Our thoughts go out to friends and loved-ones who also shelter in place. Old friends pass away, people we loved and admired. Immobilized for the time being, we can revisit destinations, near and far. Join me in celebrating the joys of Quaranteam Travel, the hope that these diversions might inspire us to value things we had taken for granted, to draw strength, wisdom and compassion from deeper engagements with nature.

Machu Picchu. Peru. August 4, 2014.

Back in Cusco we had made plans with Gate-1 Travel to meet at Machu Picchu at 11:30 Monday morning August 4, 2014. Having confirmed our plans with the tour company on Sunday, we rose at 9am after a heavy sleep. Altitude in Aguas Calientes is roughly 7K, more or less comparable to Santa Fe. A heavy mist filled the gorge. Across the road from Hotel Sumaq, Rio Urubamba flows gently around massive boulders strewn across the stream. Fragments of the topical cloud-forest, mosses and lichens cling to the nearly vertical, deeply gouged rock-face. I was struck by the ubiquity of invasive species coming up the river by train through Ollantaytambo. Prevalent among these is the Australian Eucalyptus globulus tree. Hundreds of thousands of these imports had been planted during the past hundred years by the government to reforest the Andes, provide timber for mining, and fuel for campesinos, former migrant laborers resettled in ambitious land-distribution programs.

Looking downstream through the gorge the fog began to clear, reveling two promontories with blue sky behind them. Above the clouds in the great saddle between them stand the ruins of Macchu Picchu.

desayuno of lavish proportions. I asked the desk if the hotel could arrange a bus to take us up to the Sanctuary Lodge—where the guide named Linder would meet us. She was schedule to arrive at 11:30, giving us time to get oriented before embarking on another death-march with a Peruvian tour-guide.

Urubamba Gorge. Aguas Calientes, Peru. August 4, 2014.

Grinding gears, groaning under its burden, the bus climbed the vertiginous slope through a series of thirteen hairpin switch-backs; the same number of steps leading up to a gallows. Disgorged from our transport onto an asphalt pad below Sanctuary Lodge, Kathie went to the Ladies’ Room. I acquired a light backpack for my iPad and journaling gear for nineteen American dollars, embroidered with the legend Sanctuary Lodge, Machu Picchu. Reunited, we proceeded to the punto de reunion looking for Linder. I spotted a cheery young woman in an orange Gate-1 tee-shirt. This must be Linder. Hailing her, I asked if she were our guide. She was not. I asked if she could find out when our guide will arrive. Calling Linder, she got no answer. She too was waiting; a guide without a group. As we were without a guide, and she was without a group to lead I proposed that she give us the tour and let Linder lead her group when they arrived. Offering her a small gratuity, she got on her phone and called her boss. He told her that Linder would be there in five minutes. I asked her to let her boss know that we would wait six minutes and then proceed, with or without Linder. After getting our passports stamped, we buy a couple of bottles of water and begin our ascent. Not being fond of heights, Kathie preferred to take the trail up through the forest, rather than follow the heavily-traveled walkway along the precipice. As we were about to disappear into the woods, the Gate-1 Tours woman hollers up to us.
“Linder is coming. She will meet you at the first rest area. Wait there!” she cries. “Stay there. Take pictures. Linder is coming.”
We wait five or ten minutes. No Linder. Kathie loses patience and starts up the steps leading to the Inca Road. I hasten to help her. She is terrified, but climbing. At the trail-head Kathie looked to the right, over toward the Caretaker’s House and decided it was better to take our chances climbing through the cloud forest. Following a series of dirt tracks and stone steps, the grade becomes quite steep. We zigzag back and forth seven or eight switchbacks in our ascent before hitting a logjam. Blocking the trail is a team of EMS workers attach a series of hooks and harnesses that will allow them to carry a stretcher downhill on their shoulders. Strapped to the stretcher, an elderly woman wrapped in an orange blanket clutches a small tank of Oxygen. Running from the tank, a thin plastic tube leads to the nasal cannula encircling her head. The paramedics hoist her aloft. Going by, she waves.
“Have fun,” she says. “Don’t worry about me.”
A long, final ascent lands us to an embankment—the shoulder of the Inca Road. Below, the Urubamba flows down through the mountains, toward its meeting with Rio Tambo to form Rio Ucayali, the prime tributary of the Amazon River. Dead ahead is the familiar vista of Machu Picchu, plastered across the travel-agency walls, airport terminals, and the covers of in-flight magazines. The trope is as canonically Peruvian as my second Pisco Sour or the endless refrains of El Condor Pass that drives me to order a third. Kathie sits down on a rock to secure her shoelaces herself. It was unclear how much farther she would dared to go.
Advancing a little deeper into the ruins, we took a few pictures. Witnessing boneheaded daredevil selfies and other stunts, we were struck by what seemed a vast number of European and South American tourists, recognizing some of the same folks who had been on our madcap tour of Cusco on Saturday, two days prior. Reaching the final paved stretch of the Inca Trail we were both shocked and amused by the behavior of some of our fellow visitors. Wearing neither cap nor sunglasses, a pretty young blonde in skintight yoga-pants saunters past in high-heel sandals, her bosom swimming beneath a sheer, silken halter-top; milky neck and bare shoulders a deep shade of painful pink. A pair of police officers–a man and a woman–stroll by in crisp blue uniforms. She wears a London Bobby helmet. He wears a storm-trooper-style peaked cap. Both wear aviator sunglasses. A chubby young man under a sideways Dodgers ball-cap, baggy black Nine-Inch-Nails tee-shirt, droopy shorts and flip-flops next greeted our gaze. Hoping we spoke English he asks,
“Where you all from?”
New York, we tell him.
“San Antonio,” he replies, then points to the ruins.
“Dude. Can you believe it? That’s some AWESOME shit!”

