Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [42]
Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Peru
January 27–28
After our brief stop in Lima, we prepared to travel to Cuzco, the oldest permanent settlement in the Western Hemisphere, and the former capital of the Inca empire. With a population of 275,000, it’s a city resplendent with adobe houses, red-tiled roofs, winding cobblestone streets, magnificent cathedrals, and open markets, and as we flew over the city, both Micah and I were struck by its beauty.
On the flight, we were warned about altitude sickness. Nestled in the Andes, Cuzco is situated at 11,500 feet, and we were told to move slowly as we exited the plane. Members of the TCS crew stood in various sections of the terminal, repeating their warnings over and over as our group filed past.
“Take it easy. Don’t get out of breath. Go slooooow.”
“You’d think we were climbing Mount Everest,” Micah whispered, “not walking through an airport.”
I nodded, agreeing that the whole thing was ridiculous. Maybe some of the people might be affected, but we were young and in relatively good shape. Ignoring their warnings, we walked at our normal pace and ended up having to wait quite a while for everyone else to arrive at the buses.
While we were waiting, however, a concerned look crossed Micah’s face. He took a couple of deep breaths.
“You know, I think I can actually feel it,” he said.
“Really?”
“A little bit. It kind of makes me feel . . . fuzzy.”
In the end, it made us both feel really fuzzy, like we’d had a few too many beers. For whatever reason, we started giggling and couldn’t stop. Everything struck us as outrageously funny as we rode on the bus; the clothes people were wearing, the bumpy, cobblestone roads that made our voices vibrate, and especially the name of the place we were just about to visit: Sacsayhuaman.
When pronounced correctly—Socksy Voomun—it sounded like someone with a Russian accent trying to say, “Sexy Woman.” In our addled state, we couldn’t drop the subject. It was all we could talk about.
“I just can’t vait until vee see zee socksy voomun,” Micah would say, and my oxygen-starved brain would make me double over in laughter.
“I vonder where zee socksy voomun is,” he’d add. “You know I love nussing more zan a socksy voomun.”
“Please . . . just quit, okay?” I’d plead.
“I veally, veally, veally vant to climb on a socksy voomun. You know Peru is famous for zee socksy voomum.”
By then, I had tears in my eyes.
We had lunch at our hotel in Cuzco. Once a monastery, it was one of the most interesting hotels we would visit. Like Casa Aliaga, it was designed around a center courtyard, albeit on a much grander scale. Originally built in 1640, the rooms had been modified to allow oxygen to be pumped in. As Micah observed when he entered the lobby:
“Zis is even better zan a socksy voomun.”
In the afternoon, after the giggles had subsided, we finally got a chance to visit the Incan fortress. It wasn’t exactly what we expected. Situated on a large, open plateau just above Cuzco, it was ringed by rock walls on either side, more like an amphitheater than a defensive fort. The walls had been formed using giant blocks of granite, and the stones had been so precisely cut and stacked that, even today, it’s impossible to slip a piece of paper between them.
Above us, heavy clouds lent the landscape an ominous appearance. We wandered the area with Bob and Kate Devlin, who had rapidly become good friends. As we listened to the guide talking about the intricate stone construction, they informed us they’d recently celebrated their forty-first anniversary. A little while later, while Micah and I were exploring on our own, we saw Bob and Kate standing together in the distance. For a while, we simply watched them.
“They look happy, don’t they?” Micah asked.
“Yeah, they do. I think that’s because they really are happy.”
“Forty years is a long time. They’ve been married longer than I’ve been alive.”
“So have a lot of people on this trip.”
“What do you think the secret of a long-lasting marriage is?” Micah asked.
“I don’t know if there’s a secret. Every couple is different. What