Machu Picchu

Sitting on a ridge high above the Urubamba, Machu Picchu had been a tacit destination during my long adventure up the selfsame river. Visiting the ruins and walking out the long Urubamba Valley into the Inca heartland would also be a way to continue next to the river that I'd seen every inch of, from its mouth at Atalaya.

My walk started at "Hidro," a hydroelectric complex tucked into a rocky valley that reminded me of the Poudre Canyon above Ft. Collins, Colorado. The Urubamba here was wild. It leaped and dashed itself upon large boulders and shot down narrow sluices, entirely white. The train tracks followed placid curves cut into the rock above, through forest where the appearance of a pterodactyl wouldn't have been altogether surprising. During the course of the two-hour walk the forest thinned out, leaving the valley's towering rock formations exposed, and at one point allowing a glimpse, high above, of a corner of Machu Picchu's agricultural terracing.

Arriving at the guard house at the trailhead for the ruins, I discovered that Peru had not accounted for visitors coming in the back door, so to speak; I was forced to walk a mile further to Aguas Calientes to buy my overpriced admission ticket, and then walk back. At least the guard took care of my backpack.

The hike up the steep trail was exhilarating after spending so much time in the jungle bereft of exercise. The trail was beautiful and lonely, as all the tourists were bussing up. But once I got to the top I popped out into the thick of it: camera-slung Japanese tour groups, bunches of Germans sporting crisp new hiking gear, shorts-wearing American couples with pale, pudgy calves, and loud hordes of high school students from Lima. Surveying the ruins from the classic photo spot next to the guard house, I was struck not by the majesty of the ancient, exactingly constructed city, but by how the scene resembled a "Where's Waldo" drawing taking place on a Chutes & Ladders board: masses of diversely dressed people bumbling through a difficult-to-navigate setting.

If I'd gone early or late in the day I'm sure my experience would have been different, but at noontime Machu Picchu was a purely touristic phenomenon: I was looking at a destination, not at a place. All of the archaeological, cultural, historical, engineering, spiritual, and astronomical significance of the city was obscured behind a veil of people who had come to a sight worth seeing. All of these people seeing it reduced it to two dimensions. I felt like I was in photograph. There was no space for the ruins to expand into with their own presence. Later, I wished I'd had the idea of a Brit I met in Cusco: to hide in the ruins in the afternoon and spend the night there. I'm sure at night, especially with a moon, the stones would sing with a voice that was silent during the middle of the day.

Despite the flattening of this incredible place by the flood of tourists, two things blew my mind at Machu Picchu. One was a pair of the famously joined stones which had been pulled slightly apart. Closing one eye and peering through the gap, I could see that the sides of the stones were perfectly parallel all the way through and all the way up and down--about a square meter of perfect parallel planes. There was no bellying of the joint, as I've learned to do in woodwork. No cheating at all. Pure craftsmanlike perfection, all without metal tools. The other mind-blowing thing was booming my voice into the alcoves in one of the temples and listening to the flawless amplification produced by the tight stonework. I must have looked a goon, going from alcove to alcove and mooing.

After an hour and a half in the ruins I made my escape and walked out along the train tracks. The guard who looked after my backpack told me it was a six-hour walk, which sounds a lot shorter than 30 km. Tacked onto the 15 km I'd already done that day, this was too much: I was forced to spend the night with 12 km left to go. Miraculously I stumbled upon a little house in this nearly uninhabited valley where a lady made me dinner, and then slept with the rushing of the Urubamba for my lullaby.

The next day I made it to Cusco where I lanced the blister that 45 km in inadequate shoes (cheap replacements for my venerable Merrells, stolen) had given me, and commenced to rest up.

Signage Redux

(Cuenca, Ecuador) A diabolic version of the beloved Japanese brand? Or is the kitty's head supposed to be an O?
(Cuenca, Ecuador) Easy pickings, you might say. But when attempting to be fancy you should really make a better effort than this.
(Near Alausí, Ecuador) Anthropomorphizations-as-chefs of animals that we eat never cease to creep me out.
(Near Alausí, Ecuador) Guasuntos, La Moya, Chunchi...all very Latin American-sounding names. But Zhud?! Where am I, a fictional Eastern European nation that sprang from the imagination of Hergé?
The shampoo I purchased in Medellín brags that it includes "snail drool extract." I chose it over the one that included placenta as an ingredient.
(Riobamba, Ecuador) Trying to read this sign out loud made me hold my mouth in a very funny way.

