Choquequirao to Machu Picchu: Final

This story is a continuation and the culmination of the previous two entries. So I suggest you read those first...


Day 7
The rain is so warm I don`t even bother with a jacket. The river we are following is flowing full force. I cross the tributaries via logs spanning the white turmoil. Dense clouds tail me and overtake me, depositing sheets of water in the surrounding basin. After a few hours the trail turns into a road and we are hiking three-wide along the banks of the Salkantay. Unkempt hair knots together in oily clumps and repels the showers. Steam from armpits smells seven days old and the red elbow-bumps still itch underneath Merino wool. We are miserably dirty but undeniably proud of this state. We wear our filth like a badge that says, "We hiked Choquequirao." Onlookers stare with hanging jaws. Children run after us waving tiny American flags. Grandmothers cry in the street. Security guards hold back the swarming crowds. Every raindrop is a piece of ticker tape. This is our parade.

"I mean this is just a road. Can you imagine hiking on a road for two days? The Salkantay is weak," I say.
"I know. Cars passing every couple minutes. Dirt bikes. Strollers. I`m definitely glad we did Choquequirao," says Mike.
"Yeah, they might as well be taking a bus," says Kelly, talking about the people who hike the Salkantay.
This has been an amazing trek, but it hasn`t been an easy one. We only encountered two other parties on the Choquequirao trail. One solo Frenchman was carrying an enormous external-frame backpack and hiking very slowly along the trail. Every time we passed him he said he was hungry. After the fifth day, we stopped seeing his footprints. There was also a group of four young Argentinians, two men and two women. On day three, Mike noticed one of the girls limping around camp with her hands gripping a forked walking stick. The next morning we heard that they had left their shoes outside the tent and that they were going to spend the entire next day letting them dry. We never saw them again.

Now, hiking along the last part of the Salkantay trail, we are shocked to hear the sound of a television. The village of La Playa is a conglomeration of miniature stores and outposts, which cater to the hikers that pass by. We stroll between two parked mini-buses and are immediatly badgered by the drivers. They ask us over and over again if we need a ride. Our reply, no gracias, trails behind us as we continue on.

After lunch, we say goodbye to our muleteers. Jesus smiles widely as he shakes our hands. I tell him that we cannot thank him enough for his service and hard work. The group has nominated me official tip-giver-outer, probably because my Spanish is a bit better. He seems almost embaressed to recieve the bills, but thanks me over and over again, nodding his head and smiling. We wave at them as we walk down the hill and cross a rickety bridge on foot. The mini-bus follows us across and we watch with horror as the boards bend from the weight of the fully loaded vehicle.

An Ecuadorian woman is driving. She obviously does not know how to drive a stick shift because she keeps the car in first gear for half an hour, revving the engine to a high RPM. We are traveling down a steep hill when a car approaches from the other direction. There is a turnout behind us but the woman does not know how to reverse. She turns the wheel the wrong direction and nearly drives us off the side of the cliff. Everyone in the car screams. She cannot figure out which direction to turn the wheel. Our cook, Alfredo, finally takes over at our bidding and does a perfect job of getting us out of the precarious situation. He drives the rest of the way to Santa Rosa while the original driver sits in the back, watching.

Immediatly after setting up the tents we all hop back in the car for the ten minute trip to the hot springs. Alfredo drives again. The pools are huge and beautiful. Pebbles carpet the floors, the water is crystal, warm, refreshing. It feels so good. The last vestiges of sun have disappeared and Orion`s Belt glints above us before we get out.

We share wine, rum, and beer at dinner. Afterwards, Felix builds a fire in the driveway and we sit in wooden chairs drinking and telling stories. A Peruvian man with black dreadlocks and huge eyes joins the party and offers us San Pedro cactus and Ayahuasca. He promises a transendental experience with pachamama. No one accepts the Mystic´s offer, but we are happy to have him sitting in the circle, drinking his fermented corn alcohol from a long-necked gourd. Soon, everyone gets drunk, and when the pouring rain starts again, we hide in the hostal`s store. It is past midnight by the time we stumble to our tents. The zipper on my rain fly is broken again and the foot of my sleeping bag is soaked. Kate lends me a dirty t-shirt to sop up the mess, but I hardly care. This is our last night of camping anyway. I fall quickly into a deep, life-giving sleep.

Day 8
An hour long cab ride takes us to the edge of the train tracks. We carry all our luggage to a nearbye storefront where Alfredo and Tigre will wait for the afternoon train to Aguas Calientes. This is where we say goodbye to the men who nourished us with gourmet combinations each night. Besides the overabundance of white rice, which is typical to Peru and Ecuador, the meals were absolutely amazing. I pass them a generous tip and tell them that I do not know how to say "thank you" enough times. Their smiles illuminate our receding figures as we hike with Felix along the railroad ties.

In a few hours we reach the town of Aguas Calientes. We are shocked by the sheer number of white people we see. There must be more tourists than locals. The ruins of Machu Picchu are visible on the towering ridgeline. The Urubamba River looks like it is ready to flood the town. A blender of red-brown water churns along the foundations of the brightly colored hotels. Mike and Kelly have a room that looks down on the roiling mass of collected rain. With the window open, we can barely hear each other speak.

We find a place for ice cream and play cribbage to pass the time. Groups of Japanese tourists snap photos of every little detail. German backpackers trundle up the train tracks with determined looks on their faces. Australians drink beer. Americans speak loudly in horrible accents and point from one restaurant to another, unable to decide on pizza or hamburgers. "Jeesh, we`re in tourist town now," I say.
"Gringoville," says Mike.
"Well, at least we took the scenic-bus to white-boy-city," says Kelly. This is our newest form of completely mindless conversation . Its a riot. We`re pretty much in tears.

Felix buys us dinner. We cheers with glasses of boxed wine. To a successful trip! Faces are clean, hair is combed, the stench of oily sweat no longer berates us. The hotel has hot showers and we are sitting on the balcony of an actual restaurant. There is no mess tent, no canvas camp chairs, no bugs. The novelty doesn`t wear off. Mike orders pizza and assparagos soup to start. I have the same, except my appetizer is a stuffed avocado. "How`s yours?" I ask.
"Its like the cheese-bus to dough-hood," he says, grinning. "How`s yours?"
"Not sure yet. I`m too busy in avacado-land. The beef-train to stir-fry-pueblo may be delayed."
Tomorrow, Machu Picchu.

Day 9
Someone knocks on my door at 4:30am. I am downstairs by five o`clock, eating a breakfast of white bread and red jam with coffee and sour juice. The six of us are walking to the bus stop by 5:20 in order to catch the first group of buses to Machu Picchu. There is only a hint of sunrise as we round the corner and are confronted by chaos. Hundreds of gringos are standing on the sidewalk milling about, walking up and down the street with their daypacks on, shuffling their feet on the pavement, listening to iPods. We squeeze into the middle of the line where Felix has been waiting. The buses arrive shortly. The Mercedes Benz logo is on the front. We get on the fifth bus and sit with our backpacks on our knees for the 20 minute ride.

Finally the clouds have disappated. A fresh sun bakes the line at the entrance to the enormous ruins. When we are inside Felix asks us if we want to climb Wayna Picchu in the morning. Wayna Picchu is the jutting precipice that provides the stunning backdrop to the ruins. In almost every photo of Machu Picchu, the bald peak resides in the background. Since the weather seems so perfect and since we all have plenty of energy, we say yes. Felix hurries us along trails and through passageways towards the opposite end of the ruins. There, we wait in a short line that slowly filters through the entrance to the trailhead. We are the 42nd, 43rd and 44th people through the gate, as it says on our tickets.

