360 Degrees Longitude

We were anticipating meeting Jessie, our guide for the Inca Trail, but at the moment I was focusing on making dinner at our Cuzco, Peru hostel. This was proving difficult because the burners on the stove were dominated by large cauldrons of a simmering green gelatinous liquid. A plaque on the wall above the stove hinted at the contents:

San Pedro is a sacred plant, a cactus, used in the Andes for healing purposes. Most people drink this medicine to heal on an emotional level, but it is also used to cure physical illness. San Pedro reconnects us to ourselves, and also to Mother Earth.

This plant is a Master Teacher, a great gift from Creator. It helps us to heal, to grow, to learn and awaken, and assists us to reach higher states of Truth and Consciousness.

I thought I had gotten used to the Andean extracurricular activities while we were in Bolivia. After reading the plaque, I glanced at the simmering liquid and listened. All I heard was gurgling so I didn’t speak to Lesley.

Cuzco was the seat of Inca power in 1532 when the Spaniards appeared on the scene. The Spaniards found leading from Cuzco a series of roads that supported a Pony Express-like network used for sending communications throughout the empire, which extended down the western sides of the Andes from modern day Ecuador to Chile. One of those roads was to Machu Picchu, known today as the Inca Trail.

The Peruvian government limits the number of people on the Inca Trail to five hundred per day, and demand for hiking permits far outstrips supply so we had made our hiking arrangements several weeks in advance.

When Jessie, a native Quechuan young woman, arrived at the hostel to brief us on what to expect while hiking the trail, the smell of San Pedro simmering on the stove hung heavy in the air. Lesley, the 50-something Australian-born matriarch of our hostel, was guiding a fresh batch of 20-somethings on their journey to reconnect to Mother Earth in the next room. I heard giggling. I really did not want to know what that was all about. I tried to focus on what Jessie was trying to tell us.

“Since you elected to not have porters carry your personal belongings you will need good sturdy backpacks that are up to the task. If you don’t have one of your own, you can rent one of ours.”

Elect? I hadn’t elected porters? My mind raced to understand this information. All I could think of was that I hadn’t elected anyone since the last presidential election, and I couldn’t even remember which candidate I’d chosen.

“There are porters to carry the food and tents,” she replied, “but not your personal belongings such as clothes, sleeping bag, drinking water, camera, and so on. You can arrange to have a porter carry your personal belongings as well, but at additional cost.”

This was starting to sound familiar. I now remembered thinking when I made our reservation, that I could carry my clothes—they weren’t heavy—and then nixing the personal porter line item all those weeks ago. “Okay, we’ll need to rent some backpacks.”

September shot me a sideways glance, unleashing a death ray out of her left eye. Luckily, I narrowly escaped it. “Jessie,” September asked, “how many hours of hiking can we expect each day?”

“The first day you will hike for eight hours,” Jessie handed out a map of the trail, “then twelve on the second day, followed by ten on the third day. Depending on how far we get, there could be as many as four hours hiking on the fourth day.”

September shot me another death ray, but this time I caught both barrels. I swear I had read that there were no more than four or five hours of hiking per day, which was the story I had told her when I booked the hike.

“What about the elevation profile?” continued September, as though she hadn’t just mortally wounded her husband.

I didn’t need to hear the answer. Looking at the map Jessie had handed out, it was clear that the second day was going to be the worst, when there would be 5,700 feet of ascent and 3,300 feet of descent. In Cuzco’s thin air we were still struggling to get our breath just climbing a flight of stairs. This hike was going to push us to our limits. I wasn’t looking forward to being alone with September, as this had been all my idea.

September then asked the $64,000 question. “Jessie, what age are the youngest children who have done the hike before?”

“Oh, this hike has been done by very young children, as young as twelve or thirteen years old, I think.”

Nine-year-old Jordan beamed at the prospect of being the youngest to do the trail. Forty-five-year-old John was thinking of going into the next room and reconnecting with Mother Earth before September had a chance to unleash more death rays.

“We will pick you up at six in the morning!” was Jessie’s parting, cheerful reply.

Our sole preparation for our hike had consisted of “being at altitude” for over a week. The entire length of the Inca Trail was so high that altitude sickness was a real concern. Now that we had a better idea of what to expect, I felt a little, shall we say, underprepared.

