360 Degrees Longitude (49 page)

Katrina and P had gone on and were probably an hour or more ahead of us. Although P is a strong hiker, we had a good idea that Katrina would be running circles around him. With her boundless capacity for nonstop chatter, we also had a good idea that she would slowly be extracting energy from him, like a star orbiting a black hole.

September, Jordan, and I were in the back of the pack of the 500 hikers on the trail: only Jessie and a trail sweeper were behind us. Jessie carried oxygen and other medication for altitude sickness, but Jordan, who refused all of it, was starting to respond to the Gatorade therapy.

Mr. Trail Sweeper's job was to be sure no one got left behind. He carried a Peruvian pan flute and played a tune as he walked.

We were hiking along the side of a mountain that was part of a steep and narrow valley. The tune echoed beautifully across the gorge. I was huffing and puffing with all my might while Mr. Trail Sweeper played a tune as if he were on a street corner working for tips.

“He's playing an old Simon and Garfunkel tune,” I said to September. I liked to annoy September with my knowledge of music from the '60s and '70s because she couldn't name anything that was less than 200 years old.

“Actually, it is a 300-year-old Peruvian tuned called ‘El Condor Pasa' that Simon and Garfunkel put English lyrics to and made popular.”

“Give me a break. You're making that up.”

“Look it up, if you don't believe me.”

“I can do better than that. I'll ask Mr. Trail Sweeper.” Turning to the trail sweeper, I said, “That was nice. Do you know any other Simon and Garfunkel tunes?”

He looked at me as if I was from an alien planet. September has never said the words, “I told you so.” I wish she would, just to get it over with.

Dead Woman's Pass, at 14,050 feet, is the highest point along the Inca Trail. Through sheer stubbornness, Jordan made it to the top. We found Katrina and P there waiting for us. Katrina was overflowing with energy, the excess coming out of her mouth as one long run-on sentence.

P congratulated Jordan for his tenacity in making it to the top. “Yes,” I said, “stubbornness can be a good quality, so long as you don't have too much of it.”

• • •

The day was far from over. Jordan even had some lunch at the top of Dead Woman's Pass. When we started again he was racing Katrina up and down the hills.

That is more than I can say for the adults.

At Dead Woman's Pass, the trail converged with the historical trail. The historical trail from Cuzco is judged to be to too treacherous and is thus closed to the public. We bid adieu to the broad, flat, hard-packed soil trail we had been following. Going forward the historical trail was uneven stone. Every step was a new opportunity for twisting an ankle or hyperextending a knee, requiring full concentration.

“I think I left my knees at the last stop,” I said to September. “Going uphill merely made me tired. Going down makes me feel old.” I acquired two walking sticks and was doing my best quadruped imitation. At the end of the day my triceps were as painful as my quadriceps.

“Would you like me to carry your pack?” September asked.

“You mock my pain? My ego is wounded enough as the porters fly past while I hobble along!” With a total of 500 people on the trail for any given day, about half are porters. They are the last to leave camp or to take a meal stop, and are the first to arrive at the next stop. So you are assured of having a gazillion porters passing in a blur two or three times a day. With these impossibly large loads tied to their backs with sashes of cloth and simple sandals on their feet, the porters
race
each other in a testosterone-fueled show of machismo.

“Don't mind the porters,” September said. “Machismo doesn't turn the girls on like quoting
π
to the tenth decimal point. And the pack-carrying thing will be our little secret.”

If we weren't already married, I'd propose all over again. With a rush of gratitude, I gave my pack to September. But only on the steepest of descents.

• • •

The ancient city of Machu Picchu is situated on a mountaintop with sheer cliffs all the way around, as if man finished the citadel that Mother Nature had started. One can hear the rapids of the Urubamba crashing in the canyon below, but the cliffs are so steep the river is well out of view.

When we arrived at Machu Picchu, we looked down on the tops of the clouds, which filled the canyon that defines the surrounding geography. To look down on the city emerging from the clouds gave a palpable sensation that this was more than a mere
place
. All over the world Switzerland seems to be the common standard for sheer, rugged, alpine beauty. Machu Picchu's setting is the only place I have ever been that is more stunning than Switzerland.

Crafted with intricate stonework, the city obviously wasn't built in a hurry. Machu Picchu is many things, not the least of which is a self-contained city with a temple, civic buildings, terraced, arable land where llamas still graze, and dwellings so fresh it is as if they are waiting for new move-ins.

I hadn't known anything about the Incas before I'd arrived, and once there, I couldn't learn enough about them. I was fascinated by anybody who could build a city with stone that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and was so intricately cut that you couldn't slip a piece of paper between the pieces.

“Jessie,” I asked our guide, “who lived here and where did they go?”

“No one knows. The Incas didn't have a written language. As such, they left no record. When Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu in 1911 this is what he found. The inhabitants of this city remain a mystery to this day.”

I didn't like that answer. The Incas may not have had a written language, but the Spaniards who wiped them out did.

• • •

Listening to the Urubamba River raging in a canyon 2,000 feet below, the only other sound I heard was September's labored breathing next to me. We were taking a well-deserved break. Physically, hiking the Inca Trail ranks as one of the hardest things we had ever done. Our legs screamed in pain.

After four days of hiking to Machu Picchu, a genuine hotel awaited us in Aguas Calientes, a 30-minute bus ride away. All of us were walking very stiffly, even the 20-somethings who made up the rest of our party of ten hikers. All of us, that is, except Katrina and Jordan.

