“It really whooped a llama’s ass”

(I find it sad that while thinking about how to describe our 4 days on the Inka Trail and our time at Machu Picchu, I was excited most by the prospect of quoting the great Wesley Willis. Now that that’s done with, I can get onto talking about why the Inka Trail did indeed “whoop a llama’s ass.”)

Sue, Jung-Eun, and I just got back from our 4 day, 3 night trek along the Inka Trail to Machu Picchu. We made it up to 4200 m (I think around 12000 feet), we adapted to the altitude and elements pretty well, we met some great people, Sue and Jung-Eun developed into kick ass trekkers before my eyes, and I had my notion of what travel is re-configured (slightly) again.

1^st off, the animals (including of course, the llamas). As we hiked up several thousand feet, the amount of animals walking down the trail with their handlers was uncountable. Most were donkeys, but we did catch a few llamas walking by. The waste left in their wake(and our avoidance of it) also made our trek a little more interesting. I don’t think of myself as an animal person, but watching donkeys, cows, chickens and dogs wander about as we set up camp our first night, with the mountain Salkantay in the background (5000+ m) evoked the word paradise for me. It’s melodramatic to use a word like that, but seeing how harmoniously everything meshed was life-affirming. It warmed the cockles of my heart, even if I was awoken several times by a donkey grazing just outside our tent in the night. Upon reaching Machu Picchu, one of the best things I saw were llamas grazing throughout the grounds, being used as natural lawn mowers. Our guide told us that they used to use lawn mowers, but they were too loud. Instead, they went old school, llama style. Perfect.

We met a lot of great people, but only got to know 3 of them well: David, Efrat, and Simon. David and Efrat are a couple on holiday in Peru for a month who were the only other trekkers in our group. This made things cozy, and luckily, we all got a long great and hiked at close to the same pace. It could have been hell if the other 2 trekkers were as loud and obnoxious as some of the people in other groups, but David and Efrat were about as perfect companions for trekking as one could hope for: swift, yet not in a hurry, drole, but not over the top, up for anything, but not excessive. It was a pleasure trekking with them, and they even invited us to visit them in Amsterdam while we’re in Europe. Simon, our guide, was as knowledgeable as could be hoped for, but with a dash of showmanship thrown in. After dinner one night, he proceeded to tell us the first campfire story I’ve heard since I was 8 or 9. He talked about mysteries of the Inkas, (like the possibility of a lost city of the Inkas somewhere hidden in the jungle), and it was all like something out of Indiana Jones. It was invigorating for me, and as I told Sue, further added to the newness of the trip. By newness, I mean that I saw things and heard things that I hadn’t ever thought about or anticipated. It was like discovering another planet or something. Like learning a new letter in cursive or hearing about killer bees as a kid or when I watched a GI Joe episode about diseases spread by mosquitoes. Scary and life-affirming all at once. It was like that, watching this very passionate guy tells us tall tales that he believed, and that through his passion, made me want to believe.

(Simon has also had an amazing life. His parents gave him up to a convent to be raised because they couldn’t afford to raise him and he therefore grew up apart from his 8 siblings and family. He learned Latin, Italian, English, Spanish, and his native language, then was studying to become a priest before re-considering because he wanted to be able to support his family. Now he teaches at a Catholic school, does tours several times a month, is a devout Catholic, and yet showed us all of the “pagan” rituals of the Inkas without the slightest hesitation or sense that he was betraying his Catholic faith.)

You may be wondering how all the equipment for camping and eating finds its way up into altitudes of 4200m. How did we eat 3 square meals a day cooked fresh and have tea time once a day, all at a metal table while sitting on stools? That is all thanks to the porters. While my 6’3, 220lb. frame was panting and sweating my 15kg backpack, porters of 5’6, 150 pounds were rolling past me carrying up to 40kg of supplies. The government limits them to 20kg and our company gave them insurance in case of injury, but other companies bribe officials so that their porters can haul 40+ kg. Some days we went up as much as 1200m, meaning these men hauled their own weight + 40 kg. Sue was horrified by the whole thing, wanting it to be stopped, but I was conflicted. Sure it’s f-ed up, but mustn’t this be a decent job if so many men were doing it? Its sort of how I look at Nike paying someone in Indonesia a couple bucks a day to make shoes. That’s terrible in the US, but it’s a good wage and opportunity in Indonesia. Same thing for couriers in Peru. But, all the equipment did at times seem excessive. And personal couriers (whom we didn’t hire) are too much.

After the trek, perhaps due in part to exhaustion, Machu Picchu was somehow a disappointment. We woke up at 4 AM to hike from our last campsite to the sungate overlooking Machu Picchu in the hopes of getting a glimpse of the sunrise bathing the city in light (alas, it was too cloudy) and I was pretty well-done from the previous 3 days of hiking, but I don’t know that I would have enjoyed it even if I had taken the train up to the site (as most tourists do) after a good night’s sleep. As I blabbed to David later on the train back, I think that, jumping off from my few hours of Foucault study, the simulacra surpassed the reality. For those of you who aren’t hoity-toity English majors, this basically means that seeing Machu Picchu in movies, books, National Geographic specials, etc. made it familiar to me. I was aware of how amazing and seemingly impossible it was before ever setting foot there, and that made it a letdown. Unless it was something completely different from what I expected (like my experience at the Grand Canyon 6 years ago), it was bound to disappoint. The best comparison would be watching a trailer for a comedy with all the really funny parts in it, then getting excited to see the movie based on the trailer, only to see the movie and find that everything that was funny in the movie, you had already seen. So, yeah, that’s Machu Picchu.

The Inka Trail, on the other hand, contained so many completely unexpected experiences, visually, physically, intra and interpersonally, that it re-aligned my views of the world. And that’s the point of travel. So, I’ve realized that I want travel to sneak up on me, to blindfold me and then reveal moments like llama’s as lawnmowers or solitary trees that are more majestic than man’s greatest architectural achievements. Or maybe I’m just turning into a tree hugging hippie.