"I know, I know for sure..." Anthony Kiedis

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(Continued from last entry)

The Sun Gate, Machu Picchu. Panting, walking in circles, wiping rivers of sweat from my face. Trying to recover and occasionally grinning with satisfaction at the other guys.
There was absolutely no need to run like we did and it was a strange way to spend the first few moments at this spiritual place, but we felt like we had won a race and this was our prize. An unbeatable feeling.

We settled in to wait for the rest of our group and dangled our legs over the edge. I broke out the chocolate snacks to put some energy back from the headlong charge through the dark.
The sun was still on it´s way up from behind the ridge and any photos that we took bounced all of the light back from our bodies making us look superimposed on a fake Machu Picchu background. Funny.

Either time passed in a flash or the rest of our group were travelling almost as fast as us as we were soon together again and heading down to the city. Jilbert made a few stops to look at flowers and ruins but everyone was champing at the bit to get amongst the main event.

I was surprised to see llamas wandering about and they were amazingly tame. One of them stunned us by moving over into the middle of our circle and patiently posing for group photos. I listened hard for any telltale whirring from inside but it was definitely not biomechanical, just vain.

After a typically Peruvian process of leaving the site to show our tickets and re-enter with validated passes, we got another cool passport stamp and were allowed back in to explore. I impatiently sat through our guide´s vaguely informative discussion of the site and snapped a bazillion photos.

The site was beautiful, living up to the impossibly high expectations that had developed during my year of planning and looking at amazing photos. Again, the weather was perfect - everything only got more and more impressive as the sun switched up a gear and bathed the area in a warm glow. Our guide said that only about 5% of people who he had accompanied over the years were lucky enough to have weather and visibility that good on the final day. I just grinned, it´s almost like I expect everything to be perfect now that I have had so much of it.

After much discussion (mainly by Luke!) about who was going to step up and punish their legs further, climbing to the summit of Huayna Picchu, almost all of us set out together. This is the much higher peak that overlooks the city from beyond the ruins and we were all enthusiastic about an even better view of the site, it was a serious climb though. We were almost grateful for the exhausting training of the past few days as we were able to will ourselves up and around the tiny track to the top. It is amazingly steep in parts, I found myself using mostly arm power to pull myself along metal cables which appear and disappear along the way. At one point there is a staircase barely wide enough for two feet pressed together and with nothing to hold onto other than the steps ahead of you. Not for people with vertigo. And on top of all this it seems like you… never…reach…the…top. Maybe it was the fatigue making it harder, it can´t have been that bad, plenty of others went up after us. As they passed us later, we laughed with surprise, you could actually smell who had done the trail and who had arrived by bus. We teased each other about feeling elite.

Emerging from the scrub of the trail at the summit was indescribable. This is very much Peru - no safety railings or warning signs here. Nothing to take away from the feeling of being on the very pointy end of an enormous mountain. We just gaped down at Machu Picchu, I had no idea we would be so high up. I just sat there for ages in the quiet - the others moved off for the return trip while groups of twos and threes passed through. After a further awkward crawl/squeeze/pop through a tiny rock tunnel, only just big enough for me and my little pack and surely sufficient to limit the shape of people making it any further, I discovered that the true summit was even higher.

You have to get a bit action-man here, swinging yourself up onto a set of huge boulders and jumping between them - all the while wondering how such huge rocks could just be sitting up here - but then you are there… There was no more up. Higher than I have ever felt before. A little jump to the left and I could have fallen straight down for days.

It is a 360 degree panorama of lush green mountains and mini, mini rivers miles below on the valley floor. Butterflies fluttered about my head and a lizard with some serious penthouse real estate ran amok amongst the slower bugs. It was so peaceful. I immediately felt stupid for being awed by the previous “summit” when this was so much better. It was even less populated here and the few other people spread on boulders around me were equally quiet and reflective. Occasionally I would glance at a complete stranger and share a grin of mutual disbelief.

I was up there for ever. I think a bit of me chose to stay behind. It is an unromantic sentiment but there was a very strong moment of “mission accomplished” as I lay up there, stretched out in the sun. As cool as my group was, I was grateful that I could do this alone, it seemed crucial that it was just me and that big warm rock for so long.

I was aware of a serious amount of endorphins, an amazing high that prevented me from altering my grin even when I focused on it. I didn´t want it to end but, at the same time, it is such a lot to take in that I climbed down feeling “full”.

It was so, so hard to leave but I was seriously jeapordising my chances of returning on the train with the rest of my group and I waved goodbye to a place that I will never forget with enormous satisfaction.

I bounced down the mountain. A few hundred metres down I realised that I had my iPod with me and the added effect of the music on the experience was enough to give me goosebumps. It was like God was programming the shuffle selection and it had me dancing over the rocks at the parts where I was alone. (Ok, and some parts where I wasn´t alone - but I couldn´t help it - I was off my face with happiness). I was disappearing into a cartoon world where I picked yellow flowers and sniffed at them madly, there was barely anyone around and it felt like it was all mine, even if only while I passed.