Pongo de Mainique

The downpour finally let up and our party set out. It was still raining steadily, gradually soaking through my ancient REI rainpants, but my enthusiasm couldn't be dampened. The feeling of moving onwards has no equal for the traveller. The seven of us in the boat fell into a mesmerized silence. Thoughts evaporated into the patter of the rain on top of the deep rush of the river. Scrappy bunches of neutral gray cloud stretched void-like over the layers of jungle, appearing as a flat absence, as if someone had taken an India rubber at random to parts of the scenery. These erasures only enhanced the beauty of the rain-soaked forest.
Eventually the rain tailed off and our silence broke. The main payer, a man with a downturned mouth like a medieval samurai's mask, expounded to me on the beauty of the Pongo, calling it a "cathedral of nature." My excitement to see this place, a transverse gap in the first long ridge to rise out of the Amazon Basin, had been stoked by my long wait at the CSERACRUS camp into a silent roar in my consciousness. Now I read phantom ridges in the cloud colorations to the south, unsure of what I was seeing until finally the true mountain asserted itself darkly through the parting clouds. It looked like Sideling Hill in Pennsylvania, an even, gently striated rise with no end in sight to the left or right. But dead ahead there was a notch, like Greenland Gap in West Virginia: the Pongo. When we were almost there, the payer cracked a beer and poured it into the river as an offering.
In we plunged, steep green walls rising up on both sides, pouring in an almost continuous pantheon of waterfalls. The river leaped and dove, swirling off rock formations jutting out of the canyon walls. The driver deftly ferried through the rough stuff in the middle from one side to the other, hugging whichever bank offered the tamest flow. The rapids were exciting, but not as scary as I'd expected, and any fear I might have had was overpowered the sublime power of the scene. This was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever been.
Occasional patches of flatwater allowed uninterrupted contemplation of the rich feeling of awe which consumed me. I have no idea how long the Pongo actually lasted before we came out on the other side of the ridge. No-time. My life, the self I felt was me before entering the Pongo felt incredibly distant, and at the same time the running of it had seemed like a flash. In reality it was perhaps a kilometer in distance and fifteen minutes in time. Given the opportunity I would spend days in the Pongo, but perhaps part of what made the experience so special was the impossibility of stopping, the ungraspable fleetingness of its sublime beauty.
Above the Pongo the Urubamba was a different river. There were rapids that were bigger and scarier than those in the Pongo itself. It was restless throughout, as was the landscape around it. Layers of rock on the river bank leaned at every angle. Low mountains hung all around in random patterns like a parachute settling onto the ground. Small pastures opened out of the forest here and there, and I was reminded of West Virginia. The rain started back up, but as before it had no effect on my high spirits.

Nothing lasts forever, of course. When we got to Ivochote the truck from the municipality that had been scheduled to meet us was nowhere to be found. Logistical dysfunction not being a complete surprise, my companions settled readily into a long afternoon of beer drinking to pass the time. The conversation followed a predictable arc: civilized conversation led to dirty joke-telling, which in turn gave way to an impassioned argument that was eventually resolved with drunken hugs and expressions of mutual admiration. We ended up spending the night. When the truck still hadn't arrived the next morning, we took an all-day bus to Quillabamba. When we arrived I was ready to look for a hostel, but one of the policemen in the group, a dour man who bore a faint resemblance to Saddam Hussein and looked like he wouldn't begrudge an opportunity to use the gun on his hip, insisted that I spend the night at his house. His kindness was as genuine as his aspect was offputting. His wife and daughter were also very sweet. They were Mormons (although he was not) and were very excited to introduce me to a young Elder from Arizona doing his mission in Quillabamba. "Speak English!" they insisted. It was the first English I'd spoken for three weeks.

The Waiting

Map nerd that I am, my plan to travel from Iquitos to Machu Picchu by boat sprang from perusing the National Geographic Atlas. And optimist that I am, I assumed that where there is a large river there will be boats, and the people driving those boats will be happy to take me with them. But not everything works as neatly as we map nerds would have it. My harebrained scheme bore fruit only after 10 days of stewing in the jungle.

From Pucallpa, tired of slow cargo boats, I took a puddle jumper to Atalaya. Efficient Aero Andino employees packed eight passengers into a fuselage the size of a large water heater. A ninth sat in the copilot's seat. I felt like a tinned herring, but at least there was a great view. The jungle was not the uniform emerald expanse I'd expected. The Ucayali's geologic-time hegemony over this landscape was in evidence as far as the eye could see. The oxbow lakes (including a heart-shaped one) were only the most obvious signs of the river's wanderings, scourings, and leavings-behind. Huge tracts of jungle appeared to have been raked by the claws of a gargantuan bear: curving parallel stripes of differentiated vegetation, the ghostly outline of an ancient river's march across the landscape.

