All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [68]
In the morning I am renewed; I have a ferocious appetite for breakfast, and whatever bug has been dogging me since Arequipa has been decidedly driven away. The shaman tells me that though I shouldn’t have taken the ayahuasca when I was still ill, now surely the bug is cleaned out—the healers use it in small doses to rid people of amoebas and parasites. We leave that lush and mysterious world on the same boat to town and then take a bus to the airport, where Evan and I depart for Cuzco, flying over a dozen microclimates in a short hour, from deepest jungle to high arid desert.
Cuzco is a spectacular city, red rooftops surrounded by high, rugged mountains. Its colonial houses remind me of what I remember of San Miguel de Allende in the high desert of Mexico, though the buildings are older and more imposing for their enormous hand-hewn stones. We explore the town and nearby ruins, eating in colonial haciendas, ex-monasteries, and modern art museums. After spending time with Guillermo, who travels light and is as fast to get up and go as I am, it is difficult to adjust to Evan’s pace: when I’m ready to head out the door, he has another forty-five minutes left of organizing his gear. You always have to compromise when you travel with someone, so I write postcards or explore the gift shop, but when he is willing to skip the Sacred Valley and Ollantaytombo, perhaps Peru’s second greatest ruins, to save taxi fare and be sure we are back in time to pick up our laundry, I say I’d like to go and he can join me if he likes, which he does.
THE NEXT MORNING we take the train to hike the Inca Trail, with our guide, Narciso, an easygoing and dry-humored Inca descendent who is an amateur anthropologist. From the first day on that ancient trail, passing ruins and villages, ascending into the high Andes, we are awed by the experience. Along with nuggets of history and mythology, Narciso passes out coca leaves to villagers we see along the trail and to our group, to help us with altitude sickness and to give us energy (I am not interested in trying any more local drugs). Evan and I snuggle in our tent during the cold nights and encourage each other up the difficult trail. We climb up the highest point, Abra de Huarmihuanusca, Dead Woman’s Pass, more than 13,000 feet high, and marvel at the view. On the last morning, we wake at sunrise to watch the dawn hit the Cordillera Blanca, the white-topped mountains, including the 20,500-foot Nevado Salkantay. Evan is elated at the morning and greets it bare-chested, arms raised in an animal howl of appreciation. At that moment, I am crazy about him. That last day, when we finally climb the ancient, tidy stones to the Inti Punku, the Gateway to the Sun, we are both wonderstruck by the sight of Machu Picchu—that something so grand could exist in such an astonishing setting, that human beings could create and inhabit such a magical space—me with tears rolling down my cheeks, him giving me a big bear hug.
“You’re wonderful to travel with,” I tell him.
“This is easy,” he says. “It’s being together at home that’s difficult.”
ONCE BACK IN the Bay Area, photos developed and organized with scanned topographical maps, then put away, I realize he is right. Evan has a fun streak on vacation and on the weekends—when, superenergetic, he’s happy to dance, take bike rides, make love, and head out skiing—but his week is all routine. He microwaves his Lean Pocket at a precise time each morning, watches sports highlights for a few