“It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you’ve been and what’s happened. In the end, you’re just happy you were there — with your eyes open — and lived to see it.” — Anthony Bourdain
The train chugged along, rocking and swaying with its effort to move along the track. I gazed out the window at the lush cloud forest and the river that ran alongside us, churning and swirling with a force that came with the start of Peru’s rainy season. The Andes Mountains loomed over us, seeming like ancient giants that laid down to take a rest, and never awoke again. I felt dwarfed by their immensity, the sheer grandeur of their size. They seemed endless and only grew in size as the train pushed forward, passing turn after turn with only another, larger mountain awaiting around each bend in the track. I gave up trying to catch a photo of the picture-perfect scenes passing by and let myself be lulled into a state of half-sleep by the rocking of the train, waking now and again to only be taken aback by how utterly stunning my surroundings were. Suddenly, I was startled fully awake as the train screeched to a halt. Outside my window, men in orange vests and hard hats ran alongside the train. I glanced at my seat mate and we wondered aloud to each other what could have gone wrong. We quickly were alerted by the announcement system that there had been a small rockslide blocking the path of the train and it needed to be cleared to continue. We eventually started again, but the delay more than doubled the length of our ride. When PeruRail arrived in the small town of Aguas Calientes, I was amazed to find that this wasn’t just a pit stop on the way up the mountain; there were locals that lived here as well, isolated from any nearby major city, like Cusco, where I had started my journey more than five hours earlier. There were plenty of stands selling souvenirs and restaurants that clearly had tourist menus posted out front- “Hamburguesa y fries” – but there were also families carrying groceries, little boys running and playing in the streets and across the train tracks, and, it being Christmas Eve, even dogs dressed up in Santa hats that wandered freely through town, stopping to bark every time a train came through.
After I walked through the town of Aguas Calientes a bit, we crossed a bridge over the river to get to the bus stop. I stepped into the bus and endured 25 minutes of pure terror and awe as the driver quickly swung around tight turn-backs steeply up towards our destination, Machu Picchu. I tried not to notice how close the bus was to the edge of the cliff, and what a drop down it would be, and how there seemed to be no such thing as guard rails. To avoid my fear (and slight queasiness) I looked up – up at the mountains around me, mountains that were shrouded in mist, mountains that were older than time, mountains that held ancient Incan secrets. In that moment, I forgot about my fear, my queasiness. I forgot the nervousness that had been in the back of my mind since I had left my hotel at 5am that morning. I just felt awe and wonder. My eyes teared up as I contemplated how lucky I was to witness beauty like this, beyond my wildest imagination, that I was living one of my dreams to go to Machu Picchu, and how insignificant our little human lives are in the span of Earth’s history. We’re just a speck, a blip, after all.
I got off the bus once again feeling trepidation, as it had begun to rain. I worried about how slippery the trail would be, and what the visibility would be like at the top with such downpour. The base area where the buses did dropoffs was already quite wet and muddy. My guide, Rene, a man born in Cusco who had been trekking the Inca Trail and much more difficult paths such as this for decades, turned to our group and said, “Remember, this is not a competition. It’s important to take your time, watch your steps, and stop and rest.” He knew that most of our group had suffered from altitude sickness since we had arrived in Cusco. I myself had a headache, muscle cramps, and trouble sleeping, but others had been nauseous, dizzy, and close to passing out. I was thankful to have come down to a lower elevation today, as at 7,000 feet my symptoms disappeared and I was ready to climb.
Our group huffed and puffed our way back and forth, up stone steps until we reached the top, under a drizzle of rain. At first it was too misty and cloudy at the top to see all around, but then the drizzle petered out and a light breeze blew away the mist surrounding us. I stood in shock and awe at the scene below us, the Incan ruins that had stood the test of time.
When I returned home from my trip to Peru, I didn’t have enough words to adequately describe the feelings and experience of Machu Picchu, or really any of what were very spiritual experiences during my time in Peru. I didn’t have the right words to say how I felt when I was sitting in absolute darkness in natural hot springs, gazing up at the stars and wondering at the infiniteness of the universe; watching a giant condor glide through the depths of Colca Canyon; gasping in surprise as a wild herd of alpacas appeared around a mountain’s bend; feeling the waves underneath my feet on reeds of floating islands, breathing in the scent of the shaman’s scented water deeply into my lungs as he wished Pachamama’s blessing on me.
I didn’t have the right words to express the soaring of my heart or the tightness in my chest or the catch in my breath, the overwhelming feeling of deep, pure, joy that this country brought me. I still don’t. Like Anthony Bourdain, I can only remember, that I experienced it with my eyes, and my soul, wide open.
Jill Came Tumbling After 