Six Sentences

The entire adventure was sparked from six sentence. This was what was responsible our exploration. The six sentence was the collective of two books, the first "Alternatives to the Inca Trail" and the other "Extreme Shoestring Travel Blog 121". This was all the information in existence about a cheap way to reach Machhu Picchu. This was all it took.

For a little background, Machhu Picchu is deep in the jungle. Due to the excessive tourism, the path to the ruins was expensive, very expensive. Ian and I were determined to find another way. So we begin searching. After two days, hours on the blogs and countless conversations with locals, we had found only 6 sentences outlining an alterative. It was a brief explaination and explaination might be too stong of a word. The brief hint of an alternative was nothing more than an allure. There was a way into Machu Picchu, it was cheap, it was involved, it was a mystery and best of all, it was set in a jungle with path to an ancient lost civilization. All criterion met for an Indian Jones adventure, minus the Sallah and the hat. The six sentences in the Lonely Planet Guide

book provided more questions than answer. These sentences were our burnt treasure map. There was a clear start and the X was evident but parts in-between were far from clear. It left more to the imagination and our imaginations were working overtime. I read them over and over as we packed our bag from Cusco. I read them until I memorized them and then I read them again. I reached deep into the subcontext of the measly paragraph, and I felt no more prepared.

The six sentences spoke of a trek deep within the Peruvian jungle. It spoke a journey far away from our grubby existence of hostels and eateries. It spoke of crossing a river that had claimed lives. Under a picture of a raging river it read, "In order to cross the river you've got to balance yourself on a steel platform attached to a large cable, suspended above the raging river. As you pull yourself across hand by hand, try to put out of mind those who have lost their lives in the crossing". Short, sweet, effective. We had found our path to Machu Picchu.

The start of the journey consisted of 15 hour bus ride. 5 hours of walk through villages brought us to a small town with a shuttle. We wedged luggage in our laps. We clung to the back of seats in front of us. I turned back and to see repressed horror on Ian´s face. Maybe it was ignorance. Maybe it was a death wish. Either motive would produce the same reaction. I sat in the middle row of an eight person passenger van, going 50 mph, wheels just 6 inches from a 200 foot drop into a boulder scattered canyon. I was ignorantly laughing. It was half out of entertainment half out of nervous tension. The single-lane, dirt road was poorly etched in the side of a gravely mountain-side. This portion of the trek was a connecting path between the small town of Santa Teresa and an industrial hydro electrical plant. Just one leg of our journey. This was nothing more than a workers access road. A windy, two-way, one lane, no speed limit, dirt road with many blind turns and many wash outs. Maybe I was laughing because I was confident in our 15 year old driver. He showed such little concern for the dire situation so much so that takin

g his eyes off the radio would have been a burden. Maybe I was laughing because the gas gauge hung squarely in the "E" and my happiness was based on my new philosophy of "low tank=small explosion". Or maybe I was laughing because there was little else I could do. I had chosen to laugh so I wasn´t forced to count the endless ways in which I my life could be over in a unpleasant chain of events resulting in a fiery explosive death. Blind turns into oncoming traffic going 40 mph, these were necessary because driving fast on a road of that condition is not nearly a large enough risk. Let´s add ensuing head on collision and inexperienced driver.

We did make it and I was laughing the whole time.

Looking out from the top of Macchu Picchu trivialised the excursion. The beauty and amazement of the ancient city is very consuming. The effort, endurance and craftsmanship of the ruins leaves little else to pondered. It brings a state of awe to see such a pristine glimpse into the elusive past. The ruins bring life to history but only a outline of life. They are a beautiful evocation of curiosity into lives of people long ago. They are important for what they reveal but that is only half their role. The ruins stand to evoke wonderment. They are both objects that fulfill the apex of discovery and a mere looking glass to a civilization past. It was everything we sought to discover. We left the ruins and walked back into the jungle. Our path was Cusco-Machu Picchu-Cusco. We had made it to our destination that sat squarely at the half way point. We aimed toward cusco, our adventure complete but only half over.