When I first arrived in Peru a month ago, Peruvians immediately struck me as louder and more enthusiastic than the stoic Ecuadorians. On the passenger boat from Atalaya to Sepahua I saw the other side of this coin: Peruvians as complainers. Never in Latin America have I seen such an uproar over any form of transport leaving 10 minutes late. The complaints were vicious; my ears burned in sympathy for the boat driver. Even when we got under way he was not spared umbrage: the old-but-still-vital man posted in the bow to watch for logs and plumb for depth shot bullets aft with his eyes whenever the driver didn't follow his directives with alacrity.

The flora was unchanged from what I'd seen between Iquitos and Pucallpa. Although I didn't know their names, I'd grown familiar with these trees and shrubs. I particularly liked the tree that looked like a bouquet of moustaches on sticks, something you might see for sale on the street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, if people there were anywhere as opportunistic for street commerce as South Americans. The geology, however, and consequently the river, were distinctly different here on the Urubamba than the placid Ucayali. It seemed more stern and deeply powerful in its downward push. Here and there were areas where the greater steepness of the riverbed had broken it up into 10,000 choppy wavelets, the water sucking out from under itself and lending the surface the popcorn-stitch texture of the palms of hand-knitted mittens.

Sepahua, a town which enjoys electricity from 6 to 11 every evening, was where my boat hitchhiking was to start. However, the only opportunities that presented themselves in two and a half days were a pathological liar whose boat's motor was in disrepair and a woman from a fly-by-night environmental organization who got a free beer out of me before declaring she would have to charge me twice the money I had to go a single day's journey up the river. The only things keeping me from abject disillusionment with my trip during this time were volleyball games with a kindly local family and rereading "As I Lay Dying," which was much better the second time around.

On my third morning in Sepahua I was considering beating an ignominious retreat to Atalaya, even though I was seven dollars short of what I would need to do so, when I met Pedro, aka Chikipala. Chikipala worked for a municipal electrification project called CSERACRUS. The project had camps up and down the lower Urubamba where workers lived while they macheted paths through the jungle and hauled concrete poles and spools of cable along them. He offered me a two-day free ride, camping and food included, if I would pitch in as one of the guys. Thus, in the space of five minutes I went from moping with a blank, hopeless gaze to carrying sacks of cement down steep steps to the CSERACRUS boat, as happy as a clam.

My CSERACRUS sojourn ended up lasting ten days. I macheted and hauled concrete poles with the guys, laughed at their dirty jokes, ate greasy-but-delicious food in the mess hall, slept in a "Klimber" brand tent which almost allowed me to stretch out corner-to-corner, watched movies like "Terminator" on generator-powered DirecTV at night, and enjoyed being called "Mister" a thousand times a day. Every day various men assured me that "tomorrow" the guy who pays them would come, and I could continue upriver with him to Ivochote, then in a truck to Quillabamba. "Tomorrow," of course, began to shed its semantic identity with something like the impassive relentlessness of the Urubamba's flow. I'd thought I was a patient, unflappable person, but this Waiting for Godot situation showed me how much maturing I have to do. In the meantime I spent an afternoon with an Ashanika Indian family, drinking manioc beer, watching a solar panel-powered DVD of evangelical songs in the Ashanika language, and listening to the patriarch's boasts about his brave exploits as an Army soldier and in wars against enemy tribes.

Finally the pay guy appeared, and I was only subject to one last toying with my emotions: a morning downpour that threatened to delay me for one more day.

Pablo Amaringo, Artist and Ayahuasquero

In Pucallpa I visited the gallery of Pablo Amaringo, a painter who depicted his ayahuasca visions in vivid color and detail. The cacaphony of pattern and symbology mesmerized me, and I stared at the selection of paintings for well on an hour. An affable fellow, a student of the late Amaringo and a teacher at the school for disadvantaged children he founded, followed me and answered my questions. One exchange went like this:
"I'm interested by all the centaurs and mermaids," I said. "Did these symbols have significance for the Indians here pre-contact, or did they arrive with the Europeans?"
"When one takes ayahuasca, there are no borders. It is all one big space."
Besides the centaurs and mermaids, there were UFOs, bearded white angels, minarets, onion domes, fantastical cruise ships, an underwater snake with portholes in its side, devils emerging from pots of fire, supine women being healed by flaming shamans, fabulous headgear, geishas, and all manner of forest creatures. In almost every picture there was also a group of people gathered around an ayahuasca pot. Sometimes there was a figure vomiting, and sometimes a shaman blowing tobacco smoke from a pipe. There were many angels.
The human figures were often rough or stylized, but many of the animals were hyper-realistic. The style reminded me of Alex Grey, with whom Amaringo was in contact. Grey sent some of his paintings to Pucallpa as a gesture of friendship.
I left the gallery feeling dazed from my intense viewing of these wild visions. I look forward to learning more about Amaringo in "The Ayahuasca Visions of Pablo Amaringo" from Inner Traditions Press when I can get my hands on it. His life story apparently includes a clandestine canoe trip to Brazil among other adventures, and seems worth reading about.