The trail is more like a stone staircase. There are cables attached to the white granite walls that provide at least the illusion of security. The staircase winds steeply around the peak until, after about 45 minutes of climbing, it ends at a viewpoint that overlooks the Lost City. From here, we crawl through a tiny cave that leads to the summit of Wayna Picchu. We bask in the sun on top of some enormous boulders, share a candy bar, drink some water. More tourists eventually find their way to the top and the area soon becomes uncomfortably crowded. We offer our perch to others and make our way down an extremely steep and narrow staircase. "These Incas had tiny feet."

After a few hours on the mountain we decide to descend. Felix meets us at the entrance, and from here, we begin our guided tour. We spend two hours exploring many different parts of the city. Felix tells us more stories and theories than it is practical to relate. Suffice it to say that we are all awed by the skill with which the city was built. There are stones so massive, with so many corners and angles, that it is impossible to imagine how the Incan sculptors could have put them together so perfectly. The joints are hardly even visible.

We are getting hungry by the time the guided tour is over. It is past midday and the baking sun has made us lethargic. Mike, Kelly and I find a corner to hide in and eat lunch. We rest in the shade of some enormous boulders as tourist groups hobble by, snapping photos of every blade of grass. It is another few hours before we have had our fill of the city. Tamed Alpaca block the exit, but we squeeze by their soft flanks and stroll to the bus stop, satisfied with our experience, still wide-eyed and in shock that we actually made it. After countless difficulties in airports and bus stations, after eight days of gruelling hiking, after soaked sleeping bags, near death car rides, Jurrasic sized wasps, we finally made it to the Lost City of the Incas.

Still, for me, the intricate towers and endless terraces can´t compare to the lush valleys and churning riverbeds of the trail. Thousands upon thousands of people visit Machu Picchu every year. It is the low season now and yet the temples and passageways are teeming. But on the trail, I was alone for hours, lost in the rhythm of my moving body as it mixed with the song of the bees. The pattern of veins on a leaf that brushes my shoulder, the emmaculate yellow of a budding orchid, the eternal rushing of the river, the invisible beats of a hummingbird´s wings. These things are all perfect and they are more amazing to me than polished stone could ever be.

As I sit on the train back to Cusco, I am lost in thought. My mind wanders over the woven stone walls, the polygonal architecture, the narrow steps and trapzoidal doorways, but it invariably returns to one image: in an emerald valley at the foot of a crystal glacier a butterfly with orange wings alights on a pile of dung. It waits there for a moment, pulsing it´s amber sails as I watch, before an incomprehensible breath of wind pushes it into the lapis sky and it is riding an effortless current towards the weeping saddle between the mountains.



Check out more of Patrick's photos from the trek. Thanks Patrick!

Choquequirao to Machu Picchu: Continued

This entry is a continuation of the story that was posted yesterday...

Day 3
The corners of the tent are soaked. The last half of my science fiction novel is a fat sponge. The toe of my down sleeping bag drips, but I am warm and dry inside. The zipper on the tent fly pulls apart as I emerge from the damp cave. Mike is already awake, brushing his teeth with his rain jacket on. Pieces of mountains shrouded in mist are like a newly opened puzzle. Most of the tabs and slots are still turned upside down. Only grey cardboard with a hint of color here and there. We gather in the mess tent to warm our cores with tea and coffee. The pancake with chocolate sauce hardly fills the void, but today is a short hike anyway.

Felix leads us up an unmarked trail. This is different from the one we took to the ruins yesterday. I duck under spikey branches that catch my backpack as I pass. Felix points out yellow orchids and warped trees with papery bark: the chachacomo. He sings a love song in spanish about the spikey bush and asks me to translate. The composer obviously has a problem with his girlfriend because he describes her as a sharp plant that grows in the cloud forest. But the air is sweet from the dew-released vapors of the flora.

An hour of hiking brings us to the cleaved hilltop that we discovered yesterday. As we sit on the stone wall, Felix tells us stories of the Incan culture. There are too many stories to relate, but he provides us with different theories and perspectives, allowing us to form our own opinion of what happened. Still, he is very animated about certain points, the worship of pachamama--mother earth--and how that practice has all but disappeared. With every glass of wine or beer that Felix drinks, he pours a sip onto the earth, thanking pachamama as he does so.

We explore the ruins for three hours. We are happy that we made it here yesterday because, today, the same views do not exist, but as we start traversing around the nearbye peak, the sun pokes through the mist and bakes our plastic covered bodies in moist heat. We descend through buggy pastures. Hummingbirds with tails twice the size of their bodies, red tubular flowers, the buzzing of enormous blue wasps with orange wings, the smell of fresh green piles of dung where butterflies perch and pulse their petterned selves. We reach the campsite by lunchtime and play cribbage as we eat. We are happy to spend a lazy afternoon stretching in the heat of the sunshine.

Day 4
Clouds like spilled milk disperse across the blue ceiling. We descend overgrown trails to another churning river. There is no bridge and every rock is encased with a film of rushing water. I manage to hop and balance my way across without getting my boots soaked. We watch the mule train cross the rapids. The leader, Jesus, sends the animals trudging through a deep pool. He takes three weightless bounds from rock to rock. It looks like he barely touches the water.

The next three hours of climbing pass like a glimpse of sun. After three days of hiking my legs are accustomed to the march. My breathing is steady and rhythmic. The distance between my footprints is always the same. The tread of my soles in the black mud, moments of thought last for hours, stinging leaves brush my shoulder and leave an itchy mark that I ignore. Mike and I reach the camp together and are suprised to find that Eric is not there. It turns out that he has passed the campspot and continued up the trail. He does not return until just before dinner.

Felix opens a box of Gato Negro and tells us about hummingbirds. He describes the tiny hummingbirds that look like insects, the ones with enormous tails, the ones with long beaks. Sitting in the mess tent listening to his stories, listening to the Australians laugh at my jokes, listening to the melody of the crickets, there is no other place I can imagine wanting to be.

Day 5
Equinox. The sun passes across the equator. This was a very special time for the Incas. Their temples are built with windows that face the exact direction of the sunset on equinox and solstice. Here it is becoming fall. At home it is turning to spring. The trail is deep black mud mixed with the corn-husk green of excrement. Mike`s boots squish forward as he leads the way towards the pass. For a moment, it looks like the dry, fall sunshine will break through the summer clouds, but the mist only grows denser at 4200 meters.

The views, we imagine, would be grand from here. Icy pillars would be the backdrop to layer upon layer of lime valley walls. Condors would soar from ridgeline to ridgeline, never stopping on flat ground where their bulk would prevent them from taking off again. They can only soar, never flapping, an airliner that glides down from a cliff. The trail is cut into a vertical outcrop of limestone. It is like half a tunnel with the left side breached open by decades of erosion. Along the way, there are many short caves that delve into the mountainside, mines once carved to the depth of copper and lead. We peer in but can see no deeper than blackness allows.

We descend into a valley of rolling green pastures. There are houses speckled against the winding rock walls of farms. After being confused for half an hour by the web of trails, we spot one of our muleteers sitting on a far away ridge. He leads us further down the valley towards another white river. Our campspot is his lawn, perched on a plateau within earshot of the flow. We have trout for dinner and champagne to celebrate the changing season. The beating rain on the roof of the mess tent lulls us into lethargy and we retire to sleep before the last hint of color is expunged from the weeping sky of this first fall evening.

