Trail of the Incas

October 29, 2004

I've come back from the mists, and what now? Gonzales! Could you point me the way? Where have you gone––where could you be? You know, not me.

It was Sunday night when we met on the terrace to await the arrival of our trail-
guide, six of us from the hostel who would be hiking the next day. Another
six from somewhere else were going to meet us in the morning. Max and
myself, Roger and Vicki (older couple from England, nutty), and Christian
the deadpan Norwegian with his sad-faced girl. This was before we knew
Gonzales, or knew of him. Seven o'clock passed and still no one showed.
Our suspicions in regard to the organization we'd signed in with were
growing; after all, it was the only agency we could find a place with on
such short notice. The dodgy Inca woman who lurked the hostel, who was
she, so glum and somber and ready to recruit? And where was she? Nearly
eight o'clock and no one showing. We discussed this while we waited up on
the terrace. Then there was the sound of frantic footsteps on the stairs.
In came the Inca woman followed by a man in a vest. He rushed into the room with wide eyes, bird nose flaring, looking all of us over frenetically and seriously.

"Senores!" he shouted, chopping a palm in the air, his whole face stalling, staring directly ahead of him at the Norwegian guy (this was when I first realized he addressed only the person in his direct line of vision). "I am Gonzales, you know." He gestured at himself, stared, then shrugged it all off. "You know, tomorrow we go to Macchu Picchu. You know, we go to see the Macchu Picchu arch-e-o-logical site." He voiced the last word of each sentence emphatically, and said 'you know' a ridiculous amount of times, almost sandwiching every other word between you-knows. It looked like he was only talking to the Norwegian. I knew we were doomed.

He proceeded to brief us on some of the specifics: what we needed to bring, what he would bring for us, and what we might expect on the way. "Guyz," he said, "I bring you chicken, I bring fish and vegetables––we cook all this for you... the porters, they cook this for you, they carry tents and pots––guyz, they are like horses..." On he went, until he finally finished, looking around nodding and smiling at everyone. I was sure he snorted cocaine beforehand. "You know, they call me Speedy Gonzales. I will get you to Macchu Picchu. My plan is we will be there first, you know." Then he shook hands with us and left. We all shuffled off to sleep.

That night the dorm room was filled with the most awful guttural snoring. It was orchestral. There was only one girl who didn't partake, and I heard her rolling around in vexation. One Aussie guy sounded like he was struggling to survive the night, gasping and pulling for air, even shriek-snoring. I put my head under my pillow and fell asleep, joining in.

I got up before sunrise and put my things together for the hike, then went up to the terrace for breakfast. Roger and Vicki were up there already, and the Norwegians. A pretty French-Canadian girl joined me at my table and we began talking. I liked her. She was staying in Cuzco for a few more days before flying home, and she wanted to go horseback riding in the ruins. I cursed myself and my perpetual thwartation and rotten luck. "I'm leaving in a few minutes," I told her. She said that was too bad. Of course it was too bad, and of course I was leaving in a few minutes, what else would I be doing? Max shouted from downstairs that we were already heading out, and I bitterly rushed to guzzle my orange juice and grabbed up my rucksack with a quick farewell. She watched after me as I ran out. In a few minutes I'd forgotten her.

The bus was waiting in Plaza de Armas and we all piled on. There were five French folk in the group, a Sri Lankan woman and her South African friend. Soon we were off, but we had to stop to pick up our porters, who waited against a wall in a nearby square. They were quiet and humble, weary-eyed, with leathern feet in sandals. Sandals, they were going to hike thirty-three kilometers through mountains in little tattered goddam sandals. They climbed onto the bus and took their seats, and the bus air filled with an odor that smelled like sh...erpas. I was eating a chocolate bar and offered some. "Gracias, amigo," he said, and meant it. I noticed Gonzales wearing a vest with a professional-looking logo on it, and at first I thought it was a legitimate one for his agency, but on closer inspection I realized it was the logo of a local pizzeria.

The weather was beautiful, and I dozed off as the bus wound through the hills, my head rattling against the window, one eye cocked up to where snow-topped mountains appeared in the distance over the fields. Along the river the bus tottered through potholes, over shoddy bridges, finally pulling to a stop at Kilometer 82, Inca Trailhead. A light rain started and the porters quickly pulled out canvas to cover our packs, then went to work setting up their primuses to cook our lunch. They went about their work unquestioningly, qualmless, always with a deference toward us that made me feel like some kind of lazy miser with a cigar in my mouth with indentured servants at my whim. And for all their toil and labor their pay was miniscule––a slave pension that stood so small only because they could do nothing else, and as we made ready for the trail they hoisted gigantic tarpaulin freights onto their backs and struggled on ahead of us, only to set up camp once again miles ahead to ready for our arrival. Just like Sisyphus. I watched them go, and my heart went out to them.

