Before departure for Peru I practiced what I like to call a “priming of the self,” opening the senses and imagination without expectation of a promise in return. It would be essential, I reasoned, particularly before any pilgrimage to the legendary archaeological site, Machu Picchu, because nowadays the Peruvian State allow entry to some 4,500 visitors a day. It was necessary to simplify conjectures, at night holding wishes for a positive encounter despite the anticipated crowds.
Pablo Neruda, that Chilean bard famous for his erotic verses and whom Gabriel García Márquez named “The most important poet of the twentieth century in any language,” had visited the ruins in 1943, publishing Alturas de Machu Picchu (Heights of Machu Picchu) in 1945. His saddle covered in sheepskin, Neruda likely reached the ancient retreat traveling from Aguas Caliente mounted on a gaited, innately elegant Peruvian Paso, as I had hoped to do if only it were possible in 2024.
An alternative to hiking on foot via a selection of routes ranging from challenging to more challenging, however, is to ride PeruRail's luxury Vistadome train departing from Hotel Tambo Del Inca in Urubamba. Despite being relatively expensive, this seemed the perfect choice since, by any method of locomotion, there is no way to avoid the hoards of tourists; tourists, I had to admit, much like myself. In addition, I was already living in Urubamba, renting a casita from expat Canadian entrepreneur, owner-operator of Frontierlab Cabalgatas and self-proclaimed conscious guide on horseback, Kyd Campbell. She resided next door with her young daughter, about fifteen trail ponies and mules, and three vocal basset hounds. Kyd made all the arrangements to perfection. Even though departure was at 6 a.m. during a monsoon downpour, I felt so radiantly happy that I didn't know where to put the happiness. It was the palpable joy you experience biochemically, like love. The rain, a sound palliative, must have been the most beautiful rain conceivable.
The train takes several hours, depending on how much time is spent line-switching. It passes along the Yukay/Vilcanota River and the fortress-temple complex of Ollantaytambo, with final destination Aguas Caliente.
Most roads in the Andes alternate between paving and dirt, with serious emphasis on dirt. The Hiram Bingham highway, named after Yale University professor of history and explorer who claimed to have discovered Machu Picchu in 1911, however, is asphalt and well-maintained. I would commute by bus from “Machu Picchu Village,” ascending precipitous peaks that afford breathtaking views of the fantastic contours of the mountains at every hairpin bend. Rivers Urubamba and Wilkamayu grow increasingly small until they appear as if rust-colored slivers at the bottom of steep, ravishingly-green ravines high above the western rim of the Amazon, the largest rain forest on earth.
It is almost impossible to stay in Peru without hearing the name Hiram Bingham. The truth is, seeking fame and fortune, Bingham not only stole and illegally exported priceless pre-Colombian treasures from Peru to the United States, but also equivocated in giving credit where credit was due. Indigenous Runasimi-speaking campesinos, in fact, using its pristine Incan agricultural terraces for subsistence farming themselves, had led Bingham to Machu Picchu. An earlier Peruvian explorer and laborer, Agustín Lizárraga Ruiz, left his name scrawled on one of the immaculate walls in 1902, nine years before Bingham made his famous climb up into the clouds and came upon his “Lost City.” It's clear Bingham's was no attitude of generous fellowship or shared glory, and informed Latinos are underimpressed.
Travel can provide a revolutionary opportunity. Argentine medical student Ernesto Raphael Guevara de la Serna, later known as Che, passed through southern Peru exploring a continent he had previously known only from books. Riding his dilapidated motorcycle, like Miguel de Cervantes' fictional character Don Quixote de la Mancha on his mare Rocinante, Guevara was ever the dreamer. It was here, nevertheless, that his awareness began to shift. Encountering impoverished peasants headed for Bolivia in search of work in the salt mines, Guevara understood that men and women who worked for large landowners within a feudal system had possessed no land titles themselves since the Spanish conquest. They were the beleaguered remnants of the descendants of a once-great Inca civilization whose apex was reached architecturally, as well as politically, socially and economically, at locations such as Machu Picchu.
In a world in which we are so often split off from community at the individual, local, national and international level, travel can provide a joining effect, an invisible fusion of Self to Another, teaching that we have more in common with others than differences, and healing the wounds of division.
In a country such as Peru, where government policy continually fails the majority of the highland populace living outside of Lima, and inequality unavoidably hits you in the face, building connection at the micro-level, one person, one group, one village at a time can repair injuries that have been suffered for generations. It is not a romantic notion to suppose that our collaborative project with Edward Rimachi Yanqui, constructing a cabin suitable for guests of his trekking enterprise, should also bring revenue to Huayqui, Edward's remote Pueblo Beyond Time. While I have been told that villagers in these distant Andean hamlets can be suspicious of and standoffish with “outsiders,” I have personally never found them to be so when meeting them within of a perception of their own desires and what they can do for themselves.
What do you think?
Writing is necessarily a solitary quest. In crafting what I hope will be yards of monthly columns and a window into my ongoing and breathlessly-fascinating adventure story in Latin America, taking YOU, the reader, along with me, how is this narrative affecting my audience, I wonder? What more would you like to know? I love hearing from you, and read all of your communications, so please ask me anything and share your comments to my email soul@avant-garde-art.com.
Looking into the eyes of someone from an unfamiliar setting who is looking back at you with dignity and potency, holding bygone traumas, facilitates a communicative exchange that is hard to quantify, and yet forms the foundation of understanding. Perhaps this energetic reciprocity echoes a force in nature that can be perceived vibrating throughout the Andes, held in what may be the mountains' spirit powers, powers Andean people call apus. It was the apus, Edward Rimachi Yanqui says, that brought us together, and their breathtaking strength affected me viscerally even as I was coming in to land at Alejandro Velasco Astete Airport in Cuzco. These very real dynamic authorities are sentinels, projecting knowledge of the past, and holding a silent, stoic presence that will carry far into the future.
Awanky is a word from the onomatopoeic Runasimi language used to describe the soaring flight of large birds gazing into profundity, their great wings spread into the breeze. In the mid-15th century, Pachacuti, the “earth-shaker” king who almost single-handedly transformed a tiny native kingdom into the vastest empire the New World has ever known, along with a select group of nobility, would have observed the shadow of the condor gliding on thermals over Machu Picchu, just as it's possible to do today.
It takes courage to feel awe. Machu Picchu lacks the Spanish veneer of Cuzco. Upon entering the venerated site, envision ourselves bridled, as if two flaps prevent us from seeing from side to side. Here, an untouched Andean world penetrates. We surrender to the stone citadel in the sky whose magnificence links with the royalty inside of each of us. Yesterday and now merge. We know the hand of the artisan who cuts, hones, angles and fits blocks together without use of mortar such that they withstand the most convulsive of quakes. We tremble before spaces softened by centuries, yet as fresh as if they had surfaced yesterday. We shudder, sensing the presence of priests who carve the still-beating heart from the chest-cavity of llama, alpaca and preadolescent child. Bounded by blood, bone, water and wind, the mystery and mettle of this domain take up residence in your soul. It is here, at Machu Picchu, that the essence of a people who lived in this place lives on.
Janice Jada Griffin is a graduate of Sotheby’s Institute Of Art in London, a designer and an internationally-sold painter who owned her own art gallery in Portland, Oregon, for a decade. Jada lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is currently writing a book based on her ongoing experiences in Peru. For more information visit avant-garde-art.com or Email Jada at soul@avant-garde-art.com.