Mototaxi Brands

As soon as I crossed the border from Ecuador to Perú, I noticed them. The mototaxis. They're everywhere, roaring, buzzing, screeching, teeming! They are a true menace in the cities, their assymetrical shape lending itself to fearsomely chaotic traffic patterns. At the major ports in the Amazon Basin they jockey for position in a great horde atop the bank, anticipating the disembarking passengers; in Nauta one driver got too close to the edge and jumped clear as his machine toppled down the steep 30-foot bank with a little girl inside. She appeared to be okay, and a group of bystanders hauled the thing out of the drink in no time.

During my time in Pucallpa waiting to confirm plans to move farther south, I much of the day scoping the brands of these terrible machines, as emblazoned on their gas tanks. I ended up with quite a respectable collection:
Honda
Suzuki
RTM
Lifan
Boxer
Arlo
Velorex
Skymoto
Italika
Motokar
Sama
Loncin
Haojin
Zongshen
Junesun
Qinqi
Wanxin
Hongyi
Jialing
...and, as if to summarize the main idea, Asia Hero.

Marathonian Amazonian Expedition

My intinerary of Yurimaguas - Iquitos - Pucallpa by cargo boat might not count as much of an expedition to Peruvians from Loreto and Ucayali departments, since these boats are how they routinely get to and from the city for supplies or to visit family, but for me it was an adventure and then some. These boats look sort of like giant high-top sneakers or Lego monsters sticking their tongues out; the long part in front is for the big cargo, which on the two boats I traveled in included box trucks, bulldozers, lumber, and giant crates of ice blocks packed in sawdust. Other cargo is stored in the nooks and crannies and farther aft, below the upper decks, and includes sacks of fish, stalks of plantains, motorcycles, pigs, chickens, and roosters who did their best to disturb the tranquillity of Amazonia, but could not compete with the children above them. The upper decks are for hanging hammocks. They are hung densely, so that navigating from fore to aft feels like an initiatives challenge from camp called "The Spider Web." The first leg of my journey took two days and the second took five and a half. In between I spent two days in Iquitos, but still slept onboard in my hammock. So I've now spent 10 nights sleeping in a hammock in less-than-ideal circumstances. However, long naps in the morning and afternoon of each day have kept me spry.

Unfortunately my camera went missing on my second day on the Eduardo VIII. My fatal mistake was to display my camera by taking a picture of a pink dolphin that looked something like this one, put my camera back in the top of my pack, and proceed to wander around the boat like a nincompoop, chatting with people and watching sunsets. A word to the wise: don't be a nincompoop.

So from here on out this blog will rely on pictures selected from Google Images. I also saw a dolphin like this one jump out of the water like this. Maybe it was even the same dolphin.

The method of docking in the big cities is the same as in the tiny jungle villages: beach the boat's nose (aka tongue) onto the bank. No need to tie off! In Iquitos the port is packed; in order to get in the boats often have to spend an hour ramming sterns this way and that until they can wedge themselves in. The boat second from the right was my ride from Yurimaguas.
In Iquitos I was a bad tourist, as usual: I did not go on a jungle tour. I just wandered around this isolated (look at a map! It's crazy!) city of 400,000 (or 600,000 depending on whom you ask). It is a typically earsplitting South American city, but also a pile of trash and concrete mouldering away in the jungle. The tallest building I saw--maybe eight stories--was vacant, with saplings growing in its crumbling windowsills.

The closest I came to being a tourist was looking at the following two buildings: the Casa de Fierro, designed by Gustave Eiffel; and the Casa Fitzcarrald, former home of the rubber baron who inspired Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo. Neither building is open as museum, and the only way I could guess that the Casa Fitzcarrald was the Casa Fitzcarrald, after three conflicting answers from pedestrians, was a tiny plaque on its wall saying only, "This building is part of Peru's cultural heritage." A bank occupies its lower floor, and the upper floor seems to be vacant, which is also the case with the Casa de Fierro.
The ride from Iquitos to Pucallpa was a test of endurance. Babies and the television screamed. The lights were on all night every night. The toilets were never flushed. My hammock was jostled with unapologetic abandon during all hours of day and night. And, horror of horrors, I finished the two books I'd brought by the fourth morning, leaving a day and a half with no reading material. ...Which may have been a blessing in disguise--on the last day I had my longest and most substantive conversations with my neighbors in this floating village. They referred to me as "Mister," pronounced "MEEST-air." Between these sweet people and some lovely sunsets, I managed to retain my sanity, and even enjoy myself for minutes at a time.P.S. Thanks to a lightfingered boatmate of the same ilk that made off with my camera, I arrived in Pucallpa shoeless, which I've now rectified by buying a $12 pair of Converse All-Star knockoffs called "Tigres."