Day 6
We have nine hours of hiking today. We begin at 7am by traversing gradually upward along the sides of the soft valley. Backlit peaks are silhouetted black against grey. The trail is long and gradual for at least three hours until we reach a short-grass basin where cows graze. Then we climb steeply up a rocky orange ridgeline towards a saddle between glaciers. The frigid wind reddens the tops of my ears and makes my fingertips numb. We reach the pass at 4800 meters and stop briefly for a photo. By the time we are descending I can`t feel the trekking poles in my palms.

After six hours of hiking and two more river crossings we reach the lunch spot. Spotted pigs oink as they rut in the corner of the field. Peruvian children play with plastic trucks then grab an axe that leans by the doorway and start chopping stringy wood. The pasta and sardines replenish strength. We are all looking forward to the hot springs that were promised to us tonight, so it is disappointing when we hear that a pipe is broken and that the hot springs are out of service. However, we are motivated by the fact that this is our last difficult day of hiking. In only a few days we will reach the town of Aquas Calientes, where we will be provided with hotel rooms for a night. The Lost City of Machu Picchu awaits.

Another three hours of hiking brings us to our campsite at the junction to another trail. The Salkantay trail is much more popular than Choquequirao, because it is shorter and less difficult but still more challenging than the traditional and widely traveled Inca trail. There is another group of trekkers at the campsite and we give them condescending glances as they filter into their tents. Upon reaching camp, the Australians immediatly buy enough beers for all of us, guides included. Upon reaching camp, Eric immediatly takes a shower but continues to complain about not being able to shave. He has a short crop of stubble. Mike and I scratch the dese forests on our chins.

At dinner Felix offers us "macho tea," which is a mix of fruit juices, cold teas, and the local sugar cane liquor. The tea is strong but refreshing and the six of us drain two plastic jugs without noticing. We ask each other riddles and tell jokes all night. It feels like we have completed something, like we are celebrating the end of the trek even though we have three more days of exploring to do. As we stumble back to our respective tents, the light drizzle leaves a sprinkling of dew on our shoulders.

To be continued...

Choquequirao to Machu Picchu

Day 1
Mike knocks on my door at 6am. Felix, our guide, knocks on the hostal door at 6:30am. We pile into a taxi, a stationwagon, that takes us five minutes down the narrow cobble to the Plaza San Blas. Our mini-bus is waiting. Peeling green paint beneath half a Toyota symbol. We shove our duffels and daypacks in the back, balancing everything so it won`t fall out when we close the hatch. There are enormous mesh bags strapped to the roof. A propane tank, a blue and white cooler, the Apus Peru logo. This is the name of our guide company, Apus Peru. Mike, Kelly and I squeeze into open seats. There are three unfamiliar faces. Two are Peruvian: our cook, Alfredo, and his assitant, Tigre. The other face is red and clean shaven with too much chin. He introduces himself as Eric, tells us he`s from Montreal. A late minute addition to the trek. Now there are six of us. The Australians, Kate and Patrick, meet us in the Plaza Armas. With the addition of their bags, the mini-bus becomes tight but bearable. It is a four hour drive to the town where we will start our trek.

When we arrive we are told to explore the village while our lunch is being prepared. From the cement and plaster hillside the frigid slopes of the nearest Cordillera reflect the lingering sunshine. The range is splayed out before us, creating a sublime setting for our icebreaking conversations. The Australians smoke cigarettes and wear dark glasses, but are friendly enough. As it turns out, Kelly used to know Patrick from her year of study abroad in Australia. He was a friend of her boyfriend at the time. This insane, small-world connection amazes all of us. As we eat sauteed chicken breast with french fries and white rice, we talk with Felix about today`s hike. His English is mispronounced and occasionally difficult to understand, but his vocabulary is vast. The hike today will take five hours. After about an hour of flat, we will be going mostly downhill. I ask for more mayonaise.

Mules pass us on the trail. They are loaded with our tents, duffels, food. Their grey haired flanks are soaked in sweat. They drag their toes, their hooves, over the dusty trail. We stand on the high side to let them pass. A tall narrow Peruvian with more gums than teeth smiles as he passes us, nods his head. The caboose conductor does the same as he shoos the mule train along. We follow after them at a much slower pace, avoiding the fresh piles of dung.

The valleys are emerald cities. At the base lies the white destruction of the Apurimac River. Purple lupins dot the edges of the trail. Long Agave cactus spill forth from orange chunks of earth. Our respective hiking speeds slowly seperate us. Eric runs down the trail in his street shoes, wearing headphones and carrying a single green walking stick. The Australians lag behind but never stop their deliberate pace. Mike, Kelly and I fill in the middle. Felix, also know as Gato, remains close behind or ahead of us, depending on if his shoes are tied. The two of us walk together for a while, talking in Spanish. He tells me about the corruption in the Peruvian national soccer team. He thinks that they may have a chance to get into the World Cup after this one. 2014. Thats a long time to wait.

At a rest stop, he points towards a snow covered mountain in the distance. It is an Apu. Apu means snow covered peak in the Inca language and he describes it as if the mountain is a grandfather. His words are full of respect, almost spiritual. Mike, Kelly and I split a chocolate bar, take some photos, continue descending. The constant rock-dodging wears on my feet. We apply bug juice to prevent miniscule black flies from feasting on our sweet European blood. Regardless, Mike and I have elbows speckled with red lumps. Kelly`s legs are glowing constellations. By the time we reach the campspot, the sun has hidden behind the towering hillsides. We stretch our weary muscles.

A heaping plate of popcorn greets us at the dinner table. The six of us devour it in less than ten minutes. We are also treated to tea or coffee and crackers as we wait for the main course. First we are served a steaming bowl of soup. Then a heaping plate of meat, vegetables and, of course, white rice. Everything is followed by another round of tea. We retire to our tents hydrated, full and exhausted. Tomorrow, we are told, will be the hardest day of the trek. I fall asleep anxious and excited.


Day 2
We descend an hour to the edge of the boiling Apimurac. The apus of the Cordillera Villcabamba are no longer visible, only the steep, moss-filled rock and dense shrubs of the valley walls. We cross the river on a small orange suspension bridge that hangs high above the angry water. The power of the tumbling liquid is incomprehensible. Mike and I can barely hear each other`s words as we stare between our feet. "Imagine kayaking that shit," I say.
"I can`t," he replies.
The moment we step onto solid ground we are climbing. The trail switchbacks steeply for almost four hours. We are in Inca territory now. The river creates the separation between the outlying villages of Cusco and the realm of the final Incas.

Occasional clouds provide a respite from the sweat inducing sun. Droplets land on my shoe tops as I climb. For the first three hours, I am in a rhythm. Theighs churn over stones. Breaths bounce off the beats of my heart creating music that my entire body follows. This machine is efficient, but it is not sustainable. The packet of cookies and the banana that the cooks gave us to carry on the hike isn`t enough to keep me going. I begin stopping every few minutes to rest. Mike eventually catches up to me and we plod on together, discussing summertime in the Northwest, our future plans, the imminent return to Western society. It makes the time pass and we soon reach a grassy plataue where the mules are grazing.

Lunch and rest replenishes our energy. We are worried about Kate and Patrick. We have rested for almost two hours before Felix arrives and tells us that they are 45 minutes behind him. But they are making it, just going slow. We decide to continue hiking. Eric has already ran off towards the campsite. His speed, among other things, has earned him the nickname Puma. For us, this trek is not a race, and we have fun pointing out birds, flowers and butterflies to each other along the way. Still, the sun is high and we still have another few hours of hiking to go. We saddle our spines with shoulder straps and trudge on.

