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Days 3 & 4: A Thousand-and-One Uses for Toilet Paper
"There's always gonna be another mountain. I'm always gonna wanna make it move. Always gonna be an uphill battle. Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. It ain't about how fast I get there. Ain't about what's waiting on the other side. It's the climb." - Miley Cyrus ("The Climb")
By the third morning I was digging my First Aid kit out of my suitcase. I rooted through the contents - BandAids, AfterBite, Polysporin, antiseptic swabs, a sewing kit, the broad spectrum antibiotics my doctor had prescribed for emergencies... I took out the gauze and considered the stingy roll. Even if I used it all, it wouldn't be enough to cushion the saddle sores forming on my inner thighs, and I didn't want to waste it. I chose the medical tape instead and carried it to the bathroom, where I taped folds of toilet paper to my upper legs. Over it, I pulled on my long underwear and jeans. So what if it made my thighs look fat? This trek was hardly a beauty contest.
While I was at it, I took the ill-fitting helmet I'd borrowed from Edwin and wrapped the chin strap in toilet paper, hoping this might stop it from rubbing my neck raw. I dry-swallowed a handful of ibuprofen for my back and packed water, chapstick, and Pepto Bismol in my saddlebags (bumping up and down for hours in pants that are too tight isn't easy on the stomach). I put on a pair of sunglasses to keep the dust out of my contacts and tied the bandana I'd brought for my hair around my neck, accessible to pull up over my nose and mouth if need be. I'd eaten enough dust coming down the canyon yesterday, and wasn't interested in spending another evening picking dried clumps of black snot out of my nose. It was giving Brunette Mary nose bleeds.
Last but not least, I sealed my precious iPad, along with my wallet, in a large ziplock to keep it from getting wet. Then I wrapped it, as carefully and lovingly as a mother swaddles her child, in a pillowcase and a pair of pants. There was no way I was trekking through the Sacred Valley on horseback without a camera, but my iPad was my life. Internet, pictures, blog, e-mail, calendar, copies of travel documents, contact with home - everything was on there.
We were getting ready to head out, tightening the girths and securing our saddlebags, when an adorable train of small, fuzzy pack mules trucked through our camp. There were five or six of them, all laden with bundles that looked bigger and heavier than they were, driven from behind by a single farmer with a stick. We stopped what we were doing to watch. When they'd gone, I turned to find my horse missing. One of the wranglers leapt into action, chasing after the little herd to bring back Sufa.
Today we rode up, climbing a rocky and wet-in-places slope almost as steep as the one we'd come down yesterday. This time, we were in the woods, a narrow dirt path winding through what Edwin said was tropical forest. This explained the leap in temperature from forty degrees to seventy. I was grateful for the sunglasses and bandana, though I was sure I was well on my way to looking like a black-and-white-movie bandit. This trail was even dustier than the desert canyon had been.
The toilet paper worked well until I squatted to sit on a rock at lunch and the tape tore loose in a rather unfavourable spot. I found another use for it when I went to use the facilities. I was getting pretty good at peeing on the ground. There wasn't really much choice out here. You just had to be careful which bush you chose. It took me a few days before I learned to avoid the ones with thorns, burrs or beehives.
We ate cold chicken salad inside the ruined walls of an Incan stone lodge. Edwin said it was at least 700 years old and had been used as shelter along the 250-mile trail from the coast to Cusco. Incan runners used to carry messages and fish from one to the other in a matter of hours, so the emperors always had fresh seafood.
We were headed to Pumahuanca, a picturesque highland valley nestled between mountains made of volcanic rock. I thought the ride was pretty enough already, over a grassy carpet alongside a stream fringed by wildflowers and lush forest. It looked like something out of a fairytale, complete with moss-covered boulders and polka-dotted toadstools. Pumahuanca, though, was something else entirely.
Edwin and I left the horses and the Mary's (they didn't feel like humping up a hill for twenty minutes) in the basin of a waterfall and followed the cascade up, up and up. "Oh to be twenty-three again," I heard one of the Mary's marvel as I bounded after Edwin like a mountain goat. The truth was it wasn't easy, but I was still trying to shake off the Italy weight, and jumped at any opportunity for more exercise. Whether it was a result of the uphill climb or the altitude, or both, my heart was threatening to explode again when we finally made it to the top.
And God, was it worth it. Remember the Great Valley that all the cartoon dinosaurs migrated to in the Land Before Time? Pumahuanca was too perfect for non-fiction. Traffic-light-green grass carpeted the floor like faux turf, interrupted only by the babbling brook that flowed down to the waterfall and was bridged by gnarled fantasy logs. I half expected a gnome or river troll to poke its head out from beneath one. The stream narrowed as it stretched into the distance, meeting its vanishing point where the bordering peaks dovetailed to close the valley in a kind of secret sanctuary.
