Turn Right at MacHu Picchu 12-Copy Floor Display - Mark Adams [79]
John finally spotted a small opening in the brush. “All right, Mark,” he said, lifting his bags, “put your big pack on your back. Strap your smaller one on your front. It’ll help you keep your balance so you don’t fall over.” I did as I was told. I looked like a tortoise.
We climbed a hundred feet up the slope, then another hundred, with John occasionally peering into small stands of trees or checking behind a three-sided shack as if he’d dropped something back there. Fifteen minutes into my career as a hard-core backpacker, I knew I’d made a mistake. The muscles between my shoulders felt like they were being slowly torn from the bone. If this intihuatana turns out to be another fucking usnu, I thought, I’m going to push him in front of that train.
“Ah, there it is!” John shouted. “Almost no one knows about this.”
I followed him down a short path that led from the train tracks and through an archlike opening in the flora. And I’ll be damned if we didn’t step out onto one of the most amazing pieces of stonework I’d yet seen in Peru. Carved out of a massive chunk of granite was a sculpture that wouldn’t have been out of place at the Museum of Modern Art. Its wide platform top and thirty-foot-high face had been squared off and smoothed. Multiple niches and altars surrounded a set of steps that led up to a geometric base, like a gigantic trophy. It appeared to have once held a gnomon, the vertical part of a sundial.
“The electrical company broke that bit off,” John said. “Or so the locals tell me.”
After walking around to admire the stone from every possible angle, we sat down, unwrapped our clasicos, and gazed up at Machu Picchu, which now seemed close enough to hit with a Frisbee. John didn’t even have to use his GPS to show me that we were picnicking atop an invisible axis from Llactapata to the more famous intihuatana stone at Machu Picchu, perched atop a stack of terraces like a candle on a birthday cake. Each time there was a break in the crowds up above, I could practically trace its outline with my finger.
Had I not been carrying sixty pounds of belongings, the six-mile walk to Aguas Calientes might have been lovely. We followed the Urubamba River as it looped around Machu Picchu. I tried to match photographs Bingham had taken with what I saw, but it was hard to concentrate when I was stopping every few seconds to shift the weight of my pack. According to the map I had, we were about half a mile, horizontally speaking, from Machu Picchu’s Sacred Plaza. In the crazy-quilt world of actual Peruvian geography, we were almost as far beneath it.
We crossed a train trestle above the river and proceeded to the spot where Mandor Pampa should have been. Whatever Bingham had seen there had long since been swept away, replaced by tree ferns.
For three hours, I struggled to keep up with John, who maintained his metronomic pace and paused occasionally to let me catch up. The canyon narrowed until its sides were almost perpendicular to the river, leaving us in shadow. Just when I started to wonder what the logistics were for repatriating a body to the United States, we spotted a depot with a train parked in a siding. On its side was painted HIRAM BINGHAM. Welcome to Aguas Calientes.
THIRTY-THREE
Historian Makes History
Mandor Pampa
The morning of July 24, 1911, was a rainy one, and like any serious firewater aficionado, tavernkeeper Melchor Arteaga was in no hurry to seize the day. Bingham dangled a silver dollar reward if Arteaga would guide him to the ruins that he’d boasted about the night before. When Arteaga agreed, Bingham inquired where, exactly, they were going. Arteaga “pointed straight up at the top of the mountain.” Bingham’s expedition companions from Yale decided to stay behind.
Arteaga, Bingham and his military