From the high ridgeline we have a perfect view of the terraces. Row upon row of woven rock. The terraces occupy the almost vertical walls of a narrow valley. One group of them is built up to the very edge of a completely sheer, thousand foot drop. High above the terraces, on a ridge across the valley, are the ruins of Choquequirao. Gable ends of rock jut from the flattened precipice. It takes us another hour of hiking through dense bamboo forests to reach our campspot.

We rest shortly, but the three of us are feeling fairly good. We decide to make the 45 minute hike to the ruins. The trail is muddy. We see Eric on his way down and are happy that we do not have to hike with him. His mannerisms and social conduct have already begun to annoy us. Mike, Kelly and I are getting along fine though, and we enjoy going slowly on this short uphill section.

When we reach the beginning of the ruins, we are amazed to find that there is no gate, no ticket to be bought, no one even there. The only other people we see are a group of Peruvian men cutting the grass. We are free to explore every corner of this place, to vandalize it, to steal rocks and take them home. The two days of hard hiking are prevention enough. No one who is willing to hike all that way would have the heart to vandalize a place like this. Although we are free to go anywhere and explore anything, we are running short on energy and on time.

The sun is descending towards the torn-paper peaks. We climb to a flattened hilltop that overlooks the ruins. The views are amazing. The few clouds that remain in the painted sky are wrapped around the knees of the endless mountaintops. We gaze out from the clearing of grass that is surrounded by a circular wall of stone. Moss grows where mortar should be. We imagine that this is where festivals were held, great celebrations. Perhaps the stone in the middle is where girls were once sacrificed, the blood pooling into the hollowed bowl and mixing there with grains of sand. What was once blue sky has now mixed with the blood of a dying sun. Only deep pink is left. The trail back to the campsite is illuminated by the color of rose petals filtered through the transluscent green of moist bamboo leaves.

After nine total hours of hiking, we are all ready for sleep. The Australians arrive just as the heaping plate of delicious popcorn is brought to the table. Kate is wearing a knee brace and from the way Patrick is walking I would guess his feet are blistered, but they are both in high spirits. We laugh and talk about tomorrow as we eat. We will have more time tomorrow to explore the ruins. Felix will be our tour guide. We are all looking forward to it. Dreams of lost gold and giant stones plague me in my sleep. Unitl I am woken, late at night, by the pounding of rain.

To be continued...

Cuzco Briefs

1.
My feet almost get ran over by a taxi. The streets are narrow, the sidewalks the width of my hips. Sharp cobble protrudes from worn concrete. There are channels in the middle of the road covered by metal grates. Gralic odor wafts from restaurant windows and mixes with the stench of nearbye dog shit. Someone has stepped in the pile, but it wasn`t us. Another gringo must have done it. They are eveywhere. White faces hide beneath khaki sombreros. Pale legs are protected from the sun by cotton trousers. New Balance sneakers stained tope and cracked from wear. Cameras.

Like animals fed in the wild, the habitants of Cuzco have grown accustomed to the easy exploitation of the over-abundant tourists. We are offered massages from every doorway we pass. Hosteses wave menus in our faces. Red-eyed Peruvians offer paintings and terquoise jewelry. We say no gracias and continue walking towards the plaza.

2.
Enormous diorite blocks carved for a perfect fit. The joints are nearly invisible, hidden by the shadow of the inlay. These walls survived the great earthquake of 1650 while the Spanish architecture crumbled. These walls were here when Cuzco was last besieged by the Manco Inca. The weight of the stones is unimaginable, the skill of the craftsmanship unbelievable. The temple we are exploring was built right on top of an ancient Incan structure. Many of the walls remain intact, but they are now decorated with colinial religious artwork. The Virgin Mary stares skyward with imploring eyes. I`m more interested in the stonework.

We go to the Inca museum next. Black and red pottery, bronze tweezers, a golden llama. There are faces on the vases with tiny noses and pointy eyes. One exhibit shows mummies illuminated by red bulbs. Their gaunt faces stare back at us from the 16th-century. The artifacts tell a history of wealth and power, but there is a noticable lack of gold. Spanish furnaces melted a wealth of art that could not be equaled by the thousands of bars stamped with the King`s seal.

3.
We hike towards the ruins and are stopped by a man in a booth selling tickets. The price is 40 soles, about 14 dollars. The ruin is packed with white faces pressed to viewfinders. Tour guides spew mystery and legend. We will have plenty of chances to see ruins on our nine day trek to Machu Pichu. We decide to stroll around the countryside. We climb a short hillside with a white statue at the top. The statue has his enormous arms open wide, as if embracing the city. From the hilltop we can see every red roof of Cuzco. The green valleys contrast the sprawling buildings.

A young boy starts talking to us even though we do not ask him to. He tells us that the city is built in the shape of a Puma. He points out the head, the legs, the genitals. The Plaza Armas is the heart of the beast. The blood is tourism and it pulses to the claw tips of the puma.

4.
A milk shake with chocolate chip ice cream. We play cribbage and discuss our trip. We leave tomorrow morning at 6:30 am. The trek will take nine days. We will see Machu Pichu and many other ruins along the way. We are all excited. I suck forcefully on the straw until the glass is empty. My stomach is full of sugar. My mind if full of anticipation.

Travel Blues: Ecuador to Peru

5:30am. The bus leaves the Riobamba terminal in half an hour. We eat leftover potato thing--that`s what Mike and Kelly call it--mashed russels mixed with sauteed vegetables, wrapped in a tortilla. We don`t have time for coffee, hail a taxi outside the hostel, throw our enormous backpacks in the trunk, tell the driver we are going to the terminal, inform him that he will charge us one dollar because we know this is fair. And we`re off to Peru.

The bus to Guayaquil takes about 6 hours. Road construction slows our progress. We are sitting beneath a speaker that blasts unchanging romantica: synthesized, high-pitched, whiny beats. As we descend the jarring road from the southern highlands to the flat-plain coast, the air begins to change. What was once light, fresh and cool is now the opposite. Roadside vegetation has bigger leaves. The trees are different. Cloying heat envelopes the bus even though there is no sunshine, only clouds. Open windows bring shit-smells swirling around us. We close the windows and watch the countryside zoom behind the dewy glass. People board and disembark. We remain seated, occasionally stretching arms to ceiling, Mike twisting back with a pop, until the bus reaches it`s end. Guayaquil.

The bus station is huge and modern. This is the first McDonald`s I have seen in Ecuador. We are immediately badgered by bus attendants. These are probably the most annoying people on earth. All they do, all day, is stand around rapidly repeating destinations in shrill voices that follow a standard tonal rhythm. "Ambato! Quito! Ambato! Latacunga! Ambato! Quito! Quito! Quitooooo!" or "Baños! Baños! Bañosss!" They do this continually throughout the day, without moving from their original position. The effect is absolutely maddening.

The bus to Lima has already left, even though all the internet sites said that it did not leave until 2pm. It is noon. We take a taxi to the office. The guy behind the plexiglass barrier says the bus tomorrow is full. We would not be able to leave for Lima until Friday, meaning we`d be in Guayaquil for two days, which is something none of us want to do. Besides, we would not get to Cuzco until Sunday probably, the day before we are supposed to leave for our trek. We initiate the back-up plan. Head for the airport.

