
Only now could I explain how we got here. At the start I had no idea. I couldn’t see past the next hill or around the next switchback. I hadn’t lived it yet.
I remember thinking we’d not make it. I laugh.
I remember knowing that we’d make it no problem. I laugh.
“Hot springs?” Lou suggests.
“Yes,” my entire body responds.
Next thing I know, we’re dancing down the train tracks out of Aguas Calientes. Pisco has that effect. Sometimes the workers join in from the train.
I look back. The bottom terraces of Machu Picchu are still clinging into view.
“Alellanchu!” I wave. I never did learn the word for goodbye.
Maybe I didn’t have to say it. The whole trek was now a physical part of me, from my muscles to my memories.
In a way, I’d always be there.
Lou and I weave through the Andes once more.
Each time I remember a moment from the journey, I greet it all over again.
Lou
Thank you
wondertherapy
Anything for my Lou <3