Day Three

Another 4:30am wake up call from Fredy’s gentle voice. Two more cups of Coca tea. By 6:00am we were packed, fed, and back on the trail.

Before I get to the dangers that lie ahead, it was this day we began to learn more about the psychonaut that was Fredy. He told us of his experiments with Psylocibin and Ayahuasca to deepen his connection with nature, his ancestors, and the spiritual realm. He was very candid about it all. He loved coca tea, and had turned us onto it. In terms or potency, it was maybe a bit stronger than green tea. But on a day to day, or hour to hour basis, he chewed coca leaves. This man had a lip packed at all times like an MLB pitcher.

He had a separate cloth bag slung around him just filled with coca leaves. He would hand coca leaves out to people running ticket booths or security guards to grease the wheels to make our journey as frictionless as possible. Sometimes I think he tipped waiters and bartenders with these leaves like it was some Neolithic currency.

So it’s not just him, Peruvians love coca leaves. Fredy did concede that they were the same leaves that were used to make cocaine. But he was adamant about the health benefits of coca leaves. So much so, he explained step by step, exactly how you make cocaine to demonstrate how different it was than just the pure leaves. I don’t remember them all, something about fermenting leaves in gasoline in pits in the jungle. He would say, “Coca leaves actually are not addictive at all,” while his teeth were stained green from munching them all day.

Anyway, so Fredy likes to party. Nothing wrong with that. Him telling us all this while walking at dawn through a Peruvian jungle felt like a trip in itself. But it wasn’t long before we encountered what Fredy had warned us about the night before.

Landslides. The rainy season lasted longer than expected, so landslides had wiped away chunks of the trail and other roads all throughout the mountains. The group before us had to turn around and hike back over Salkantay pass because recent landslides blocked their path. Less than a week later, guides and other staff from all the trekking groups came together to forge a path through. The first instance of this path lay before us now.

High up on the hillside, a steep, brown slab carved a geometric gap in the jungle that stretched hundreds of feet down to the river below. I’m not sure the guides’ trail restoration prowess consisted of anything more than patting down the dirt with shovels across the landside making a narrow path to walk across. The path was about three feet across here. One at a time, we stepped gingerly across while hugging the side of the mountain and refusing to look down. But I took a peak. There wasn’t so much as a single shrub to slow my fall into the roaring rapids on what would be the steepest, longest slide of my life.

Alas we made it. Down the mountain we wove back and forth on miniature switchbacks. The trail led us to a dirt road, where our path would continue for now, given the original trail had sections claimed by Mother Nature. We found that this road itself was not entirely spared. We approached a long line of fellow hikers. The guides of the various companies had come together and decided it would be safer for everyone to cross at once. That way they could post guides on either side and manage the flow of hikers and horses.

When we reached the front we understood the abundance of caution. The path wasn’t even a foot wide across this landslide. Each trekker nervously made their way across with varying speed but all successful. To my genuine amazement, the horses (mules?) also made their way across, saddlebags and all. One carefully placed hoof in front of the other, it was just another day at the office for them.

Then it was our turn. I had a sort of exhausted, delusional confidence that I’d made it this far in life and I could probably make it through this as well. This time I really didn’t look down. With my right hand leaning on the near vertical slope, I stepped one foot at a time on the loose dirt, testing each foothold. One step in the path was so narrow I couldn’t fit my whole foot on to it. I had to do a half step with my heel hanging off the edge above oblivion and swing my other leg around.

We had two or three more crossings like this. The adrenaline was like a hundred coca teas coursing through my veins. At one crossing, the path was wider, but the guide on the other end was playing red-light, green-light based on how actively the rocks were falling. I began to cross, then he held up a hand and we both watched some small to medium size rocks roll past. Then he waved me through.

Like, what the hell is that? I just had to trust one guy eye-balling the mountain side to see if the whole slab would come loose and take us all with it? Again I crossed, with a wary eye trained uphill on the precariously loose rubble.

Eventually we crossed the landslide portions and were left with a long, shallow decline on this dirt road in the jungle. In some spots, mountain streams flowed over the road and we were forced to decide between wet boots or hopscotching across the rocks. But for a long time after our death-defying feats, we were left alone with our thoughts and the hum of the jungle.

I remember thinking how if one of those landslides happened in a national park in the US, it would be closed down for the whole summer whiles they ran tests and reconstructed the entire mountain. Life is not so complicated in Peru. They understand there are no certainties in life and “good enough” can often be the solution. They treat crossing a perilous landslide like a dad strapping a mattress to the top of a car with bungee cords and saying, “Yep, that’s not going anywhere.”

Miles later, we arrived at a coffee farm. Here we grinded fresh coffee beans and made our own espresso. Coffee farms in that valley had won several international awards in coffee competitions. I’m no connoisseur, but that coffee was pretty damn good. It was a welcome break, sipping on a little pick-me-up while massaging our calves. As we rested, the aromas of the freshest coffee I would ever have swirled around us. The day was sunny, but not bright. The mountains and leafy vegetation offered plenty of shade. The landslides were already becoming distant memory – like VHS tapes or dreams of retiring someday.