After talking to various flight agents, we discover that buying tickets on the internet will actually be cheaper. There is an internet cafe in the airport and we begin the process of finding three tickets to Lima. The process is painstaking. We eventually settle on the cheapest tickets we can find. Kelly sits down to enter her credit card information. Bank Of America puts a hold on her card due to suspicious activity. Mike enters his card information. At first, the site rejects us. He tries again and is accepted. We have tickets for Lima. The flight leaves at 5pm this afternoon.

Now, we must find tickets from Lima to Cuzco, but we are striking out. Everything we find is extremely expensive, almost as much as it costs to fly to Ecuador from the US. We discover a website from a cheaper airline and find some reasonable tickets. I enter my card number. The site does not work. It regurgitates error messages at us. We try over and over but cannot get through. Flight agents quote us exorbitant prices. We have reached a dilemma. We are all extremely stressed out. We feel like we have been getting screwed over this entire time. Bad luck is on our side. It is decided that we will just fly to Lima and hope to find cheaper tickets there. It is decided that we will hope for better luck.

Airport fees, overpriced food, security checks. Our flight leaves Guayaquil on time. The plane is spacious and modern. There are television sets on the back of every seat. You can play games, watch a selection of movies, listen to various albums. I turn on some mellow tunes and try to relax. Food is served even though this is only a two hour flight. Triple decker sandwich and fruit bowl. Orange juice without ice. I read my book, "The Conquest of the Incas," which tells the history of the region we are flying over. Gold, disease, knights versus Indians, Christianity. We land in Lima, Peru and they let us through customs without a second look.

We are immediately accosted by taxi drivers. We are continuously shunning them. We are also approached by some men who tell us they can get us tickets to Cuzco for cheap. They wear name tags and ties. We are suspicious but intrigued. First we talk to the flight agents and are quoted a reasonable price. We are willing to go with this, but the suit ties keep telling us they can give us a better deal. We follow them to their office, figuring that we can turn around if anything feels sketchy.

We cross the highway on a bridge. The sour smells and clammy heat of Lima surround us. This is the city that Francisco Pizzaro founded after conquering Cuzco and the Inca empire. We are knights in search of horses. We are the Inca`s sons and we must get to the highlands. We walk briskly behind the travel agent. Our only armor is our minds. The office looks legitimate. The man behind the desk speaks English, although we converse in Spanish. He quotes us a decent price for a flight that leaves at 6am the next morning. I ask him very direct questions about whether or not this is a real business and whether or not he is booking real tickets. He is not offended but answers very professionally. We decide to do it and hand him $500 in cash. I grab Mike by the shoulders and shake him, releasing some of my stress and apprehension. "That is what I`m going to do to you if these tickets aren´t authentic," I say, seriously, to the travel agent. He gives a little chuckle and then proceeds to reassure me, over and over again, that everything will be fine.

We shake hands and part ways. The moment we reenter the airport, we head immediately to the ticket counter and try to check in. Everything is fine. We are handed our boarding passes after we check our luggage. This is a small relief after so much stress. We head to the food court, find some dinner, which is horrible, and then head through the secure area. It is midnight. Our flight does not leave for another 6 hours. We find some seats in a corner of the terminal and try to sleep.

The flight is canceled. At first, it is just delayed. We are sitting on the plane, carry-ons in overhead bins, books out, seat belts on, when the captain explains that there is fog in Cuzco. We sit for another fifteen minutes before the flight becomes officially canceled. All the passengers filter down to the baggage claim. A woman from the airline is mobbed. It is impossible to tell what is happening. A group of loud Ecuadorian and Peruvian men surround her and begin shouting. Eventually the crowd disperses and forms a haphazard line that leads towards a ticket counter. After a few hours of waiting in the line, a group of airline representatives appear and, once again, chaos ensues. The older men from the back of the line shove their way to the front. No one cares about the rules. No one can control this mob.

We are at the back of the line because we are some of the only people that did not barge to the front. We are told we need to go to a different ticket counter and wait in another line of the same people to get our boarding passes. This line is slightly more organized, but there are still groups of people who cheat and make their way to the front without waiting. We are the absolute last people to get to the ticket counter. Every other passenger from the original flight gets on a plane that leaves at 9:20am. We are put on the 11:30am flight. We spend another few hours wandering the airport, complaining about horrible food, complaining about selfish old men, complaining about weather, money, politics, everything. We are absolutely exhausted, worn out, on edge, annoyed with society, beaten, fucked. We talk about how we have been fucked so many times in the last 24 hours that it is depressing. We are almost positive that our next flight will be canceled, that the only flight allowed to enter Cuzco in the next two weeks will be the 9:20am, which we missed. We are equally positive that the 9:20am flight will crash into the Andes, killing all passengers. We know we will be stuck in Lima for the rest of our trip, unable to leave or return. We know we will be robbed by airport security. We will be like Tom Hanks in The Terminal. We will build our own section in the airport and not allow stupid people to enter. We will apply for citizenship, marry the great-great-great-great-great grand daughter of Atahualpa, build a race of powerful mixed breed politicians who will change airport policies forever. We will flourish, or we will wither. We will survive!

The flight leaves on time. We land in Cuzco without crashing. The taxi driver rips us off, but that is to be expected. We stumble through the narrow streets of Cuzco searching for an acceptable hostel. We find one with a kitchen. The owners seem nice. We have lunch at a nearby restaurant. I am too tired to taste the food. It has been over 32 hours since we left Riobamba. There has not been a moment during this period of time when we have not been stressed out or on guard. Finally, we can rest. We return to the hostel and say we will just take a little nap, that we will get up and go find a place to eat dinner. It is 3pm. We hug each other, glad that we are finally here, and retire to our separate rooms. The lights go out and we do not wake up until the next morning.

Loopy and Laid-Up

We start walking as the morning sun makes the dark earth steam. The trail is a road, but no car could possibly drive it. Switchbacks along farmed hillsides, tiny lambs, oinkers, the smell of dog shit. We reach a soft ridge and rest for a moment. There are so many different shades of green in the valley that it is impossible to count. Kelly describes it as a patchwork blanket. There are great tears in the fabric though. Deep canyons with beige walls end in skinny rivers. The only citys are towns. Communities. Three buildings, two yellow roofs and one red, are the largest eye-sores visible.

We detour up a rolling hill that is the highest around. The "summit." We pass horses and cows. They moo. When we reach the top Kelly breaks out her compass and we orient ourselves in relation to the Amazon, the Andes, the Pacific. There are so many mystical names surrounding us. We are a part of the names, a part of the countryside, a part of the mysticism.

We continue along the road as a dense, afternoon fog envelopes us. A small community appears ahead. Children laugh at us and stare. We pass a few roads and a few trails that look like they are heading back towards Chugchilan, our starting destination. It is impossible to tell where they lead in this fog. We sit down for lunch on a hillock by the road. Ubiquitous tuna and white rolls. There is no mayo in this valley. How can they survive without mayo?

Mike, Kelly and I have a way of talking that is extremely stupid and eternally hilarious to all of us. We have determined that approximately %75-%85 of what we say is absolute bullshit, but we have also determined that we are laughing pretty much constantly. As we sit and discuss which trail to take, our conversation goes like this:
"Well there was a road back there that looked like it went where we wanted," says Kelly.
"Yeah, this trail also looks like it heads in the right direction," I reply.
"We could continue this way too?" says Mike, pointing further up the road we have been following.
"Well, which do you think we should take?" I ask.
There is a short pause and then Kelly says, "I don`t really care."
Mike and I look at each other. "So what you`re trying to say is..." says Mike.
"So what you`re implying by saying those words is..." I say.
"So what you are intending to impart by speaking those words out of your mouth to us is..." continues Mike.
"So what you mean to describe by using those phonemes that signify words which have a certain meaning in our language is..."
"So what you wholly wish to imbue to us, these humans sitting here on this earth, with these sounds that you create by expelling breath from between your lips, which combine to form longer, more complex sounds, which we then interpret by having them pass through our ear canal and travel to our brain all in an instant, is that...you don`t care."
We are all in tears. Just rolling on the ground. Dogs stare at us.

