Sacred City
October 21, 2004
So we were all going to catch a night bus from Loja at ten o'clock across the border into Peru. After we came down from the mountain into town and had some food the others caught a ride up the hill to the hotel while I stayed to catch up on writing. It was getting dark when I came out into the streets, the weather beautiful, mountains fading in the last sun. I didn't see any trucks around to take me back, so I stood on the corner until I found a driver willing to let me stand in the back of his pickup with face to the wind.
Everyone was watching a movie in the outside bar, hanging in hammocks and lazing around. I was restless and wandered around the grounds, one of those downtimes when futures creep into mind and discourage the moment with vague worries and anxieties: I sat and wondered about what I'd do when I got back to San Francisco, wishing I had more time to travel, wishing I didn't have to come back. Sighed and went to meet Hanna, Max, and Rachel up at the terrace for dinner. The meals were so good I questioned them.
A slew of newcomers were shuffling onto the terrace to check into the hotel and I recognized most of them and went over to chat. That's the thing about the Gringo Trail, familiar faces keep appearing again and again, everyone trundling along the same route, hitting the same towns and the same bars and restaurants of those towns, everyone holding the same bible of where-to-go and what-to-do. My feelings were convoluted about it, I found myself in dichotomy, because I appreciated the familiarity their faces brought with them but another part of me shunned it and wanted away. I even contemplated cutting out on the friends I was traveling with, just to invoke a sense of solitude in myself and color the world with strangeness. But I enjoyed their company just the same. Hanna was sweet and had a good wit to her, always making little remarks with that accent; she had a boyfriend back home and rushed off whenever possible to call him. Rachel and I had spent an afternoon talking about our lives, she'd explained her upbringing in Ireland to me, the solidity of her parents and the firmness of her foundation. I countered that by telling her about my fractured childhood, the numerous step-parentages and uprootings and court-wars, including a brief synopsis of ghost father and all the rest of the broken. She listened intently and when I was finished commented that she would never have guessed such a tumultuous history of me, that I didn't seem to show it in myself. I shrugged, because how often do you really know a person. Something about traveling, though, far away from everything, in strange lands removed from your old life, it's all told.
A pickup truck arrived to take us down to the bus station, we all piled in back and threw in our rucksacks. Some Swiss girls I'd met in Baños were just arriving and shouted as we pulled out, "Stay one more night!" I waved ruefully and shouted, "See you further down the trail!"
The night ride to the station had a moon in it, obstructed by clouds. Rachel said, "Now's a good time for Friendcam to film." I nodded. Friendcam was the invisible camera that followed after us, recording everything for our friends back home to see and shake their fists in jealousy. I said, "Yeah, Friendcam fades in on the moon up there, then pans down to our pickup truck and follows along behind, getting close-ups on our determined faces." And, hell, that's just what Friendcam did.
Our night bus was a good one, comfortable seats with steep recline, except that means the odds are you get a Peruvian head sleeping in your lap that night. The worst thing about the ride was the checkpoints. We were woken numerous times from slumber only to be filed off the bus and frisked against the wall. At the border of Peru we had to get out and walk across the empty borderline to have our passports stamped. They threw in a swindle-charge too, the shady bastards, only for the gringos.
I woke as we made our way into Piura, saw the desolate Peruvian landscape out the window that was all scrub brush and boulders and a mountainless circle of horizon. Off the bus it was time for our little company to diverge. Hanna and Rachel were going north to a beach town to surf, Max and me were going straight to the airport––we were making fast for Cuzco. To hell with the bleak northern coast of Peru. We exchanged hugs and emails, I promised I'd show up one afternoon in Ireland demanding a place to stay. Then we waved and cut out to catch the morning flight to Lima, where we'd catch a plane into the Sacred City, the gateway to Machu Picchu, Lost City of the Incas.
We spent the layover in Lima playing cards and drinking coffee, talking excitedly about everything we'd do in Cuzco. An old woman accosted us about a hostel owned by her son in Cuzco, prying Max for his name, which he gave just to get her off our backs. We had no intention of staying there. As we descended over the brown mountains I sat in my seat brimming, trying to bring the moment to a head in my mind, making it epochal, mythologizing my own life to myself silently. "I go from the middle of nowhere in a cabin in Canada to here?" I asked Max, rubbing my hands together in anticipation.
When we came off the plane there was a guy holding a sign with Max's name on it, waving and going nuts and pointing at us. His mother had called ahead and described us to him so he could snag us off the plane. "A tall Brit and a bedraggled guy with big eyebrows will be there shortly," she must have informed him, "get them." Since Max spoke good Spanish he talked to the guy on our way to the parking lot, and the guy convinced him to get into his car. I got a bad feeling about it and wondered why the hell Max conceded to him. On the car ride I kept expecting a gun to be pulled on us, and I wondered what I'd do. Nothing happened though, we just payed them for the ride and took off. We'd arrived right on the main plaza, Plaza de Armas, and I stepped into the light and was stunned.
Immense brown cathedrals loomed the square, Incas and adventurers bustled everywhere on the cobblestone streets, the sun poured in and gave the glow of gold to the open spaces and the stone walls around us, and I stood there overwhelmed by something ancient and ineffable. It didn't take long for us to realize how street-walking was going to be: they came for us right off, and they came purposively, relentlessly, crazy-like. Brown faces swarmed us waving pamphlets and innumerable paper invitations. I said no gracias a record 649 times in thirty-eight seconds. We climbed a narrow street looking for a particular hostel with an agua caliente claim and a view over the plaza. Panting and winded by altitude, we finally made it up the stonelaid staircase and rang the hostel bell, soon got our beds and went for much-needed showers.
Up on the terrace we met a weatherbeaten sailor whose life-worn face rippled and crimped a thousand times over every time he moved his mouth, and we shared a giant beer bottle with him. Others soon joined us, Mike from California and an Aussie who I'll call Maaadda since I forgot his real name. Then we all decided to go out to a nearby pub for food and beer; on the way they all came for us again, rifling us with free-drink cards and more free-drink cards. I really couldn't believe it, I felt like we were the Rolling Stones on tour, making way to our limo. This was unprecedented attention of the rockstar variety, absolutely.
At the pub we got a round of beers and shared travel stories, everyone gleaning information from the other for upcoming adventures. Me and Max were determined to get onto the Inca Trail, and asked plenty of questions. Mike told us of his journey to Africa, and Maaadda ate a big hamburger. Afterward we pulled vast piles of cards and slips from our pockets and embarked on a night on the town. We didn't buy a single goddam drink the whole goddam night.
Weary from drinks and travel, I waned from consciousness on a bar couch, until I got up drearily and without a word stumbled out into the streets, heading home. It had just stopped raining and Plaza de Armas was gleaming with lamplight, terra cotta eaves dripping the four quarters of the night square.
But they were waiting for me.
"My friend, where you from? Amigo, here! Here!--drinks all night here, amigo!--"
I waved them off irritably, "No mas, no mas... yo voy a casa," I said, and climbed the cobblestones up and up.