Life As Canvas

Alone on the hotel terrace, I sit nursing the little thunderstorm of rocky love in my heart. I can see the Pacific Ocean, a great churning mass of slow changes over time. It’s misty out, the sun is setting, and the waves look stone grey against the light clouds behind them. Near the horizon moves the silhouette of a local man fishing in a traditional boat made of reeds. It’s curved up in the front, making it look like an elf shoe. He goes out on this ocean, the same as it was centuries ago, to find dinner in the same kind of boat his ancestors used, though judging by his cumbersome maneuvering, a kayak would be more practical. But it’s simpler than that. The way he’s fishing is just the way it’s done around here, and has been done for generations. I ask myself what kinds of complications and troubles of the heart this man has. From here on my terrace looking out to his horizon, it just looks so simple.

Peru is overwhelmingly full of things to do and see, from jungle to desert, ocean and high mountains, all of it scattered with ancient walls and palaces belonging to the ancestors of the Inca who still live here. Today the Inca hassle you with their taxi offers and order you to enter their restaurants (Adelante! Adelante!). As a gringo, it gets tiring fending off their pleas. But when I look beyond the things placed in front of me to those who still fish and farm, to the friendly man who sold me an Inca Cola in the Colca Canyon, a man who lives in a village of 5 people and farms cactus for the pigment it produces, these lives seem so much simpler and, in ways, more authentic than my own.

I’m going to leave Peru for Ecuador in a few days, meandering up the coastline until the border and then following the Panamerica Highway to some new Gringo Paradise. Ecuador’s currency is the dollar. I fear that farther north this simplicity will be harder to find.

4:05 am and I found myself falling into an uphill rhythm in the dark, something that is slowly becoming familiar to me. I’d decked myself out in all of my raingear, taking the rushing river outside the hotel for rain, expecting the worst. The worst has been my luck in the weather department, lately. Alas, this time the skies held their contents in and, unfortunately, so did my rainpants, in which my legs were throbbing and sweating under the uphill sway of my body, hot and sticky in the muggy jungle air. Lone drops occasionally added contrast to my skin, cold rivulets hitting my head or sneaking down my back by way of the nape of the neck. Everything, the vines and trees, moss and rocks, even the darkness itself, was dripping.

Wheezing lightly, wondering why a month and a half in the high altitudes of Bolivia hadn’t helped my lung capacity by the time I got to Peru, my mind wandered to the two days it took us to get there, bus stuck in the muck, rock slides on the road, thick curtains of rain that melted the way right before our eyes, milky brown mud half way up spinning tires, pushing the bus, walking along the train tracks, chatting with local men who, with a lock of the eyes, offered to be my “guide” on my next visit, looking out steamy windows to see the land change from mountain rocks to furry green valleys full of coffee, fruit, tea, cacao, coca, birds, bananas, clouds and their wet contents, and pueblos there where the Inca have lived for centuries, leaving so many ruins behind and now opening restaurants to feed tired gringo explorers. We didn’t want to take the train to Machu Picchu with the other tourists. It costs too much, it’s a monopoly owned by Chile, and then there’s no adventure in it at all. So we contented ourselves with pushing buses through mud and clearing newly fallen boulders from our path.

Honestly, after months of seeing Machu Picchu posters in travel agencies in the streets of Bolivia and Peru and after two days of crazy (yet great) transport, I was just happy to finally be there. I didn’t really expect it to impress me much, cynical as that seems, yet I had gotten up at 3:45 and followed Cyril up steep stone steps, river rushing below us, darkness above.

By 5:30 we reached the top of the hill and made for the park entrance where we were met by a sleepy guard but there was no one else around. I looked for the people from the Inca trail, as they usually tend to arrive before everyone else but none were to be seen. Somehow, we were the first ones up, though the tourist buses arrive at six when the park opens. Internally I gave myself a little high five and glared at the people fresh off the bus from my post at the front of the line. I felt as though I’d earned it.

The doors opened, then, and we ran into the park, my legs still burning from the climb up, and made our way to the top of a hill where, looking down on Machu Picchu, the awe hit. Ringed by low wisps of cloud while the sun just tipped above the hilltops, streaking them with warm light, the site was completely empty but for the birds.

Sunlight sparkled from drops of dew in the grasses. I took my moment, then. Just a minute of stillness while my eyes and my mind took it all in.

Everyone else filed in and kept coming in bunches. By eleven the park was full of people following paths in every which way. We made our way back down, then, happy to have gotten up early, happy to have hiked up the trail, to have pushed a bus through the mud, to have chosen this crazy life.

More photos on my flickr site!