The rain cleared and the sun came again, brought blue with it, and I crossed the river onto the Inca Trail. I took off ahead of the others, keeping a good pace. I didn't feel much like talking, instead I wanted just to be there and take it all in. While I walked I wondered who of all the people I knew in life, who would I want there with me; for what company did I find myself wishing, I wondered, and was startled when I knew.

But Max soon caught up to me, I heard the clack of his walking stick against the stones, and I slowed to walk side by side. We climbed along the river, shade-dappled path going higher, stone steps leading through forests with lichened trees, out again into the open air where there rose verdurous mountains on all sides. The others were far behind. I surprised myself with my endurance, and continued to throughout, most of all during the Rain Run, which I'll get to.

When we reached the appointed meeting place we dropped our packs and sat in the grass. Soon Gonzales appeared over the bridge wearing a panama hat, carrying a walking stick. He walked up to us. "Ah, you guyz are fast, uh? Ok, we see tomorrow, you know."

We asked him questions. He'd hiked the Trail over four hundred times over the years, claiming to have raced through it once in seven hours. He told us about the porter who had done it in three and a half. I believed it. You'd see the porters fly past, running up the stones with their freights, impossibly, rarely stopping. That night we set up camp behind a house along the trail. Apparently Gonzales hadn't procured a spot at the campsite where everyone else was. This became a theme of our expedition, always arranging ourselves away in exile. I liked it.

While the porters set up our tents and prepared dinner I laid down on soft grass and watched the moon come slowly over the oblique mountain overhead, fire-white and creeping, hearing crickets and the soft white noise of the river.

That night we all played cards on a crooked table with a lantern hanging above. Gonzales made an appearance at dinnertime. "Hey, Gonzales," I said, "got any good Inca Trail stories for us?" He did. He spent fifteen impassioned minutes explaining the Incas and the afterlife. "Senores, this is where we will go, you know, after this life, you know." He chopped a palm and stared right at me because I was directly in front of him.

In the morning, still dark, we heard Spanish voices outside the tent. The porters had tea made from coca leaves, and we drank it drowsily and got up for breakfast. The breakfasts were pretty good, I have to say, and so were the other meals. We were served pancakes with jam and a side o' gruel, and instant coffee and tea. I ate plenty for fuel and set out with fast feet ahead. I heard Gonzales laughing behind me.

It would be the day of Dead Woman's Pass, the most arduous stretch of the entire trail and its highest point. It was a clear day. Our legs groaned as the incline sharpened. The trail took us through groves of shade where slanted stone steps wound up the mountain. Me and Max left our group behind and passed everyone. Coming out of the trees we saw the pass far above against the sky. A horse galloped down past us carrying a fainted woman who'd given out. People's faces were distorted with sweat and strain, panting on their knees with upward glances of foreboding. We had to stop at nearly every switch to drink water and catch our breath that kept thinning from the high altitude. I received from somewhere a store of energy and made use, climbing inexorably toward the top, not stopping even for Max for fear that I'd lose it by breaking a moment. I reached the top of the pass, turned around, and raised a triumphant fist in the air. There were nearly five hundred people on the trail and I was among the first to reach the top; the average time to the top was six or seven hours, but I made it in three.

I spent a couple hours there eating fruit and snacks, waiting for the others, then Max and the Norwegians made the descent down the other side with me. A waterfall spouted from the mountain above us, where we found our camp set on the outskirts, Gonzales-style. We fell down in heaps in the grass and drank what the porters rushed to bring us as soon as we came into sight. I put out my bedroll in the grass and slept for an hour until lunch.

That night stragglers kept turning up, beat and raddled. Roger and Vicki stumbled in. "That was the hardest thing I've done in my life," he said, and collapsed into a chair. The Sri Lankan woman took the longest. One of the porters had to climb back up the mountain to bring her a sandwich, she hadn't even summited the pass before dark. Later she staggered in during dinner looking ghostly and faded, smiling. From camp we could see the trail rising along the mountainside past ruins. I watched the moon through the tent flap and fell asleep.

In the morning after breakfast I saddled up and took off again, taking one look up at the ruins and then making for them, arriving a record fifteen minutes later. Next up was Max, followed by Gonzales. He stumbled into the stone circle sweating, and began explaining Incan astronomy to us. He told us how Incan priests would trip on cacti and have visions. His mouth strained to emphasize each syllable. "Guyz, you know, you must have spir-it-u-al pre-par-ation for this. Senores, I have done this cactus myself."

I was interested. "What was it like, Gonzales?"

He laughed and walked away, shaking his head.

