Turn Right at MacHu Picchu 12-Copy Floor Display - Mark Adams [74]
There are three ways to reach Machu Picchu, two of which are well known—taking the train from Cusco and hiking the Inca Trail. We were stopping in Santa Teresa to check on the train schedules for the “back door” route to Machu Picchu,7 a small train shuttle that runs once a day from a hydroelectric plant on the Urubamba River. We’d then spend a day climbing to Llactapata, which has been called the Lost Suburb of the Incas because of its proximity to Machu Picchu. Bingham had found Llactapata during his follow-up Peruvian expedition in 1912. Like a surprising number of his discoveries, it had fallen out of sight for decades—in spite of the fact that it sits just three miles from Machu Picchu and, when cleared of brush, is plainly visible from the more famous site. John had been a member of the team that conducted the first major scientific investigation of Llactapata, in 2003, much of which was based on old coordinates that the explorer Hugh Thomson had found among Bingham’s dusty papers at Yale. John therefore had a proprietary interest. “There’s some fantastic stuff up there,” he told me as we did some last-minute shopping in Santa Teresa. “They’re just beginning to understand how closely related it was to Machu Picchu.”
We drove on through a dry valley to a small cluster of huts at the bottom of a steep slope. John knew some porters we could hire to carry our packs up to a campsite near the top, next to Llactapata. We’d spend a day looking around and then descend to the Hidroeléctrica train station. The afternoon ride to Machu Picchu lasted about forty-five minutes. I’d be wearing clean underwear and sipping a pisco sour by sundown.
Unfortunately, there was no way of contacting these porters in advance. Spring planting season was approaching, and all the men were off helping burn the nearby hillsides. The entire valley resembled one of those segments on the evening news in which Highway One is shut down near Los Angeles because of wildfires. Every hour or so, John would wander up the road to see if any of his strong-backed buddies had returned home. Each time he came back alone.
We set up lunch in a school yard next to a tiny general store. It was a hot, sunny day, and when I was certain John had gone to check on porters again, I splurged on a bottle of cold water for myself and Inca Kolas for Justo and Edgar. The gearbox on the Land Cruiser was making odd noises, so Edgar went off to examine the underside of the chassis.
“I used to do that with Encounter Overland,” John said approvingly when he saw Edgar flat on his back beneath the truck. “Sometimes it’s good for the driver to just get under the vehicle and have a good hard look around, study the patterns until the problem pops out at you.” Edgar had taken this intuitive method of auto repair to another level by closing his eyes and folding his hands over his chest.
After a long day of near-complete idleness, we officially postponed Operation Storm Llactapata in the late afternoon. Justo and I parked our folding table in the valley’s one shady spot, sipped hot tea and tried not to catch each other’s eye. Even he was talked out. The only books I had with me were Bingham’s, and I’d read them all twice. Not for the first time, I thought about how I’d give a hundred dollars for any one of the four copies of Great Expectations buried somewhere in my attic. We all watched some kids play soccer on a dirt field. When the game ended, John headed off again to look for his porter friend Fructoso, whose wife had invited him to come by and wait for her husband. “You should stop by, Mark, they’re fantastic people.” I lied and said I had some postcards to write.
Two boys, maybe six years old, approached and said their teacher had told them to ask us to collect our mules, which were sticking their noses into the classroom windows. I told them we didn’t