machupicchu…again…and other stuff

So let it officially be known that cusco and its environs are actually nothing less than a well-disguised black hole, some sort of cosmic maelstrom.  It’s impossible to leave.  And if you do leave, you only get so far before you find yourself getting sucked inexorably back into its embrace.
After almost a month of a daily mantra that went something like this: “Ian, tomorrow you leave.  Tomorrow you hit the road again.” followed by my staying yet one more day*…well, I finally did it, I broke free (or so I thought) and left.
As usual, the first day walking after 20+ days of sloth and salsa dancing sucked.  But that’s the great thing about walking, it’s easy to walk yourself into shape.  Within a couple days I was back up to walking twenty miles a day. 
My goal was a sleepy city basically due west of Cusco called Abancay.  To get there I’d have to climb out of Cusco, descend into the next valley, then climb out of that one, drop into another, climb out, only to wend my way down into the enclosed valley holding the city of Abancay. 
Green, man, green everywhere.  The late fall clinging to summer’s hope.  The little villages in Perú are all really just the same one, jumping ahead of me each day: mud homes, tin roofs, refuse and discarded machinery in the yards, little brown orbs of sheep shit scattered on the road like a truck full of chocolate covered coffee beans had spilled just there, old men and women hunched over in the shadows, sharp-eyed, quiet; barefoot children with viscous streaks of snot running from their noses, dull-eyed cows, old-too-soon women bent under bundles of wood, alfalfa, corn, shambling along the side of the road, young men appearing suddenly out of groves of eucalyptus, well-used machetes in hand, tiny, shadow-infested stores with near-empty shelves, darkened doors hinting at smoke-stained interiors, the occasional truck or taxi pulled into a muddy driveway…loaded down with wood, sheep, cows, mystery meat, people, sacks of potatoes, chickens, llamas, hides, grain.  This one village is always in front of me, always a few km behind me, always in view up on a hill or across that river, this village is nothing more or less than the true Perú…hidden, oppressed, poor, on the brink, forgotten, lonely, anachronistic, limping, on auto-pilot, somehow both full of life and lifeless at the same time.  This is the real Perú, this village, this is what 90+ percent of this country looks and lives like.  It’s not slick, its not modern, it’s not happy, it’s not healthy, it’s not progressing, it’s not touristy, it’s not sought out, it’s not a place where hope hangs out…it’s a place where existence is a fucking JOB, where the very act of living is one long, maybe pointless fucking struggle in absolute, complete, total, final anonymity.  Yes, there are smiles, there’s laughter, there’s celebration, there’s love, there’s longing, and beauty but it isn’t in abundance, not in this one village that follows, waits and lingers near me at all times.  
Somewhere around my 3^rd day out, I came to the summit of yet another climb, skirted along the ridge to the far side and started walking down into a huge, empty valley.  Some Spanish song was playing on my mp3, can’t even remember which one.  I stopped to gaze out on all that hazy beauty and before I even realized it, tears were streaming down my face.  It was so beautiful, such a tapestry of greens and browns, of soft curves and jagged edges, so beautiful it hurt.  And on the heels of that awe, of that wondering at the utter beauty of life, followed a pang of loneliness that doubled me over.  I walked on, everything ahead of me a hot blur through the tears.  Regrets, doubts, loss, self-loathing, pain, sadness, fear, anger, it was all there. 
That valley couldn’t have held the half of it. 
I filled it up with that strange marriage of awe, thankfulness, and humility wrapping around all my mistakes, all my regret, all of that loneliness that spun within me.  And I walked on, gasping for breath.  It felt like I carried everything that it means to be human right there on my back, and it weighed so much, I was crushed under it, even as I took step after step.  And then, like a wave pulling back to the sea, it left me.  I felt exhausted and at peace.  If I was a person inclined to that line of thinking I would have sworn that I’d experienced an epiphany, the hand of divinity, a glimpse at the infinite.  Does this happen to others?  I wondered.  Or am I just going mad?  And the day unfolded before me in valley floors and steep climbs past fields and rivers until those…how much time?…maybe 10 minutes…of intense emotions seemed dreamlike, as distant as a third-hand story.