We get lost for a while trying to return to Chugchilan. We end up on someones farm, stomping through deep mud, wondering where the hell we are. This is pretty much our modus operandi. If we don`t get lost for at least half an hour on each hike we feel unfulfilled. We eventually return to the road and find the right way down. The walk back takes us a few more hours.

The Hostal Cloud Forrest makes killer french fries and hamburgers. Grease drowned in ketchup. We play cribbage and drink beer. There are foriegners from all over the world. We meet a young woman from France, Solene, and her friend, Andre, from Quebec. They are very nice, funny people. We hit it off immediatly. We teach them how to play cribbage. Mike and I challenge them. It`s France versus America. They start singing the French victory song, even though they are losing. I start calling the french fries "freedom fries." We talk mostly in Spanish, but the game is conducted in all three languages. When a German woman, who is volunteering at the hostal, gets involved, there are four different languages flying across the table at once. We play until someone calls us to dinner.

The next morning we wake up at 6:20 and catch a camioneta to the town of Quilotoa. There is a crater lake here, like in Cuicocha, only this one is salty. A cab driver once explained to me that scientists thought the volcano was originally formed in the ocean and that as it rose from the sea floor, the water was trapped in the crater. We start the hike by getting lost, obviously. After wasting about fifteen minutes heading directly downhill, we realize we are not on the right trail. We`ve wasted about half an hour by the time we find the correct trail and begin the hike around the crater rim.

Slippery volcanic sand shrouds the rough grey stone beneath. The trail rollercoasters along the ridge as it circles the lake. There are some clouds and it is windy, but we are comfortable. The gust`s footprints race from shore to shore. It takes us about three hours to get three quarters of the way around the lake. We stop for lunch, hidden from the wind behind a wall of crumbly rock. I am sure we are going to get mercury poisoning. Mike and I try to throw rocks into the lake from the ridge, but none of them go far enough out to reach the water. They fall hundreds of feet towards the base of the crater before they disappear in green. "That makes me reconsider jumping," says Mike.
"Yeah, but hang gliding?"
"Yeah, or parasailing, or paragliding, or whatever?"
"Right, maybe we could just glue condor feathers to our arms."

A low, sandy spot in the ridgeline approaches. There is an enormous cairn marking the trail back to Chugchilan. We turn right and head steeply downhill for a few miles through dusty pastures. Little dogs bark. We carry rocks.

Unlike the frequently touristed town of Chugchilan, the tiny community of Guayama has mayonaise. I ignore the rediculous stares from the shopkeeper and purchase a small jar. Now I`m looking forward to our second lunch. We pass a cemetary and watch for the third right. "I think that was the first right," says Kelly, as we pass a right turn immediatly after the cemetary.
"So what your speaking with your words is..." says Mike.
"Let me get this straight, according to the thoughts that you are now transforming into words in an effort to communicate to us your logical deductions, you seem to be calculating that as the first right, which means this is the second," I say.
"So what you`re saying here before us in the presence of God the almighty while he sits in his shining cloud-seat of heaven with rays of light illuminating his pointing finger, is that you think we need to turn here."

It is the correct right, the right right. We descend towards the canyon. This time the mercury and blonde bread is actually delicious. We dip crackers in mayonaise. I dip pinapple in mayonaise. The sky begins to drizzle. A tunnel-like trail leads us steeply down the canyon walls. Black sand pockets drip from the otherwise tan faced stone. The smell of Eucalyptus.

We cross a little bridge that spans the river. Three eucalyptus limbs lashed together. Now we must climb our way back out of the canyon. By the time we reach the Chugchilan plataeu, it is afternoon. The hike has taken us about six hours, not including the obligatory half hour detour. We buy a bottle of whiskey. Whiskey cokes and trilingual cribbage. I play cards until very late. The French are leaving tomorrow and I am sad for it. We have a strong connection. We exchange e-mails and talk outside their room for another hour. We part ways with hugs and kisses on the cheek. I am shivering from having stood outside for so long.

I cannot get warm. My body convulses epileptically. Eventually I calm my shivering and my heart rate. Breathe deeply. Sleep never really comes. Hallucinagenic visions, tossing, turning, soreness everywhere. Somewhere, a rooster crows. Its morning but I don`t care. I cannot move from my bed. I feel horrible. Sick, weak, cluttered. Mike and Kelly take care of me. We play card games all day, drink water, sit in the sunshine. I feel a bit better by dinnertime. The soup helps my fever. We go to bed early and I sleep a bit, but we awake at 2:30am to catch the bus out of here.

This bus goes the opposite direction but ends up at the same place. The road is much better this way. I sleep through the worst of it. We arrive in Latacunga at 7am, groggy. My stomach hurts and my energy level is in the gutter. We catch a bus to Ambato. From Ambato to Guaranda. After about 8 hours of travel it is noon. We find a hotel on a bustling Saturday street. I throw my bag on one bed, throw my body on the other, and fall immediatly to sleep.

(Postscript: I am now feeling much better from my sickness, although I am still battling occasional stomach pain and diarrea. We are in Riobamba now and will be heading to Peru tomorrow. Our trip to Machu Picchu has been pushed forward due to various circumstances. Therefore, my next post will likely be from Cuzco. Ciao!)

Robbery and Near Death Experiences

The Not-So-Innocent Bystandards
A young women, late teens or early twenties, sits in the seat next to me. Dark eyeshadow, liner, tight jeans, black Converse All-Stars. Her friend, a slightly older looking woman, sits across the aisle. There are plenty of open seats on the luxurious bus. The girl sitting next to me makes eye contact. It is a flirty, half-shy, half-seductive look. She reaches across my body for the lever that reclines my seat. She says it is more comfortable. I tell her thank you, but that I am fine the way it is. I ask her where she is going. Puyol, she tells me. My small satchel rests on the floor, squeezed between my feet.

The Setup Guy
White muscle-shirt, jeans with intentional wear and tear, gel-heavy doo, square face. He is moving all around the bus. There is a nice elderly couple sitting behind me when we leave Quito. The setup guy gets them to move to another part of the bus, reclines their seats for them, shakes their hands. He reclines the bystandard`s seat, tries to recline mine but, again, I will not let it happen. He finally sits down a few rows back.

El Ladron
The theif is a middle aged woman with long, curley black hair. She wears jeans with rhinestones on the rear pockets, a white fake leather jacket, a pink synthetic purse. When the seats behind me are vacated by the elderly couple, she takes their place. I do not notice these things happening, am too busy enjoying the views of the passing city.

The Backup
There are two more men who are present simply to be available as alibies to the other criminals. One man sits at the very back of the bus, watching everything with his arms folded across his chest. The other man sits across the aisle from el ladron, acting completely oblivious to what is happening.