I made it over the mountain and descended into the cloud forests on the other side. I found myself alone, ahead of everyone else. I could hear only my own footsteps on the stones. Ahead of me the path led up to empty ruins, dropping into a deep ravine resounding with birds. I was exhilarated and quickened my pace. It was so quiet in the ruins. I walked around, running my hand along the stones, coming to where the cliff dropped down into the swirling fogs, and stood staring. Max arrived and sat down silently. For nearly an hour we had it all to ourselves, hanging around in the mystic while fog overtook the entire valley.

When people began showing up we lit out again for the trail. The mist enveloped the path and I could only see a few feet around me, and the overgrowth jutting from the smoky jungle. Only the occasional porter dashed past and disappeared. I was closed into my own mind, closed out of time, and seemed to hover bodiless over the path. Difficult to articulate now. Back in the humdrum you might forget the world is real, that there's a life outside of platitude, and the Mystery persists despite it all. There in the fog, en route to the Lost City, things aren't so inhibited. My mind went and went, and I went with it.

We were the first gringos to reach the campsite. All the porters were raising tents, there was the smell of food cooking, and our porters were nowhere to be found––somewhere in the clouds. Just as the rain started we found our tent way down near the bottom of the camp. We should have known. Then the rain really started, the wind buffeting our tent. We drank tea and sat there dry, wondering what it must be like out there so wet and all. One by one everyone showed up completely soused with dripping hoods. Gonzales came running in laughing. He didn't care about the rain and he seemed to get a kick out of all the wet gringos supping their soup. When it became obvious that it wasn't going to let up, I prepared to descend the mountain in the rain. I'd rented a rain jacket, and I put my yellow poncho over that (borrowed from fabled mountaineer Gabe Phillips), making sure to cover the old backpack. "Gonzales, I'm making a run for it," I said. He told me it would take up to two hours to reach the next campsite, but less if I went fast. "Alright, amigo, go!"

I flew out of the tent into the rain followed by madman laughter. This descent needed a title, it was some kind of gringo record for sure, so I gave it one, called it the Rain Run. That's cute, ain't it? I reached porter speed, fast-stepping over stones, bounding down slippery steps, flashing past the gringos who were out braving the rains. There were four porters hauling ass ahead of me, blue ponchos swooping out cape-like in the wind. I was right on their heels. An English family stepped aside, one said "Watch out, here come the porters."

I flew past them and shouted, "And the gringo porter!"

One woman yelled, "One fast gringo porter!"

She had that right. I never slowed, other slower porters stepped aside for me to pass with looks of confusion; this had to be some kind of embarassment, to be passed up by a gringo. Get used to disappointment, boys. Some hotshot outdoorsmen who I'd seen earlier were ahead of me keeping a good pace, and they kept that same pace as they receded over my shoulder and turned to ant-size before vanishing on the back path. My wool sweater was soaked through with sweat, but I was proving something here. The blue-ponchoed porters looked back occasionally to see if I was still there: I was, I was.

We blazed into camp and I trotted to a hault, breathing hard, and stood there in my poncho in pride. Porters nodded to me. I found my camp down at the bottom, where Francisco appeared and looked at me as if to say 'what are you doing here?' I'd done it in a half-hour, and he hadn't even started setting up the tents. I took off my sweaty clothes and noticed the nine misty mountains standing right before me, backed by snowpeaks. The cliff dropped off in front of the camp, way down was a river, and after that only green mountains festooned with bands of cloud. And somewhere not more than an hour from me, probably befogged too, was Machu Picchu.

When Max and the others showed up we took a walk to the nearby ruins, Winaywana. I wasn't expecting what lay sprawled down the mountain there, terrace by terrace, perched on the edge of a ravine with no one around. I came to it and felt a vertigo from too many layers of depth. A waterfall came down the rocks across the rift, birds hung all around on the air, and a solemn silence. I sat on a rock for an hour on the cliff. Here was the kind of place where something must happen to you, something irrupts into mind, a revelation, this place, if anywhere. Where you reach a conclusion and never waver, never go back to what you were before, and maybe you leave from there and go off to change the world. But I never found it. I just sat there with my chin in my hand. Soon I saw Max far down in the mazes, wandering. The French guys showed up and sat by me to talk, and the Norwegians.

There was a conversation about the state of the world, and my country wasn't too popular. The election was a few days away. They said it was a shame I didn't vote. Oh, but I did vote, absentee, and not for you-know-who. We agreed that it was going to be us, the new generation of different nations, who would redeem the big shitpile shoveled onto us by the obsolete minds of our antecedents. And there in that place it meant something and seemed true. With that decided, we walked off.