On my fifth day, my muscles still sore from not having walked for a month, but still full of energy, I set out from a sleepy little town called Curahuasi.  Almost immediately I started climbing.  When I looked up I could see, only a few miles away, the notch in the ridge that marked the pass…but to get there, I’d have to spend the entire morning and the better part of the afternoon snaking along countless switchbacks, about 23 miles in total…all uphill. 
Sometimes when I’m walking, especially when climbing, I hit a rhythm or cadence that just “fits”, a convergence of breath, step, and heartbeat that makes me feel like I could walk the length of infinity and back, a rhythm-immortality.  I was having one of those days.  I got to the top around 3 in the afternoon, a cold 13,000 feet high. Only a couple radio towers, some scrub grass, and the occasional boulder watching me trudge by.  Now I had some decisions to make.  Camp right there, assured of silence and a hell of a cold night?  Walk down a few hours more and hope to find a secluded campsite?  Or just say “fuck it” and try to walk the remaining 20 miles into Abancay?
“Fuck it”  I said and set out.
Don’t believe anyone who says that walking downhill is better than ascending…at least when pushing a glorified baby stroller filled with all of your worldly possessions.  Climbing a steady slope is actually pretty low impact…on legs and joints, at least.  Sure, you sweat more, your lungs and heart have to put in some extra time, but stopping to rest is easy because that’s basically what gravity’s trying to do to you the whole time, stop you from moving against it.
Descending, on the other hand, wreaks havoc on ankles, knees and hips, not to mention the straining of various tendons and the bashing that your shins take.  And all of this is magnified in an un-fun way when you’re trying to keep that glorified baby cart from surrendering itself to gravity’s siren song. 
Basically, I hate descending.
About ten minutes after clearing the pass, I turned a corner and saw, so seemingly close, way down in the valley below, the city of Abancay.  “Ha, this’ll be a piece of cake.” I thought.  “There it is, right there…if you can see it you can get there.”
It took me another six and a half hours to get into the city center.
Just like the climb earlier in the day, the descent into Abancay was riddled with switchbacks, and as night fell, the town began to twinkle at me, mirage-like, never seeming to get any closer, but too close to give up on.  Below and above me, grinding along the cliff-faced road, cars and trucks cast cartoonish beams of light into the darkness.  I’d find myself jumping for safety at the sound of a motor or flash of light close at hand, only to realize that its owner was either a few switchbacks directly above or below me.  At one point, I heard a rushing, metallic noise like a hundred shopping carts barreling down at me.  I leapt to the side and watched, amazed, as a man whizzed by on a makeshift soap-box derby/luge-thing cart pulling a rickety wooden trailer loaded down with firewood.  The metal wheels threw sparks as he rolled along, steering and braking with his feet. 
Every time a car passed, it seemed to coincide with a dog leaping out of a doorway, over a fence, or out of the bushes, yellowish teeth gleaming in the half-moonlight, barking, hackles raised.  What to do?  If I veer out into the road, I’m sure to get mooshed by some grumbling semi truck.  If I stay on the straight and narrow, the dog has a free run at my ankles, calves, balls, neck.
Luckily, almost every single dog I’ve met in south America has been trained, harshly, to scamper away upon seeing a person cock his/her arm back in a throwing motion…a few stones to the noggin in doggy youth has made sure that all canines would rather cut and run rather than trying to find out if the stupid walking gringo actually has a rock in his hand. 
Like a phantom, I passed through small villages, a tired shadow on its way down.  How many people did I pass without them knowing I was there?
 
Was I there?
 
A human Schrödinger’s cat, not existing until some old lady peeks out of her door or window to see who it is that’s walking along the road at such an hour.
The country eventually surrendered itself to more and more buildings until I found myself in the city center of Abancay…let’s just say that if you never step foot in that city, you’re not missing a whole hell of a lot…not a bad place…just not very inspiring.
My friends back in Cusco had planned to do a 5 day walk wrapping around the snowy Salkantay Mountain, along the Urubamba Valley and from there to Machupicchu.  They’d invited me along, but I didn’t think I’d be able to do it, as I wasn’t sure how long my walk to Abancay would take.  I told them that I “might show up, I might not…it all depends.”