The Heist
It is not long before the bus reaches the outskirts of the city. The green countryside zooms by. The bus is quiet, spacious. For a while, I read my book. The gently vibrating and bouncing words lull me to weariness. It is about 8:30am. The trip to Latacunga, where I will meet Mike and Kelly, will take another two hours. I put my book back in the satchel that rests between my feet. I lean my head against the rattling window and close my eyes. Sleep does not come. I am somewhere between a daydream and meditation. My eyes are closed for no more than 20 seconds. In this moment, the not-so-innocent bystandard removes the satchel from between my feet and shoves it underneath her reclined seat. El ladron grabs it, opens it up and begins rifeling through the contents. The overwhelming feeling that I have lost something jolts me from my restful state. I look down at my feet and realize that my bag is gone.

The Distraction
The moment I realize that my bag is gone, a manish looking woman with large hips blocks the aisle. She stands in front of my seat, bending over to open and close the window next to me. She plays with the window for a few seconds, as if she must adjust this particular window to the exact width that will make her, and me, comfortable. She acts as if she is doing me a favor, but really she is just making it impossible for me to do anything about the fleeing theif. Besides, I don`t realize what is happening until after the fact. El ladron hurries off the bus with a bulging pink purse. My satchel is shoved back underneath the bystandard`s seat. She looks up at me innocently.

The Take
My bag has obviously been rummaged through. Everything is out of order. My camera is gone. The memory cards that contain all my photos from the trip so far are gone with it. Over 500 photos. It is impossible to recover them. This hurts more than the camera itself. I check the hidden inside pouch and am relieved to find that my passport and money have not been touched. I realize how lucky I am for this. I begin searching the bus and find my sunglasses in their case underneath a nearbye seat. For a second, I am hopeful that I will find my camera, but the fact that it is truly gone begins to sink in. I am in shock. I move from seat to seat, asking people if they saw anything. This is when I begin to realize the elaborate plot. I notice the elderly couple in different seats. I notice that the distraction is sitting next to the older bystandard. I realize why they all wanted to recline my seat. I ask the backup what he saw and I am completely ignored. Twice. I remember that a big group of people got on the bus just outside the terminal in Quito. I now observe as this entire group, all the players, get off the bus a few minutes after the robbery. We are nowhere near Puyol. I try to explain it to the conductor of the bus, but he thinks it was only el ladron who was involved. This is impossible, but there is nothing I can do. They are all gone and the camera gone with them. I realize that they have also stolen the $4 wristwatch that I bought in Otavalo and that was attached to the strap of my bag. I take heart in the knowledge that these theifs are so stupid they cannot tell the difference between $200 sunglasses and a $4 watch. By the time I reach the Latacunga bus terminal, I am so fucking pissed off that I roar at the top of my lungs and grab Mike by the shirt collar, shaking him in mock rage. Everyone stares at the enormous, loud, angry gringo. I am glad they are staring. I want them to know what I will do to them if they try to rob me again. Afterall, we still have a four hour busride ahead.
********************

The bus is absolutely packed with people. This is the first time that assigned seating has actually mattered. A rather large mother and her screaming child currently occupy two seats, one of which is mine. Sunburnt pouches of thin skin for cheecks, short legs, a pink sweater that is lifted chest-high to allow the child to breastfeed. I confront her multiple times about the seat, but she does not respond posotively until the engine has already started and the bus begun to move. I squeeze into the tiny space next to the window.

My knees are jammed into the seat in front of me. The child is resting his legs on my theigh. The mother`s girth presses against my right arm, the window presses against my left. I cannot move. Every once in a while the mother changes breasts and in the moment between the last nipple and the next, the baby screams. It is not very long before he grows tired of feeding, however, and decides to nap. Now his head rests on my theigh. The mother, too, leans her head on my shoulder.

The disintegrating dirt road switches back and forth as it climbs and descends the walls of a steep valley. The road is very narrow with many hairpin turns. I am sitting on the side of the bus that overhangs the bottomless valley. My seat is directly above the rear wheel. For hours, I watch with horror as the wheel flirts with the edge of the abyss. I have never been so terrified in my life. There are more than a few times when the wheel is half on and half off the edge of the road. Beneath me there is certain death. At one point, the wheel falls into a deep ditch and the top-heavy bus tips violently. The heretofore stoic passangers scream with fear. I am sure this is the end, but by some miracle the bus does not cross the threshold after which gravity would have taken us to the bottom of the canyon. The driver reverses. A few passangers jump out and throw rocks into the ditch. We continue on as if nothing has happened. I have more fear in these four hours than I have ever had on a mountain or rock wall. I have no control. What a horrible way to die.

When we finally reach Chugchilan, I am astounded we are alive. This is by far the worst day of the entire trip. My camera has been stolen and we have nearly been killed. My legs are sore from the ride. My head is aching. I am dehydrated and hungry. For the first time, I truly miss home.

The Hostal Cloud Forrest is beautiful. Breakfast and dinner are included. There is a nice communal living area that is heated by a wood stove. We meet people from all over the world. Just before dinner, some young girls knock on our doors. They are dressed in long, pleated skirts of yellow and orange. They have sequined fabric of the same color wrapped around their heads. It hangs down to the backs of their knees. They invites us to a dance. We come down to the living area and find that every guest at the hostal is there. The four girls hop and spin in unison. Their dresses swirl around them. They dance to the rhythm of reed flutes and guitarron. We all clap and cheer between songs. After a few formal performances the girls come into the audiance and drag people onto the dance floor. Everyone is obliged to come. We hold hands and create a gyrating circle. It is some kind of improvised polka. We make a train that snakes around the spinning girls in the center. For a moment, everyone lets loose. The free smiles and uninhibited laughter remind me, again, why I love this country.

Cayambe: A Story My Parents Will Appreciate

This snow bridge looks sketchy. I`m gazing up at a thin sheet of steep, snow covered ice that crosses an enormous cravasse. The bootpack leads over the bridge. Deep footprints, holes where footprints should be, puncture wounds from ice axes that struck nothing but air. We are surrounded by bottomless blue fractures, Tyler and I, standing twelve meters apart, a few knots in the rope between us. The summit is no more than thirty feet above us. We are so close. We are the only climbers on the whole mountain. Paused beneath the final obstacle, we contemplate the risk.

Sixteen hours earlier, I was annoyed. We were supposed to meet here, in this park, at about 1:00pm. It was almost 3 o`clock and there was no sign of Tyler and Nuria. Was I in the right park? I asked some lazing Ecuadorians if there were any other parks around. A ten minute walk brought me to a tiny piece of grass beside a busy street. No. I returned to the original park. In the distance, on the edge of a filthy pond, sitting on a white bench, there was a couple. As I approached, Tyler`s red mountaineering boots reflected the sun back at me.
"What happened?" I ask, arms outstretched.
"What do you mean," says Tyler.
"I mean I`ve been here since 1."
Tyler laughs, then, "So have we."
"Shut up. Are you serious?"
"Yeah, we got here just after 1. Have you been here too?"
"You`re lying. I`ve been scanning the park for like two hours."
"We`ve been sitting right here."
"No. Impossible. I don`t believe you."
"Honest truth."
"No."
"Yes."

For the sake of getting on with our adventure, I finally accepted their lies. We found a comioneta, but there was only room for two people in the cab. One of us would have to sit in the back. The drive to the refugio at Cayambe is about two hours on extremely rough, dusty roads. Sitting in the unpadded bed of a truck would not be fun. We asked if he had any friends with an extended cab. No. But he did have a friend who drove a taxi. Apparently, the taxi could handle the roads, but we were skeptical. We spent almost half an hour talking over our options. It was already late in the day. The ride would cost us $70. We would be climbing the mountain that night, meaning that we would have almost no time to rest after setting up camp and eating dinner. If we weren`t going to climb, there was no point in paying the money to go. Dark clouds shielded the mountain from our sight. I think it was Tyler who finally found the guts to say, "let`s go for it." We tied our backpacks to the roof of the taxi.