I stuffed a clean wad of toilet paper in my pocket every morning to use as a combination Kleenex and napkin for lunch. I took it out and dabbed my eyes with it.
When we'd ridden as far as we could in the afternoon, we took the van to the lodge. Driving down the mountain, Mary and Mary and I suddenly stopped our companionable chatter and remarked that we seemed to be going awfully fast. The van was gaining speed, in fact, careening around hairpin turns and honking to blow past knots of pedestrians. Our driver seemed determined not to touch the brakes at any cost. When we disembarked at the bottom, we saw the flat tire. I had yet to come to South America without at least one tire casualty, and it occurred to me that the support vehicle probably wasn't carrying a spare, with our luggage taking up the trunk space. Our driver hadn't wanted to get stuck on the mountain.
It was my last dinner with Mary and Mary. I would ride with them tomorrow to the ruins at Moray, "and then you're transferring to Obladi Oblada," Brunette Mary reminded me.
"Ollantaytambo," I corrected gently.
"Close enough." Mary took a forkful of quinoa tabouleh. "You're okay with going to Machu Picchu alone with a middle-aged Peruvian cowboy?"
I thought about it. I supposed it was no more crazy than anything else I'd done over the past two-and-a-half months. "Have you ever seen True Grit?" I returned the question.
Mary swallowed. "No," she replied. "Why?"
The next morning, I woke early to the voices of Andean wolves. At first I thought it was Zorro howling, then two and three and four more took up the eerie chorus, hitting every octave from a mournful moan to a bone-chilling keen. It was some of the most haunting music I'd ever heard.
I got out of bed, excited for the chance to finally post a blog entry. Thanks to our mad dash down the mountain yesterday, we'd reached the lodge with enough time for me to get most of one done. I would have finished it but had to walk the dusty lane into town (AFTER I'd scrubbed my face and hair in the shower, might I add) to buy shampoo and break a hundred-sole bill when I found out the front desk didn't carry change.
I had it all proof-read, had chosen a title, quote and picture and was about to hit "publish" when the power went out. I lost the internet connection and went to have breakfast instead. After cold coffee and stale bread, I brushed my teeth with bottled water, packed my saddlebags and set out. Zorro was ecstatic to see us, spinning like a top and jumping up to stamp us with muddy paw prints when we met up with the wranglers and horses. One night, it seemed, was too long to be apart. Or maybe it was Blond Mary's sugar cookies and leftover french fries he missed.
It was a perfect day for a last ride. It was the first time I'd seen a completely cloudless sky, so brilliantly blue it looked like a portrait photographer's background canvas. The sun was all ours. My face was already red and puffy from exposure (SPF 60 was no defence this high up and so close to the equator), but I snuggled up to the heat, basking.
Peru is home to twenty-eight of the world's thirty-two climates, and a terrain to match every one. Today we rode up the green, glacial ranges of Montana, through the red cactus canyons of Arizona and finally to the yellowed grassy highlands of Nebraska. The horses, when it came to dealing with it, were gold, if a little over the hill. Besides the green seven-year-old Edwin was breaking in as a lead horse, there wasn't an animal in the group that was under sixteen. They never rested or ate tied up, and had interminable patience for our limited mountain-riding experience.
I already had the 'cowboy slump' down. A ride like this was raw. Real. Pony-club formalities like a ramrod spine and a straight line between elbows, hands and the horse's mouth went out the window. There were times when I was leaning so far back my shoulders were almost touching Sufa's haunches. Other times, I was laying flat on his neck, trying to help him balance as he clambered upward. Very rarely did I take the reins between my pinky and ring-fingers as I'd been trained to do. Generally I held them in one hand at the buckle (or in this case, rope knot), giving Sufa his head along with my trust.
By now we'd forged an indestructible partnership. There was no such thing as a boss on these trails. Most of the time, picking our way over huge boulders or loose rocks, I was happy to let Sufa go where he pleased. I figured he knew better than I where the soundest footing was, and he was working hard enough already without me backseat driving. These animals weren't the robotic nags I was used to on public trail rides. Nor were they stupid. Far from it. Whenever Sufa paused at an impossible-looking step down or vertical climb up, I knew he wasn't reluctant. His ears were forward and his neck outstretched. I could see the wheels turning, recognized the expression from my own face when I was navigating an unfamiliar city: Stop. Look. Think. I let him do his job, and he never failed to keep me safe.