I woke up in my sparse hotel room on the morning that those friends would be starting their journey on the Salkantay Trail.  The 43 miles the day before had left my legs feeling like jelly-in-pain (if jelly can feel). 
What to do?  Stay and rest or go and not be sure that I’d find my friends along the trail?
“Fuck it, I’ll go.”  Decision made.
The pros far outweighed the cons:  I wanted to visit machupicchu again, really give it the time it deserved.  I love hiking in the mountains.  And it would be great to hang out some more with my friends…and hell, what is life here for?  That’s right, to do what your heart tells you to do.
A taxi to Curahuasi with a driver who reeked of last night’s raging alcohol binge, another ride with a brother and sister going to cusco to pick up supplies for their store, along a frightening little dirt road up to Mollepata, a begged ride in a chartered tour bus full of British Air Force officers on some sort of “team building” vacation along a road WAY too small for the vehicle.  Said vehicle getting stuck on a curve on said WAY-too-small road, 40 minutes spent side by side with my British military pals, doing some impromptu team building by using sticks and branches to dig the tour bus out of trouble.  The driver of said large vehicle wimping out, refusing to budge until the road was literally widened by yet more of our aforementioned efforts with stick and branch…which prompted me to  grab my backpack, shake hands and say “cheers” to dozens of crew-cutted brits before setting out in the direction of my friends who I was sure were at least 8 hours ahead of me.
But, alas, (love that word) they were actually just a half hour up the road, lolling on the grass of a clearing, finishing off their lunches. 
There are few things better than a surprise reunion amongst friends.  I had a huge grin, ear to ear.  It felt great to see them all: nick, yoni, marieke, shou, tomer, ohad, , tim, jen, Elizabeth, and paulien.  Hugs, laughs, “wow’s” and “I can’t believe it’s”. 
They had all paid about 160 dollars apiece to do the trip.  Me?  Not a red cent.  I went up to Hugo, their guide and asked him if it would be cool if I could just walk along with my friends.  I had my tent, food, everything on my back…
To my surprise he smiled and said.  “Hey, amigo, it is no problem to my person for you to be walking with friends.  Even food you can share, of it we have many.  Maybe a tip at end of trip would be good for my person and help persons, but you do or don’t do, it is your person to decide.” 
I’m not sure what the hell he was saying but the key words “no problem” and “food” were enough to make me feel like good things were happening to “my person”.
One of the few things better than the category of reunions-amongst-friends is that of decisions-well-made.  I could tell right from the get go that deciding to come out here on this walk with my 8 Dutch and 2 Israeli friends was one hell of a good call. 
Our group walked in that socially amoeba-like way, little groups forming and dissolving, stretching ahead, lingering behind, clustering together and scattering again to the rhythm and flow of conversation, ideas, and stories.
Tomer had brought a pair of speakers.  I hooked up my mp3 player to it and after a couple songs I can’t remember now, Little China Girl by David Bowie came on.  Suddenly, Tomer, Nick and I were belting it out at the top of our lungs, totally out of place, but somehow perfect for the narrow alpine valley, there in that of perú’s heart through which we walked. 
That night we camped at 13,500 feet, the stars hanging so low we had to duck to walk around, the half moon glowing off the snow on the mountains surrounding us.  I’d brought my guitar and we stayed up until frozen nearly solid singing songs and laughing, knowing we were all right there, man, right there in the moment’s moment.
The next day we climbed up to over 15,000 feet, our path tucked right against the massive base of Salkantay Mountain.  Glaciers, cornices, mysterious clouds, rock falls, giant boulders strewn everywhere.  A beautiful place.  Not 20km away as the crow flies, machupicchu, and only another 10km from a recently discovered site, maybe bigger, being excavated by a team of French archeologists …we were truly in the heart of an ancient empire.
At the top of the pass we stood huddled against the wind and cold, warmth seeming like a distant, unreachable memory.  But as the afternoon progressed we descended, almost mercilessly, into greener and warmer climes, finally hitting a river valley as the sun went down.  Mosquitoes, rushing water, rustling leaves, humidity…such a change in so short a time.
