SOMETIMES IT REALLY IS FASTER TO WALK
OK – so, the bus ride up to Machu Picchu.
Well, you see what happened was that we were on that bus that takes the tourists up to Machu Picchu from the tiny town of Aguas Calientes.
Now don’t you just love the way that name rolls off your tongue? When our guide first told us that our train would be taking us to Aguas Calientes where we would spend the night in a hotel before going up to the holy Inca site of Machu Picchu, I just kept using every opportunity I could think of with our travel mates to use those words, like, “Are you anxious to get to Aguas Calientes?” or “Will you be buying any souvenirs in Aguas Calientes?” or “Do you have any relatives or ancestors in Aguas Calientes?” at which point this tall blond Swede looked at me with startled blue eyes and slowly backed away from me as Myrtle hissed at me, “Will you shut up already! People will think you’re bonkers.”
She was right, of course, as she almost always is, unfortunately, and she used this opportunity, which I admit that I handed to her on a silver platter, to lecture me about Aguas Calientes, which, it turns out, is a town of about 4000 people, started in 1995 strictly for tourism. By the way, I did try to get her to stop flirting with that masked dude on the train, but she never listens to me.
Machu Picchu, she informed me, means old mountain in the Quechuan language and the neighboring higher peak Huayna Picchu means young mountain. The Machu Picchu citadel was started in the 1460s on a 36,000-acre site high in the mountains in order to be close to the gods, and the entire complex was built completely of granite, considered the spiritual stone.
Now once Myrtle gets on a lecturing roll, it can be hard to muzzle her. I have learned to let her babble on (another great phrase, and so apt, don’t you think? Always makes me want to say, “Babylon, Oh Babylon!”)
Anyway, I often do learn things when Myrtle really gets going. Machu Picchu, it turns out, was the Inca Empire’s most sacred religious site. When the Spaniards came a hundred years later, the Incas destroyed all trails leading to Machu Picchu so that the conquistadores could not find it.
And so Machu Picchu was left in peace until the American historian Hiram Bingham was talking with a group of Quechuans in July 1911, and they led him to the site.
At this point Myrtle, as usual, graced me with her political commentary: “What else is new? Busy-body Americans are always butting in where they aren’t wanted.”
Hmmm. I wasn’t quite sure how we could be standing on Machu Picchu without that busy-body Hiram discovering it?
Today Machu Picchu is one of the most popular tourist sites in the world, especially around June 21, at the summer solstice. Myrtle wanted us to visit then so we could spend time with the astronomers who gather in the Temple of the Sun at sunrise.
But I have learned that sometimes Myrtle spouts all this highfalutin educational stuff when all she really wants to do is meet a man.
Anyway, we were given the option to hike up that mountain to Machu Picchu, from 6000 feet elevation in Aguas Calientes to 8000 feet at the site, or ride in the bus, which takes about a half hour at a slow crawl around hairpin turns on a one-lane dirt road that had no guard rails.
Do you know that not one of our wimpy group chose the hike? We all sat like school children on that bus as it slowly lumbered up that road.
Then our bus came to a corner and suddenly met a lumbering bus coming DOWN that one-way dirt road. That bus was hugging the inside corner tightly, which left our bus on the outside corner.
Myrtle was sitting next to the window, which, by the way, she had won the fight over, so it was totally not my fault that she was by the window. She looked out of that window and saw nothing but air plummeting straight down that mountain to the lovely Urubamba River far, far below, and she
promptly let out a blood-curdling scream that caused our bus driver to swing his wheel sharply to the right. Our bus sort of smacked into that other bus, which caused several interesting developments.
- The two bus drivers got out of their buses and got to know each other way better with a conversation that seemed to be punctuated with high-decibel yelling accompanied by an astonishing assortment of arm and body movements that I thought might easily become the next dance floor hit, maybe titled something like “Rage on the Mountain.” But then they started punching each other and I had to look away. You know I cannot stand the sight of blood.
- All the passengers in our bus crowded over to the right side of the bus so that the bus tipped toward the other bus. I do not know if the passengers wanted to watch the fight or had just decided they wanted somebody else’s body under theirs in the event our bus started rolling down the mountain.
- In very short order an impressive number of buses and people got log-jammed on the road, coming up and going down. More and more people were getting out of their vehicles and joining the altercation, or just taking the opportunity to discretely pee behind the bushes. I noticed with interest that a group of climbers who had left Aguas Calientes before our bus did, now passed us and waved.
Well, eventually a policeman arrived from Aguas Calientes and gave a ticket to our bus driver, which he in turn promptly gave to our guide, who was conspicuously lacking in the perky, happy attitude we had come to expect of her. In truth, she shot more than a few daggers at me and Myrtle.
I am proud to say I did not rat Myrtle out, but that was because I knew that everyone already knew who had emitted the fateful scream. More importantly, it really wouldn’t make any difference anyway. I had learned early on that when I was with Myrtle, anything that went wrong was always my fault.
Myrtle is a tiny little blond with all her curves in the right places and with big blue eyes and a honey sugar voice, and to almost everybody, me being a very glaring exception, she is all peaches and cream and the epitome of soft, genteel womanhood. Absolutely no one feels comfortable blaming her for anything, especially when a much more likely blamee is convenient, namely me. I am nearly six feet tall, and I won’t say I am built like a linebacker, but if football had been available to girls when I was in school, well, you know where I would have been a star.
So, anyway, with truly awesome bodily gyrations and some even more impressive bellowing from the policeman, everybody got back into cars and busses, and eventually the logjam started to clear out and we continued up the mountain.
When we arrived at the top and our driver parked behind a line of about 20 tour buses, our guide, a bit grumpily I thought, got us all lined up in a row behind her. With a mighty upward thrust, she jabbed her flag high in the air and told us to follow her in single file and to KEEP UP!
She was so forceful about that last order that the woman in front of me threw her shoulders back and started lifting her feet a bit with each step. Then I couldn’t help but feel like I was back in my high school marching band, and I began to march a little with my noteworthy high step for which I got a blue ribbon one time, I might tell you.
Myrtle began to giggle, which encouragement was all I needed to really strut my stuff until suddenly the man behind Myrtle growled sotto voce (isn’t THAT a useful phrase, now I ask you?), “Shut up you two old bats.”
Well, that stopped me cold, I tell you, and I started to turn around to give him my good old what-for, but Myrtle called out loudly, “Oh, look, a cute baby llama” and I got distracted.
To be continued…