From there it was not far from the jungle huts we stayed in. These were large, wood and glass domes on the ground in a small clearing, with their backs against the wall of jungle. A family lived adjacent to the main building, where we had lunch, dinner, and breakfast. It was really a lovely spot to live, and not a bad gig to host backpackers travelling through. For some reason I remember there was a TV and couch in the corner, and the family’s daughter was watching some Barbie show in English. They gave no indication of knowing any English, so I wondered how enjoyable a show could be not understanding a word? Then I thought of the Spanish game show I would watch with my house mom in Barcelona. They spoke too fast for me to retain anything, and I’m not sure I ever even learned the rules. But that didn’t stop me from watching it every night with her.

“We’re not so different, you and I,” I said mentally to the little girl. To which she did not reply or know of my existence because she never turned around from her television program.

As we settled into our hut, we were greeted by the BIGGEST SPIDER I HAVE EVER SEEN. It perched on the wall next to the bed like a taxidermized moose. And it wasn’t much smaller than that. Easily bigger than my hand. Maybe bigger than my head. I didn’t snap a photo because every primal instinct in my body drove me to kill it as fast as possible. I approached slowly with my boot. God it was even bigger up close. I didn’t want to look directly at it. I think it could smell fear.

Whack! Miss. Oh no. It began to scurry.

Fearing insects has to be one of the most base human traits. Right up there with burying our dead and loving Chick-Fil-A. So the alarm bells were sounding in my body while Monika helpfully screamed from the other side of the room.

Finally I got it with one smack of the boot. Then I scraped up this creature, more on par with a rodent or chihuahua than insect, off the ground and dumped it in the jungle. Now we were left with the decision to seal all the windows and let the jungle cook us alive (no AC) or leave the windows open and risk being carried off into the trees by this murdered monster’s brethren.

I don’t remember what we settled on, but the best way to take our mind off of it was to soak in some hot springs. So that’s what we did.

A van took us to the hot springs. On the way there we passed the coffee farm, where one of the Floridians insisted we pull over. She soon came back with an armful of beers. Same woman who bought beer from last night. She seemed to have a sixth sense for where beer was sold. What’s more is she was probably in the best shape of all of us. Of course I could not say no. No one denied her. Soon we had music blasting and beers sloshing on the bumpy roads. The team bonding had now begun.

On one particularly bad stretch of road, we saw another van stuck in the mud. This former dirt-road was now a mud pit riddled with potholes and rocks. And just like the rest of the roads in the area, it ran along the edge of a cliff. Beer in hand, we all funneled out, our sandals squelching in the mud, to help this stuck vehicle. Enough of us leaned on it until the wheels caught traction and our fellow van zipped out and on its way.

The hot springs were a welcome sensation on our aching muscles. It had been built into what looked like a community pool, but the surrounding vista was sublime. The tension slipped down my back and out of my toes as I floated and gazed at the magnificent emerald hills and stunning cliff faces. Wisps of clouds clung to the surrounding hilltops giving an aura of mystique. The dull roar of the river from below laminated the steamy air around us with a comforting white noise. The type of view while soaking in hot springs you can only get a handful of places in the world.

Just outside the pools were a line of shops, which also sold beer. With each Cusquena and Pisco Sour the team shared, our barriers dropped and our smiles widened, as we shared stories from our lives and reflected on the journey to this point. We laughed at the ridiculousness of the landslide crossings. We verbally compared the size of spiders in our rooms, like fisherman bragging about the bass they landed. And Fredy, the little frat boy that we was, was pacing all of us in drinks. “Another cerveza, chicos?” he would ask while slipping the shop owner a wad of coca leaves.

Back in the van we now all sang along to the music and the road seemed a little less tenuous. Night had descended and spirits were high. Once again we arrived at the precarious road where we unlodged a van earlier. This time a Toyota Camry was deep in the mud. A whole family was stuck here on this ill-advised road. Another car had already arrived and was trying to help. We helped push, but it would only shift the car to another pool of mud. We had to spend 20 minutes gathering rocks and logs to fill the deeper pot holes and fit under the tires to get this car moving again.

It was a slow effort, and many times I felt like one too many cooks in the kitchen. What’s worse: a Spanish speaking kitchen with a tall, white American who can’t really communicate and struggles to cut an onion. So I gathered some rocks and helped push when necessary, but otherwise left it to the experts on traveling across mountains.

The Camry made it across, and so did we. Now every challenge before us seemed less daunting and more inevitable. Some patchwork solution would present itself if we stared at a problem long enough. Peruvians wouldn’t let something as trivial as a landslide or a two wheel drive sedan foot-deep in mud or a dog-sized spider ruin their day, so why should we? We had only one more long walk tomorrow to get to the town at the base of Machu Pichu. One more – very – early day.