“You know, we don’t have to do this,” I told September after Jessie left. “There’s a train that takes you from Cuzco to Aguas Caliente. From there you can take a shuttle to Machu Picchu.”

I am the luckiest guy in the world because not only does my wife love me, but she puts up with me in spite of all my faults, such as being too clueless to grasp all the details of hiking the Inca Trail. Or boarding the Navimag. Or riding in the Unimog.

We briefly discussed forfeiting the hike and taking the train. Then she said, “Others have done this and we can, too. I’ll bring some Armageddon Pills, though.”

I smiled. I knew what she meant by that. Not that she was going to go out and buy a pack of M&M’s, but that we both understood each other and knew that together we could overcome a lot of uncertainty and difficulty.

Early the next morning we met the other hikers in our group for the first time. There was our group of five (the four of us, plus P) and five others—an Israeli couple, another Israeli woman traveling alone, and two Dutch women traveling together—all in their twenties. The demographic reinforced our notion that the Dutch are the best-traveled group of people in the world.

Jessie was our leader, and supporting the ten hikers and one guide were twelve porters. Normally, the ratio is one porter per hiker, but the two Dutch girls were smart enough to pony up the cash to get a personal porter to carry their gear. By the time I was done packing for our hike, the weight of my backpack had ballooned to 25 pounds. P’s backpack was probably 25 pounds just in Duracells. As I lifted my backpack onto the bus that would carry us to the trailhead, I was more than a little jealous of the two Dutch girls and their porter.

There were formalities involved before we could actually begin hiking. Each of the porters was required to weigh his massive load. They were limited to 25 kg (55 pounds) each. It seemed that in years past there had been some porter abuse so their loads are now regulated, but I’m not so sure that the new and improved 55-pound limit still doesn’t constitute abuse.

After the weigh-in, there was passport control. The Peruvian government takes the regulation of the trail seriously. I was glad we had extra pages put into our passports at the U.S. embassy before we left La Paz, as we were running out of places for stamp-happy officials to make their mark.

Once through passport control, we climbed for about an hour on a smooth and wide trail until we reached a broad plateau. The Urubamba River raged below us.

“We are all a family now,” Jessie told us as she performed an Inca adoption ceremony. After blowing on some coca leaves and then burying them in the ground, it was official.

I would learn more information about the Incas over the next few days as we covered the distance to Machu Picchu, the most significant being that the Inca Trail is proof of an ancient civilization that was advanced enough to have arthroscopic knee replacement technologies, because otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to go out on the blasted trail to begin with.

That first day of hiking was strenuous, but it was the second day that really tested us, and proved almost too much for Jordan. It started with a 5:00 a.m. wake-up call so we could have a good breakfast and hit the trail at first light. With twelve hours of hiking ahead of us and twelve hours of available daylight, we couldn’t afford to waste any time.

Jordan simply refused to eat that early. I pleaded with him. “Little Dude, you need your strength to hike in this thin air. We’ll be ascending 4,700 feet in the next six hours, and the lunch stop is over eight hours from now.”

Yoda said that the mind of a child is a wonderful thing. Of course Jesus said almost the same thing. I doubt either had Jordan in mind, though, when they were being quoted.

As soon as we hit the trail Jordan’s low blood sugar and the thin air packed a one-two punch. He quickly got physically ill and started throwing up despite his empty stomach. Moving very slowly, he required rest every 15 feet or so.

“There’s no way he can make it like this,” I whispered to September. September and I hadn’t had a private conversation in almost eleven months and this was no exception. Whispering was the most reliable form of communication within our group.

Jordan simply hates to be treated like a little kid. I offered to carry his pack. I offered to carry him. Any offering of help served no other purpose than to remind him that he was little. I may as well have patted him on the head. It didn’t help matters that every other adult on the trail showed equal concern. Every comment only served to increase his resolve that he was going to finish the hike, even if it killed him.

Which, of course, was what I was worried about. Altitude sickness can be fatal. He had vomited several times and between dehydration and low blood sugar, I thought he might go into shock.

“Maybe we should just turn around,” September reasoned, when I shared my concerns.

“There’s just as much elevation gain behind us,” I said, looking at our map, “as there is in front of us.”