I had been napping, lying in the grass, my bare feet dangling over the edge of one of Machu Picchu's stepped terraces. It felt good to have my toes out of my boots and in the crisp air and sunshine. Sitting up to look around for Katrina and Jordan, I let out a groan.

“Need some help, Dad?” Katrina was devilishly gleeful to assist me down a few steps.

“Yes. I carried you all over Europe. Now it's your turn to carry me.” As we headed down the terrace, I let out a muffled groan with each step. “My legs just won't bend anymore.”

“Then betcha can't do this.” Katrina jumped a good two feet into the air, and while doing so kicked herself in the bottom with the heels of her feet. It hurt just to watch.

“Remember what Pa said in
Little House on the Prairie?
‘Children should be seen and not heard.'“

Jordan said, “Okay, then, just watch.” And he and Katrina proceeded to jump up and down kicking themselves in the bottom with their own heels. All the adults in our group booed them.

Danielle, one of the Dutch women, looked at Katrina and, turning to me, said, “You carried Katrina all over Europe?”

“Yes. She suffered a broken leg in Switzerland. We had been cycling across Europe when a rock climbing accident left her in a cast on her leg, with a badly sprained wrist. I carried her on my shoulders much of our remaining time in Europe.”

Danielle's gaze then turned to Jordan. “For a while, I didn't think he would make it! That's one tough kid.”

Katrina and Jordan were paying no attention to the conversation. They continued to jump up and down, demonstrating their resilience. “Yes, I suppose he is. I practically begged him to let me carry him, but he was determined to make it on his own,” I replied.

As the adults recuperated in Aguas Calientes (literally “hot waters”) over the next day, it was easy to tell who had recently returned from hiking the Inca Trail. We passed each other in the street with a nod and a wink conveying much more than words could say. We all belonged to the elite brotherhood of Inca Trail hikers and walked proudly with the stride of one who had a severe case of diarrhea.

• • •

I had been both awestruck and bothered by Machu Picchu. Awestruck at the beauty of the surroundings and the complexity of the structures, and bothered by the apparent lack of information about the place and its inhabitants.

A few days later we were in Peru's capital, Lima to say good-bye to P and make preparations for the last leg of our journey. There, we were also able to find an alternate perspective on Machu Picchu. With the help of Google and Wikipedia, I learned the site was built in 1440 as a retreat for Inca royalty, like a modern-day Camp David, and Hiram Bingham was guided to it by locals who were quite aware of its presence.

“So why,” I asked September, “do tour guides and books propagate the rubbish that no one knows?”

“I suppose if humankind could answer that one, we wouldn't be destined to repeat history.”

May 3–June 1
Belize

T
here sure are a lot of 1968 VW Bugs in the developing world. It's a tribute to anyone that they can keep a single car running for nearly 40 years. Most of the Bugs don't look too spiffy, but they still do the job.

It never ceases to amaze me that you can give your credit card number to someone, hop on a plane, and within a few hours be in a place that is crawling with 40-year-old VW Bugs. It is a great life, even when the credit card company finally catches up with you.

Nonetheless, as our final hours in Peru ticked away I was sitting in a Lima hostel feeling sorry for myself.

“Be brave, little Piglet,” September said. It was what Winnie-the-Pooh told Piglet when Piglet needed to rise beyond his full stature and accomplish a difficult task.

“But I don't want to go to the airport. It means we only have four weeks left on our trip.” I had recently arranged for a new position at my former company, so at the end of those four weeks, a cubicle would be waiting for me in Silicon Valley. I could already feel its icy grip encircling me.

“We've already discussed this,” September replied. “We agreed it's the right thing to do right now. We've got four weeks ahead of us on a tropical island, so let's make the best of it.”

True. I knew there would be zero sympathy from friends and family because I was wallowing in self-pity at the prospect of spending a month on a tropical island.

We had discussed not returning home at all, and every time we did, the discussion focused on Bocas del Toro, Panama, and went something like this:

“Neil the Pirate said there was a great need for a boat mechanic on Bocas. We could sell the house, take a boat mechanic's course, and live a much more leisurely existence.”

This was almost, but not always, me saying this. Over and over, we had to remind ourselves of two powerful lessons we learned on Bocas. The first is that things are not always as they seem: As much as we liked to fantasize about Gilligan's Island and the lifestyle of the marooned, the fact is we were not cut out for the island lifestyle. Relaxation is way overrated: After too much of it I feel like setting my teeth on fire. The second lesson takes more explaining.

On Bocas we observed the local children and the children of the Americans who had settled there. They seemed to be tropical transplants straight out of
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
. Bocas would be a fantastic place to be a kid, but it also seemed it would be a difficult place to make the transition to adulthood. Options were limited for all except the most ambitious, which is a polite way of saying we didn't see any future doctors or astronauts on Bocas. Returning home was the best way to give Karina and Jordan the same thing that September and I had had: the opportunity to do with our lives as we wanted.

• • •

Belize had been British Honduras until 1981, when the residents decided they wanted their independence. Britain was used to the “independence” thing by this time so, with no muskets fired and no tea being dumped into the bay, the keys of power were transferred to the locals.

We settled in on Ambergris Caye, a tiny island just fifteen miles from the mainland and protected by the world's second largest barrier reef. How we came to this place was quite simple. We were looking for a place like Bocas to spend our last month, but it had to have a real grocery store within walking distance and it had to be between South America and California.