And so the days went until we found ourselves on the 4^th night at the base of machupicchu. 
The next morning, we snuck ahead of the sun into those famous ruins.  Everything was shrouded in a thick mist.  If I hadn’t already visited the site, I would have had absolutely no idea that a dead city lay all around and under me.
Our guide for this part of the trip rambled on about the mystical, spiritual and divine happenings, history and present of the site.  I tuned him out, mostly…hell, they aren’t even sure when the bloody city was built, so how are they going to know that the Inca people were “…using this round stone to hang the information of the gods before reading it…” or “…tying the information of the universe to these stakes, to bring their knowledge closer to the gods…”  What? Huh?  Sorry Mr. Guide, I’m not buying it. 
What was it though? Citadel?  Club Med for the Inca nobility?  University town?  Religious enclave?  Who knows?  There are temples, there is a residential section, there are places that could well have been laboratories, there are astronomical observatories, graveyards, watch towers, and very accurate sun dials.  Maybe it was all of those things.  We’ll never know.  Ever.  The Spanish, the slow death of the oral tradition amongst the descendants of the Quechua citizens of the empire, and time itself have obliterated any chance of truly knowing the why’s and how’s of machupicchu.   But that’s what makes it even more amazing to me…it really is a mysterious place.
And despite the ramblings of our guide, this city did spark something within me as I walked through the labyrinth of stone alleys and terraces.  This was a living, thriving city once, man.  It was full of you’s and me’s…stepping, sitting, breathing, eating, making love, dying, hoping, wondering, and just plain old being…that’s what I felt there…the centuries, the generations and generations of life that built, maintained, lived within and visited machupicchu.  I heard whisperings of their days in the mist-breeze through a window, I felt traces of their rough hands and tanned skin in the stones of temple walls.  It is a moving, goosebumped thing to stand in a place built for LIFE that now shouts out its very absence.
Later in the morning, when the sun had burned away the mist, we climbed the absurdly steep staircase to the top of huaynapicchu (baby mountain), that cone-like peak that stands behind most postcard photos of the ruins.  Up and up and friggin’ up, hands and feet trying to suction themselves onto the stone because the abyss, the thousands of vertical feet of nothingness that swirl behind, is calling for you.  There, right near the very summit of the place, a few terraces and a couple buildings sit like a royal eagle’s nest, looking out and down at the Urubamba Valley, at Machupicchu itself, and at the endless waves of peaks surrounding this part of the world.  Wow…what an experience, what a unique place.  What a humbling honor and privilege to actually be here.
And then, and now, comes the time for goodbyes.  Goodbye to machupicchu, a truly stunning place.  Goodbye to Cusco, you big, stone-wrought tractor-beam of fun and learning.  And goodbye to newfound friends; may we come together again, someday, somewhere. 
But for right now, it’s time to walk.
*why?  Why stay in a super-touristy place well after I’d already seen all the “must-be-seen” sights?  (and how many times can I use some derivation of “to see”?)  Plain and simple, Cusco is FUN.  It’s a hub for travelers from all over the globe, it has a nucleus of bars, restaurants and clubs dedicated solely to making sure that all of those tourists are well fed, well liquidly-lubricated, and that they dance like maniacs till dawn.  And then there’s Salsa.  Yeah, the dance.  While I’m not completely rhythmically challenged, I’ve never been one to wow the world with how I cut up a rug, and even less so when that dancing involves guiding a partner around the floor.  But one night a bit back I decided to partake in a local bar’s free salsa lesson…and have been hooked ever since.  Hell, I even took a few private lessons.  Another reason to stay in Cusco has been all the friends I’ve made in that time.  Oddly, they’re mainly Dutch.  Those folks, while having made a dubious historical decision in founding their country on lands that sit below sea level, are the best English speakers in Europe (hell, almost better than people from the British Isles) and are, almost to a person, friendly, laid-back, fun-loving.  So, good food, Salsa dancing, and good friends…that’s the “tractor beam” of Cusco, that subtle pull that reels me back in, even when I’m walking in the opposite direction.