The part of the trail we were hiking had local entrepreneurs selling everything from food to shoe repair to porter services. It was Gatorade that saved the day. We bought some for roughly the equivalent of a small three-bedroom home in Silicon Valley.

“You got to have some, even if it’s just enough to get the inside of your mouth wet. You have to drink some every time we stop to rest.”

Katrina and P had gone on and were probably an hour or more ahead of us. Although P is a strong hiker, we had a good idea that Katrina would be running circles around him. With her boundless capacity for nonstop chatter, we also had a good idea that she would slowly be extracting energy from him, like a star orbiting a black hole.

September, Jordan, and I were in the back of the pack of the 500 hikers on the trail: only Jessie and a trail sweeper were behind us. Jessie carried oxygen and other medication for altitude sickness, but Jordan, who refused all of it, was starting to respond to the Gatorade therapy.

Mr. Trail Sweeper’s job was to be sure no one got left behind. He carried a Peruvian pan flute and played a tune as he walked.

We were hiking along the side of a mountain that was part of a steep and narrow valley. The tune echoed beautifully across the gorge. I was huffing and puffing with all my might while Mr. Trail Sweeper played a tune as if he were on a street corner working for tips.

“He’s playing an old Simon and Garfunkel tune,” I said to September. I liked to annoy September with my knowledge of music from the ’60s and ’70s because she couldn’t name anything that was less than 200 years old.

“Actually, it is a 300-year-old Peruvian tuned called ‘El Condor Pasa’ that Simon and Garfunkel put English lyrics to and made popular.”

“I can do better than that. I’ll ask Mr. Trail Sweeper.” Turning to the trail sweeper, I said, “That was nice. Do you know any other Simon and Garfunkel tunes?”

He looked at me as if I was from an alien planet. September has never said the words, “I told you so.” I wish she would, just to get it over with.

Dead Woman’s Pass, at 14,050 feet, is the highest point along the Inca Trail. Through sheer stubbornness, Jordan made it to the top. We found Katrina and P there waiting for us. Katrina was overflowing with energy, the excess coming out of her mouth as one long run-on sentence.

P congratulated Jordan for his tenacity in making it to the top. “Yes,” I said, “stubbornness can be a good quality, so long as you don’t have too much of it.”

The day was far from over. Jordan even had some lunch at the top of Dead Woman’s Pass. When we started again he was racing Katrina up and down the hills.

At Dead Woman’s Pass, the trail converged with the historical trail. The historical trail from Cuzco is judged to be to too treacherous and is thus closed to the public. We bid adieu to the broad, flat, hard-packed soil trail we had been following. Going forward the historical trail was uneven stone. Every step was a new opportunity for twisting an ankle or hyperextending a knee, requiring full concentration.

“I think I left my knees at the last stop,” I said to September. “Going uphill merely made me tired. Going down makes me feel old.” I acquired two walking sticks and was doing my best quadruped imitation. At the end of the day my triceps were as painful as my quadriceps.

“You mock my pain? My ego is wounded enough as the porters fly past while I hobble along!” With a total of 500 people on the trail for any given day, about half are porters. They are the last to leave camp or to take a meal stop, and are the first to arrive at the next stop. So you are assured of having a gazillion porters passing in a blur two or three times a day. With these impossibly large loads tied to their backs with sashes of cloth and simple sandals on their feet, the porters race each other in a testosterone-fueled show of machismo.

“Don’t mind the porters,” September said. “Machismo doesn’t turn the girls on like quoting π to the tenth decimal point. And the pack-carrying thing will be our little secret.”

If we weren’t already married, I’d propose all over again. With a rush of gratitude, I gave my pack to September. But only on the steepest of descents.

The ancient city of Machu Picchu is situated on a mountaintop with sheer cliffs all the way around, as if man finished the citadel that Mother Nature had started. One can hear the rapids of the Urubamba crashing in the canyon below, but the cliffs are so steep the river is well out of view.

When we arrived at Machu Picchu, we looked down on the tops of the clouds, which filled the canyon that defines the surrounding geography. To look down on the city emerging from the clouds gave a palpable sensation that this was more than a mere place. All over the world Switzerland seems to be the common standard for sheer, rugged, alpine beauty. Machu Picchu’s setting is the only place I have ever been that is more stunning than Switzerland.