Zorro, too. No matter what other escapades caught his attention, he always had one eye on us, always turned back to watch when strangers or other animals passed him and continued toward us on the trail, always growled and raised his hackles when a stray dog wandered too close to investigate. With us, though, he was all wet tongue and wagging tail.
We made it to the Moray ruins, a tier of concentric curves like an inside-out wedding cake, so colossal and perfectly symmetrical they looked like crop circles. No one knows for sure what the purpose of the terraces was. A predominant theory is that the Incas were conducting agricultural experiments, looking to see which crops grew best at which temperatures.
Zorro got into it with the resident walker hound and the wranglers took the horses for water (they followed single-file without lead lines) while we explored the ruins. Mary and Mary rested on the upper terrace while Edwin and I hiked down across the lower rims. They were even more impressive up close, their sheer breadth making us look like ants from above, the flawlessness of their shape mind-boggling. "We do not have the ability to do this today," Edwin told me, indicating the enormous stone blocks carved and aligned in a tight, even arch. "The Incas were master measurers, mathematicians and geometrists."
He started down toward the centre of the terraces. I hung back, hesitant. "What are you doing?" Edwin looked back over his shoulder to where I was standing, calculating the distance between the ancient Incan steps. They were more like giant, anvil-shaped pegs jutting out of the terrace walls at regular, descending intervals, not to mention widely-spaced. They had to be five feet apart. I had a short stride to begin with, and my knees and back were still in rough shape.
"If I go down there," I told Edwin candidly, "I won't be able to get back out."
We had lunch in the middle of a rippling, saffron plain. When we were finished our picnic, Edwin took a time-out to tend to another broken shoe. As far as I could tell, he and the wranglers were their own vet and farrier. Yesterday he went and bought a vial of Phenylbutazone for one of the horses with a sore shoulder. While he was bent-double with the gelding's fetlock clamped between his knees, he craned his neck to look at me. "You want to go for a gallop?" He asked, knowing how much I loved to run. When I nodded vigorously, he pointed his hammer across the field at a rectangular white speck in the distance. "See that wall out there?"
I didn't even try to keep the electricity out of my eyes. "Yeah!"
"Go and come back."
It was the wide open spaces I loved most here, the freedom of flying over an open range with nothing in front of you. No obstacles. Unstoppable.
In the afternoon we rode toward the village that was supposed to be the end of our trail. Here the Mary's would finish their trek, and I would go with Edwin to Ollantaytambo, one of the last townships before Machu Picchu. Once upon a time, you could take a horse all the way to the ruins, but high traffic on the Inca Trail led Peruvian authorities to limit hiking to people on foot, for preservation.
The tiny rural village came into view shortly after lunch, and I felt a tangle of mixed emotions as I realized the riding part of the trek was almost over. No more saddle sores. No more rashes, sunburns or bug bites. No more peeing behind bushes and no more aching back. No more thrill-seeking. No more Zorro. No more Sufa. I'd never done anything so challenging or so awe-inspiring in my life, and doubted I ever would again. I felt as if I'd gained more riding experience in four days out here than I had in seventeen years in an arena, and a part of me hated to see it come to a close.
I realized I'd jumped the gun, however, when we crested a ridge and the ground yawned open at our feet. Another adventure-movie cliche, the vast canyon stood between us and the village. It took us another two hours to skirt a ridge about halfway between the rim and the floor. And then, too soon, we were there. We dismounted and looked back the way we'd come. Edwin gestured to some invisible point on the other side of a sprawling mountain range that contained too much for the eyes or mind to take in. "We came from there," he said, his tone suggesting we'd ridden across a city park rather than a sublime and treacherous cosmos of desert canyons, steep cliff faces, rushing rivers, tropical forests, bucolic valleys, high plateaus and grassy plains. We'd ridden where roads didn't go, into wild and uncharted territory. From here, the all-encompassing expansiveness looked traversable only by plane.
Sufa nuzzled my neck and I patted his. "Well done, old man."
I was proud of myself, too. Every day we met up with the support vehicle at lunch, and had the option of taking the van to the lodge in the afternoon, but I hadn't wimped out once. I'd ridden every incredible, excruciating mile. Looking back at the overwhelming distance, I thought it was probably best that we hadn't known how far it was beforehand. If we had, we never would have done it, and we wouldn't have gained so much. A lot of things in life are like this.
- comments
Dad I am amazed, afraid and proud all in one. I am in awe of what you are experiencing and accomplishing. Come home safe and soon. love Dad
julie I truly feel like I am on this journey with you...your words are so descriptive and vivid.What a wonderful gift you have given to all of us. love Julie xox