Kathie and I find a place to rest in the shade of a wall running alongside the western edge of the Inca Trail. Wandering down to a steep drop, I establish a perch atop the stone wall and start working. Ninety minutes later enough notes were on the page to let me elaborate details later. Kathie joins me. We wander a bit deeper into the complex, drink the last of our water and commence our descent. Marching toward us we see the pleasant young woman from Gate I Travel, a small group of visitors trailing behind her.
“Where’s Linder?” She asks.
“Not a clue.” I reply.

Machu Picchu. Peru. August 4, 2014.

Alejandro, our guide in Cusco was a graduate student whose focus was history. As he shared with us, “It used to be that only educated people came to Peru, intellectuals, poets, artists, archaeologists. Now EVERYONE comes here. People who never heard of Inca before they arrive. The only thing they learn is from their tour-guide, mostly where to go shopping. Be careful. They sell you wool and tell you it’s baby Alpaca.”
We took his sage advice to heart when later we toured the crafts market later in the day, below the mountain in Aguas Calientes. The seller of a shoulder-bag I admired informed us that it had been made by his blind grandmother. Any pair of mittens or socks shorn from sightless Llamas were sold as baby Alpaca. Around the market’s perifery was a collection of local artists, each one of whom had names like Leonardo, Michelangelo or Botero. Like Senegalese handbag-peddlers in Venice, they seemed a bit roguish, nervous and watchful; waiting for management or the law to drive them off. Each of them carried a portfolio filled with plastic sleeves loaded with what they claimed were their artworks. Most were lurid slapdash touristic views of snowy peaks, colonial churches and Machu Picchu.

Americo Carbajal, local artist. Aguas Calientes. August 4, 2014

One young man’s work caught our eye. His name was Americo Carbajal. His work was unique in this milieu, drawn from observation or photographs using a secret technique in which coffee was the coloring agent. I showed him my sketchbook and watercolors. Having studied with an academically-trained artist in the nearby hamlet of Fica (which I could find on no map), he was forbidden access to television or Internet until he completed the five-year apprenticeship. Producing standard fare for the tourist trade, these coffee- drawings were things he did for himself. I asked how much for his view of the Sanctuario. Forty dollars, he said. I gave him fifty.

Machupicchu-Cusco-Peru. Americo Carbajal. 26 Julio-2014

(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing).

Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2020 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to editions@needlewatcher.com