The driver did not know how to ascend a hill. Tyler and I were pushing with all our might and just when the car gained momentum he would let his foot off the gas. Gravel struck my shins. Tyler was enraged. "Maybe if the fucking government didn`t subsudize gasoline then everyone and their mother wouldn`t be a taxi driver. Only good drivers could do it." It was not long before we reached a ditch that the car could not pass. Volcanic stones filled a muddy rut. Short tires, one wheel spinning, reverse. We took our backpacks from the roof and told him we would meet him there tomorrow. We trudged up the road through dense mist, talking about Obama`s proposed budget.

After about an hour hike, we reached the refugio. We set our backpacks down, groaning. Why did I bring my 700 page book on Incan history? I wouldn`t have time to read a single word. We tried to fill our water bottles in the bathroom. The caretaker confronted us and said that we had to pay five dollars each to use the sinks. He wanted us to pay him to even enter the vicinity of the building.
"Where can we get water then?" I asked in Spanish.
"There is a lagoon," he said, pointing up the slope.
"Yeah, an hour hike towards the mountain," said Tyler, exasperated.
The caretaker didn`t reply. The only place in Ecuador that I have felt unwelcome is at the climbing refugios. There is absolutely no logical reason for this. The rudeness and resentment with which we have been treated is appaling. I left with only one of my bottles full, glaring at the caretaker as I passed by him.

We set up camp in a shallow valley on the other side of a ridge. Rusty stones, hard earth, the sound of dripping water. I discovered a hose that was emptying into a massive basin above the refugio. Darkness surrounded us. Only a few stars were visible. I turned off my headlamp because I didn`t want the caretaker to see me through the window. Stealthily, I put my bottle underneath the dripping hose. I was a theif, a water robber, but I felt no guilt at all. A pot boiled on the stove. Tyler added noodles and seasoning. We ate ravenously, tried to sleep.

My eyes were shut for maybe an hour before I heard the alarm go off. It was 11:30, time to start the climb. I put my bare feet into my boots and stood outside the tent in my longjohns. Flashes of lightning strobed our conversation. We heard no thunder. The stars were barely visible behind a cloudy curtain.
"What do you think?" asked Tyler.
"Well, its not the best, but its not that bad either."
"Yeah, the lightning is definitely scary. It seems kinda stupid to climb into a lightning storm."
"No shit, but it seems far off too. We can`t hear anything. It could move in quickly though."
"Yeah."
"I mean we can see the summit, so this cloud cover must be really high up."
"True."
"But that could change at any moment," I said, glancing in all directions.
"Right, and this wouldn`t be a good mountain to get caught in a whiteout on. The glacier is just huge, wide open."
"Yeah, I hear that. We don`t have any wands either."
"Nope. But we are here, and the weather at the moment is definitely doable."
"That`s also true. How long do we have to hike on the moraine before we get to the glacier?"
"About an hour, I think."
"Yep."
"So we could just go for it and see what the weather does," said Tyler, his upturned face illuminated by a far off flash.
"We could do that."
"We should just be really conservative with our decisions. If we feel crappy or if the clouds roll in, we should turn around."
"Yeah, alright, sounds good. I`ll start to get ready."

We hiked slowly over the grey sand that filled the void between volcanic boulders. Balls of white energy exploded on the horizon. There was lightning in all directions. Each compass point electrified. The summit was absolutely clear and it looked so close. When we reached the glacier we found an obvious boottrack leading left along a shoulder of snow. We were no longer worried about the weather. The flashes had become less frequent and there was still no thunder within earshot. If any clouds moved in we felt confident that we would be able to follow the boottrack home. We decided to continue our unlikely climb.

Cayambe, at 5,790 meters (18,996 ft), is Ecuadors third highest peak. It also holds the destinction of being the highest point in the world at a latitude of 0 dgrees, exactly on the equator. Most guide books and Ecuadorians will tell you that Cayambe is a much harder climb than Cotopaxi. It is supposed to be more technically difficult and more dangerous due to the high number of cravasses on the mountain. As a result, the climb is far less popular. We were the only people on the mountain, but we were climbing like it was a race. Big, obvious cravasses that were easy to avoid. Steep snow slopes. A ridge of pumice sand that cushioned our crampons. For the first time in his life, Tyler felt good above 5400 meters. We were climbing too quickly, and slowed our pace for fear of reaching the summit before sunrise. There was not a breath of wind. The only sound was of our crampons gripping the ice, our rhythmic breathing, the rustle of our synthetic clothes. The music of our motion continued for hours upon hours. The sky lightened. A pale terquoise mixed with the meat of a lemon. We were close.

"I just don`t have a good feeling about this," says Tyler, looking up at me as I scan the snow bridge for the safest route. There isn`t a safe route. We must cross the bridge one way or another. From where he is planted, Tyler can see the vast maw of the cravasse. The ice and snow that covers this gullet is just skin. The slope is steep, the fissure impossible to jump across. We don`t have any snow pickets, nothing to create anchors, no way to call for help, no one to help us. We are literally thirty feet from the summit and we have come to a dillema.

I know that if we attempt to cross the bridge it is likely that one of us will fall in; if not on the ascent then on the descent for sure. Without anchors it would be almost impossible for one of us to extract the other from the cravasse, that is if we didn`t both get pulled in together. It would be a dangerous risk of life, something that could kill us both, but, still, I hesitate. The summit is so close and we have come through so much adversity to get here. I cannot say I have climbed this mountain unless I make it to the true summit. I may never have another chance to climb it.

There is a reason why we climb with a partner. With a few confidant words, Tyler saves my life. I don`t remember what he says, but there is no question that it wakes me up, makes me realize the risks involved, destroys my reckless ambition. On past climbs, I have played the role of conservative companion. Now Tyler returns the favor. We make an unbeatable team. Our characters are complimentary, our skills usefully diverse, our strength equal. As I turn away from the summit and begin descending, I realize how lucky I am to be climbing with him. The moment that my feet point downhill, I know that we have made the correct decision and it is almost a better feeling than actually having climbed the mountain. Sometimes, there are bridges that should not be crossed. Knowing when to turn around is a skill in itself. And it is this skill that will, hopefully, keep me alive and climbing for many years to come.

We reach the tents in sunshine. Tuna, mayonaise, cheese, bread. Our staples. Nuria makes the sandwiches for us. We are grateful. The sunshine bakes our relaxing bodies. Groups of Ecuadorians with their families walk by and ask us how long the climb took. We say that it took nine hours. It was more like eleven in reality. Tyler and I get in an enormous argument about the qualities of Prana versus Patagonia. We are acting as if we haven`t slept in days. We haven`t. It takes us a few hours to pack up and walk down the road to meet the taxi. He is there and has brought his wife. I don`t have enough energy to speak Spanish. I act as if I`m sleeping, but the road is way too bumpy for me to actually do so. He drops us off at a restaurant where we order lunch. Tyler talks about bribing the chefs to give us other people`s plates that are closer to being ready. We eat salsa with spoons. After lunch we have to say goodbye. We hug, knowing we won`t see each other again for at least a month. Maybe in April I will go visit them. They walk one way, I walk the other. I cross the busy street carefully and wait on the corner for a bus.