I was manic, I even hid the flower that I picked as I signed out of the mountain-trail checkpoint, paranoid that I wouldn´t be allowed to take it with me.

As I stepped back out into the beaming sun on the highest grass terraces of Machu Picchu, my music jumped forward to Around The World by the Chili Peppers. I was high as a kite.

I was also lost.
I didn´t realise that my direct line to the exit had taken me onto a part where you were not supposed to walk and I must have looked like a lemming with cold feet to all of the colourful tourists below who had appeared while I was off in the clouds. I was constantly finding new edges to peer over in confusion as I repeatedly refused the urge to backtrack. I had come along here on what seemed like just another path, there had to be a path out.

I ended up doing a Hail-Mary swinging-leap down from a ledge to land in front of a fluoro-jacketed senior citizen who immediately launched into a frowning lecture as if he had been expecting me. It was about how I wasn´t respecting the rules of the site and about the importance of preserving it for our children. I couldn´t agree more and felt sheepish for getting lost and stuck up there but I think my crazy smile detracted from my sincerity. Anyhow, I didn´t want to have children with him.

I didn´t make it to the exit. I had to stop again to stare at the amazing mountain which towers above Aguas Calientes and nudges up against Machu Picchu. I stretched out on the grass to soak up a bit more before finally passing through the last Inca walls and out of the gate into the bustle of hot dogs and tourist buses.

I hadn´t had enough. I decided to skip the winding bus ride down the mountain and do the hour-long walk down to Aguas Calientes via the stairs. Stairs are great, we love stairs, can´t get enough. Off I went.

Ten minutes in, I felt the distinct absence of, err, like, most of my stuff and turned around to go back up and collect my big pack from the bag check.
Not that funny but I laughed at myself.

It was all for a reason, amongst fifty or so stacked walking sticks (we had to leave them outside the ruins) I spotted my own distinctly coloured and torn cloth handle. It was most helpful on my next attempt at the descent as my knee had been twisted a little and was starting to burn.

I was still on the longest run of puregoldmusic to ever come out of my iPod when I came across a little Quechwa woman and her daughter selling Orange Cake (yum!) on the side of the path. As we chatted in our equally basic Spanish it was apparent that she was desperate to make a sale so I was easily rubber-armed towards my wallet. Unfortunately however, I didn´t have the right change and had to resign myself to missing out on this strangely-timed treat.

Then she gave me some for free.
That just doesn´t happen here. I was having a very nice day.
So we chatted while I munched and she listened to some Lauryn Hill on my iPod, showing it to her little daughter who proceeded to disassemble it with enthusiasm.
Time was ticking away, I was only minutes from missing the agreed deadline so I had to be off. A pair of sticky earphones and a mouthful of amazing cake.

It only took forty or so buses roaring by for me to feel sheepish about my choice but I was still loving the fact that I was pushing my body to do absolutely all of it (that knee was starting to wail at me now). Plus, I rounded a bend to come across a forested path so beautiful that I decided that it would be cool if that was what I saw when I died. The tunnel with the light at the end and all that.

Finally I was at the bridge over a churning river that marks the road into Aguas Calientes. I stood out there on my own and carefully souvenired the woven handle of my walking staff before spearing the stick out over the water where it vanished into the rapids.

When I staggered into the restaurant twenty minutes later, my group - some showered and rested - looked up from the meal to laugh at my grubby appearance (a layer of sweat and dust from the buses) and give me a round of applause for being an over-enthusiastic nutter. As I dumped my bags and charged for the buffet, I was completely finished.

The glow from that day is still hanging about.

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Photos

A beetle on the summit of Huayna Picchu
What a dude...

Superimposed?
Pre-dawn photo effect. Do I look recovered from our run? :-)

The A-Team
Raj, Brent, Me, Luke. Wobbly legs.

Trying for the classic shot.
Not enough sun that early.

Couldn´t stop staring at this...
The mountain above Aguas Calientes

Nasty llama accident
They exchanged insurance details

I thought I had snuck up on him...
...until he kicked me in the chops.

Wing of the condor
Couldn´t fit the whole bird in, still cool.

"I´m going up there"
Resting the legs for the climb up Huayna Picchu (Background).

Just... a bit... closer.
On the edge. Summit of Huayna Picchu

Life is beautiful
Highest point of Huayna Picchu

Comments

[anonymous]

Ouch!!
I have sore sides from laughing so hard at the biomichanican lama, i so did not see it comming in the sentences before and i have tears rolling down my cheaks, Thanks for the laughs. I am so glad that you do not want to have babies with a fluro-jacket clad senior citizen, :-) - Phil