There was a little bar at this campsite, which I had conflicting feelings about. It seemed kind of a cop-out to have drinks and laughs the night before, but when everyone got together awaiting the last big dinner I forgot about it. All the groups were there at separate tables, clinking beer bottles in toasts and hollering. Gonzales showed up and everyone cheered and raised their beers. He nodded and looked bashful. The Norwegian bought him and his two assistants beers. I wanted to buy beer for the porters. We all agreed to it and pitched in. Then me and Max, bottles clinched between our fingers, ran out into the night, down to our campsite where the porters were. The sky was pristine clear and littered. A porter from the bar ran excitedly alongside us with the beer we'd got him, yelling out the names of all his friends so we wouldn't forget. He wanted to see their faces when we gave them the beers. We went to the kitchen tent and handed them out, then ran over to sleeping Francisco and placed a beer at his side. I had some cigarettes and passed them out. They exulted in gratitude. I thought of their burden, kneeling with their loads at trailside like crossbearers. It was one of the greatest things I'd ever done.

We were woken at four in the morn to prepare for the final stretch of trail. The checkpoint to Machu Picchu opened at five-thirty. After breakfast we made fast down the trail, where others were already in line waiting to go. The time came and we were loosed. I went for it, taking the opportunities presented to me by steep steps, where people slowed and stopped to rest, and I vaulted past.

An hour later, climbing a high stand of ancient steps, I stepped out under the Sun Gate panting and came to the edge of the precipice. Far down in the first rays of the vast valley was Machu Picchu. I stood and looked at it, there at last, miles later, the Lost City, surrounded by mountains on all sides. It was a great moment, of course, but it was the kind of greatness that was granted already, and so I almost didn't feel it. I'd like to say I was overtaken with wonder, washed through with awe to my soul, Incan voices echoing in chorus around me. But with the crowd building around, with the burble of human voices, an American girl repeating "Omigod, this is so kwal, this is soo kwal" something got lost, the sacred moment was worn threadbare, and with the pang of lost romance I had to acknowledge it. Because you can't find It, It's got to find you. I made my way down.

Nobody knows the secret of Machu Picchu. Some say it was built in an attempt to salvage the Inca civilization against the rise of the invading Spaniards, or maybe it was around long before that; some think it was a hideaway for the priesthood to practice their rites of sun and moon; maybe a resort for the old Inca kings. Maybe. Who knows. Its secret escaped the conquistadors, nothing is said of it in their archives. Harold Bingham stumbled on it in 1911, overgrown and forgotten. But the secret was out and everybody wanted in, and now it was the Disneyland of all ruins. We stumbled worn and ragged out of the jungle, stinky, wild-haired, the tour buses were pulling in to unload all the parfumed freshies with their cameras. "You'd think they'd give us some time to get down there before they let everyone in, seeing how we earned it," I told Max bitterly. He nodded. Ah, well.

Inside the City I found Gonzales staring out at the rockspire that towered over the ruins, Huayna Picchu. I walked over to him.

"You know, somestimes I think that all Inca gold is in that mountain," he said, musing almost to himself. He pointed for me to look. "There is secret down there, I know it."

I nodded. "We know there are secrets," I said, trying to include myself in his ruminations, which was impossible. The night before he'd explained his lineage: he was a descendent of the Incas, and upon discovery of their history began to share his Catholic belief with Incan paganism. To him there was no conflict in this. He laughed and walked away. Everyone in our group thought he was a joke. I admired him.

I walked Machu Picchu, saw the sundial, the old tombs and aqueducts and temples; I climbed mount Huayna Picchu and looked down from the peak near the Temple of the Moon. I sat on old stones and watched the llamas grazing. I listened to the impassioned speeches of Gonzales, followed the digressions that never returned, the exaggerated gestures of his hands, the wild speculation of his theories. I went all over. My legs were done for. Too many miles. I staggered out with the others to catch a bus to Aguas Calientes at the foot of the mountain.

That night over dinner I didn't say much, I was too spent and thoughtful about what was next. Christian the Norwegian, with bloodshot eyes and creased face noticed this. He said, "Rich, what's going on over there? You were so upbeat the last few days, now you look like hell."

I said, "Maybe it's because I just walked for four days. And I think it's ‘cause I'm in between phases right now. The Inca Trail marked the end of something, now a new phase is on the way and I don't know what it is. I've got three weeks left and I have no idea what I'm going to do." He said, "That's very philosophical," and he let out one of his sporadic bitch-chortles that didn't seem to fit his voice. But he brought me out of it, and we all celebrated with beer and pizza. Gonzales came over to say farewell. I shook his hand. He looked stoned. He addressed everyone. "Senores, remember, I will see you all in the next life."

He was confident, he knew right what he was doing and what he wanted to do. I watched after him.