Crafted with intricate stonework, the city obviously wasn’t built in a hurry. Machu Picchu is many things, not the least of which is a self-contained city with a temple, civic buildings, terraced, arable land where llamas still graze, and dwellings so fresh it is as if they are waiting for new move-ins.

I hadn’t known anything about the Incas before I’d arrived, and once there, I couldn’t learn enough about them. I was fascinated by anybody who could build a city with stone that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and was so intricately cut that you couldn’t slip a piece of paper between the pieces.

“No one knows. The Incas didn’t have a written language. As such, they left no record. When Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu in 1911 this is what he found. The inhabitants of this city remain a mystery to this day.”

I didn’t like that answer. The Incas may not have had a written language, but the Spaniards who wiped them out did.

Listening to the Urubamba River raging in a canyon 2,000 feet below, the only other sound I heard was September’s labored breathing next to me. We were taking a well-deserved break. Physically, hiking the Inca Trail ranks as one of the hardest things we had ever done. Our legs screamed in pain.

After four days of hiking to Machu Picchu, a genuine hotel awaited us in Aguas Calientes, a 30-minute bus ride away. All of us were walking very stiffly, even the 20-somethings who made up the rest of our party of ten hikers. All of us, that is, except Katrina and Jordan.

I had been napping, lying in the grass, my bare feet dangling over the edge of one of Machu Picchu’s stepped terraces. It felt good to have my toes out of my boots and in the crisp air and sunshine. Sitting up to look around for Katrina and Jordan, I let out a groan.

“Need some help, Dad?” Katrina was devilishly gleeful to assist me down a few steps.

“Yes. I carried you all over Europe. Now it’s your turn to carry me.” As we headed down the terrace, I let out a muffled groan with each step. “My legs just won’t bend anymore.”

“Then betcha can’t do this.” Katrina jumped a good two feet into the air, and while doing so kicked herself in the bottom with the heels of her feet. It hurt just to watch.

“Remember what Pa said in Little House on the Prairie? ‘Children should be seen and not heard.’“

Jordan said, “Okay, then, just watch.” And he and Katrina proceeded to jump up and down kicking themselves in the bottom with their own heels. All the adults in our group booed them.

Danielle, one of the Dutch women, looked at Katrina and, turning to me, said, “You carried Katrina all over Europe?”

“Yes. She suffered a broken leg in Switzerland. We had been cycling across Europe when a rock climbing accident left her in a cast on her leg, with a badly sprained wrist. I carried her on my shoulders much of our remaining time in Europe.”

Danielle’s gaze then turned to Jordan. “For a while, I didn’t think he would make it! That’s one tough kid.”

Katrina and Jordan were paying no attention to the conversation. They continued to jump up and down, demonstrating their resilience. “Yes, I suppose he is. I practically begged him to let me carry him, but he was determined to make it on his own,” I replied.

As the adults recuperated in Aguas Calientes (literally “hot waters”) over the next day, it was easy to tell who had recently returned from hiking the Inca Trail. We passed each other in the street with a nod and a wink conveying much more than words could say. We all belonged to the elite brotherhood of Inca Trail hikers and walked proudly with the stride of one who had a severe case of diarrhea.

I had been both awestruck and bothered by Machu Picchu. Awestruck at the beauty of the surroundings and the complexity of the structures, and bothered by the apparent lack of information about the place and its inhabitants.

A few days later we were in Peru’s capital, Lima to say good-bye to P and make preparations for the last leg of our journey. There, we were also able to find an alternate perspective on Machu Picchu. With the help of Google and Wikipedia, I learned the site was built in 1440 as a retreat for Inca royalty, like a modern-day Camp David, and Hiram Bingham was guided to it by locals who were quite aware of its presence.

“So why,” I asked September, “do tour guides and books propagate the rubbish that no one knows?”

“I suppose if humankind could answer that one, we wouldn’t be destined to repeat history.”

www.360degreeslongitude.com/concept3d/360degreeslongitude.kmz

It isn’t every day you see a guy towing an island with his rowboat. Once a month the inhabitants of the floating islands of Lake Titicaca add another layer of reeds to keep their island home above water—an admirable quality in any island.

26.

One Tough Kid