Turn Right at MacHu Picchu 12-Copy Floor Display - Mark Adams [78]
By twelve-thirty, John and I were at the Hidroeléctrica station, the final gateway to Aguas Calientes. A small, presumably portable bazaar was set up on top of the tracks, where señoras sold meals to electrical plant workers, and bottled water and handicrafts to tourists. The day after his trip to Machu Picchu in 1911, Bingham stopped briefly at this very spot.
The hike John and I had just made up and down from Llactapata—more than a vertical mile in elevation change—would have killed me two weeks earlier. Now it was just another vigorous walk. There was no question that I had taken a huge leap forward in fitness. Despite shoveling five thousand calories a day down my throat, my pants were looser. I’d reached into my back pocket that morning to find something and encountered a hard, grapefruit-like object. It was my butt. So when John mentioned that it was possible to walk the rail line to Aguas Calientes instead of riding the train, it suddenly seemed foolish not to walk through Mandor Pampa, the place where the tipsy innkeeper Melchor Arteaga (whom Bingham noted was “overly fond of ‘firewater’”) had promised to lead the explorer the following morning up the mountain he called Machu Picchu, Quechua for “Old Peak.” This might be my only chance to hike like a serious adventurer, to carry my own pack like a traveler, not heave it onto the luggage rack like a tourist.
“I can ride a train in New York,” I told John.
“All right, then!” he said, thumping his bamboo stick. “We walk to Machu Picchu. Just like Bingham. And twenty dollars in train fare saved!”
Edgar was waiting with the Land Cruiser, leaning against the front grille and talking into his cell phone. He was trying to locate a mechanic who’d drive out from Cusco, and the odds were not in his favor. Justo was doing his worried pigeon walk, hands behind his back. When he saw John and me, he raised his arms and shouted, “Los aventureros!” In each hand he held a brown paper bag. “For the final lunch, un clasico!” he said. It was an aspirational name for a ham and cheese sandwich. Edgar snapped his phone shut and pulled me aside.
“Hombre, you sure you want to walk?” he asked in a low voice. “You’ve got a lot of books in this bag. The train will be here soon. You’ll be in Aguas Calientes long before you’ll get there walking.” I assured him that I was looking forward to the hike, for historical purposes. After all, what was now the train track had once been the mule trail that led Bingham through these parts, right?
We said our good-byes. When I shook Justo’s hand, he smiled broadly enough that I could see the gums above his gold teeth. Tiny gotas filled the corners of his eyes. “I hope we see each other again, Señor Mark,” he said.
When Bingham had passed through here on his way to the Huadquiña plantation in 1911, he interviewed the proprietor of a small ranch that was called Intihuatana. In The Incas of Peru, Clements Markham had translated the word intihuatana to mean “place where the sun is tied up or encircled.” It refers to a type of carved rock that the Incas are thought to have used in solar observation and worship. From where John and I stood, we could almost see the most famous intihuatana ever found, the one up at Machu Picchu.
“There was a major intihuatana down here, too,” John said. “As good as the one at Machu Picchu, but it’s never been studied. There were only the two good ones left—the Spaniards destroyed the rest.” This seemed an awfully unlikely spot for important Inca ruins, sandwiched between a power plant