apologies, and that hard road.

Let`s start with an apology.

Apologies.

In this reality, time gets away. But it is never wasted. It is spent in the best ways. It is spent at breakfast with kindred spirits from other countries. It is spent in colorful markets, chasing the beautiful local children and buying those llama sweaters. Spent on trails high up in the mountains, camping under stars, sitting in darkened ruins. It is spent touching ancient stone walls and speaking Castellano with that satellite operator who talked of the Incas, and how everything is energy. Who called me hermanita and gave me a hand carved wood whistle that I should play in happiness and sadness. It is used seeing the Southern Cross for the first time, hearing Quechuan. Or placed in those friends that touch a nerve and that you miss when they move on in a different direction. Those ones that take you to the fountain park and let you cry from exhaustion into your newfound tofu. Those ones that you climb a thousand steps with, up to Christo Blanco and back. The ones that you wander through libraries, neighborhoods with. Who stop and watch, just like you.

This time is not wasted. It is spent. In churches, museums, mountains, stars, ideas, languages, people. It is spent perfectly in experience. On the intangibles that weld to your fabric.

So, apologies.

I have been here. Collecting, remaking myself in those threads of happiness so elusive a life goes on.

the way to Machu Picchu, and that town called Cusco.

The Inca Trail climbs its way through the Sacred Valley, winding across high passes into the thin air of the clouds. Breathing is difficult. Coca candy is magic.

The porters rush past all morning, laden with our things, our campsites, our sustenance. They chew wads of coca leaves stuffed into cheeks, and their calves along with large Andean lungs, carry them on soft breaths. We breath fiercely, gasping, panting, and in endless awe of those that carry and run.

The climbs are steep. So high that they transcend the cloud bank and at night it seems that the stars could drop into palms. It is cold up in those Andes, in that Sacred Valley. Shivers in the dark inside sweaters and sleeping bags with the black sky blowing cool overhead.

In the day, the ups and downs make skin swell, skin pop. Joints expand to bear the downs and that old pain burrows into that hip joint, that angry nerve. But it is all forgotten, that sacred pain, stumbling in the dark to those majestic terraces, those 7 windows for the sky. The feeling of a secret, of the sweet undiscovered, erases all. Skin seems healed. Soul, well.

The way is hard. Harder than that walk last summer, maybe.

Machu Picchu feels small after all the steps of the trail. It is a mad dash to the Sun Gate at dawn and then a small sigh. There are people, everywhere, even so early. And the flood only grows throughout the day. Quiet is hard to find. It is beautiful, to be sure. As seen in a million photographs. And it is overwhelming in the shadow of so much exhaustion, appertaining pain.

It is the thing that you walk towards, but surely not the reason.

It is perfect for naps on the ground and proper toilets and imagining what it looked like consumed by jungle, before it was discovered and trampled. It is perfect. Perfection in stone.

that city called Cusco.

Cusco is all uphill. So many steps. So much shortness of breath in the altitude. It is imaginably difficult after the way to Machu Picchu. But it is stunning. All cobbled streets, steps. Tile roofs spreading like fire into the valley. Steeples, blanks in landscape that indicate town squares, fountains, centres.

In alleys old woman parade with llamas, baby lambs, offering photos for 1 sole a piece. Vendors approach offering massages for tired bones, and jewellery to remind of the pretty things. They are relentless, and shooed only by the admission of not carrying money. Maybe later, they all say.

The children are beautiful, hanging from their mothers backs in brightly colored slings. Dark eyes and honey skin and sweet wide smiles from behind all those wooly hats. They hold out tiny fingers to wave and coo in Spanish, and sometimes in Quechuan. They laugh, freely.

Cusco is weather. Hot in the sun. Freezing elsewhere. Frigid at night. There are rarely clouds here, only the sprawling blue of sky. There is nothing to keep the heat down. The llama sweater industry is booming.

Tonight I take a night bus to the West. To Arequipa, on my way back to Lima. They say it is (blessedly) flat there.

xo