Monday, June 8, 2015

Levels.


My alarm goes off exactly two hours before the bus leaves, and roughly two hours after I suffer nightmares about missing it. In another twenty minutes I'm dressed, the backpack I fully prepped the night before downstairs with me, negotiating a 4am check out with the confused kid working the front desk.

"Now? You're sure you want to check out now?... You know it doesn't open for two more hours..."

A few blocks away, my lobby-poured coffee and I reach the parked caravan of buses at 4:10am to be the third person in line, behind one of the countless couples making this pilgrimage together. Within a ten minute span, I'm joined by my other 2 trailmates from the Salkantay Trek and our guide, and behind us stretches at least a hundred more people, though anyone more than that is out of range of both the humming light bulbs and my disinterested earshot.

I pass the next hour mostly with my neck craned up in weak-interest at a rerun soccer game between Uruguayan and Colombian club teams, as behind me a flock of purple'clad elderly women from the States perform chakra chants, their hands tambourining down the center line of their bodies. Morning calisthenics in sequined hats. As the buses next to us rumble to life just before 5:30, a girl from a massive group way back in line tries to convince the couple ahead of me, in a distinctly American accent, to let their group of 20 jump to the front of line. When she walks back to her group, scoffed at, defeated, I take one last look at the massive group behind us before piling into the bus that drives us up the 20 minutes of switchbacking road from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu.

The headlights cut the darkness as we rise up Hiram Bingham Highway, panning across the backs of the hikers, the idealists determined to walk up to Machu Picchu by way of a grueling series of steps. With each switchback and tier up the mountain, the day greys awake, making them easier to see, their exhaustion obvious, even in the fledgling light. When we exit the bus, there's a group of ten, the fastest, already sitting on the steps before the roped'off ticket inspection counters. They're absolutely flooded in sweat, and staring challengingly at us bus-riders with a palpable arrogance, but even with that, they'd earned my respect. For their commitment and far more so, their speed. Because by the time the next set of hikers reaches our plateau, there's three buses full of people in line ahead of them. Their lack of quickness betraying their abundance of determination.

Past the ticket check, any hierarchy becomes moot, instantly forgotten. I'm one of the first 20 people inside Machu Picchu on the morning of May 15, 2015, nearly jogging around corners with the sweat'drenched Brits to the first viewpoint. The anticipation finally giving way to the arrival. And for those few minutes it's ours. We first'and'early'risers, we trekkers, the fast hikers. Any arrogance melted away into ecstasy, into a pure childish wonder at where we are. When we are. The rarity of its pristine emptiness. Just briefly, we tear glances away from the wondrous ruins to exchange dumbfounded smiles. The possible-temple, possible-noble-retreat, the fabled Lost City. The vision of Pachacutec and the obsession of Bingham. Machu Picchu. Its stone'chambered vacancy a vessel for our awe.

And the early alarms, the grueling stair'climb, the foresight of others who booked Inca Trail reservations seven or eight months in advance, it's all for these sprinting minutes that dissolve too quickly. Because we all know what a shit show this is about to be.

This is the cost of doing pleasure. The trade'off of travel in the modern world. Machu Picchu holds a near unique spot in our consciousness, even if we can't pinpoint why.  We know what it is, but not what it was. It was commissioned by the Incas' greatest ruler, but as an observatory, or temple, or simple vacation resort, there's no uniform agreement. What it is now is a pilgrimage. A box on a checklist, or a bucket list, or a prerequisite for backpacking credibility. An obsession, a headless sphinx to challenge us. Simultaneously the most unifying and polarizing destination I have ever been to. Because it draws so many of us, no matter what our background, or travel motivation, or degree of commitment. And yet everyone wants it to belong to them alone, feels entitled to that ownership. Maybe because its walls stood here for centuries, in obscurity, if not true total abandonment, and we want that fantasy of untouched discovery to belong to us. 

The paradox is that everyone deserves to see this. Whether at the bus station at 4:10am to ensure a seat on the first bus at 5:30, or hiking the near vertical stair'climb, or entering directly by the Sun Gate after trekking for days on the Inca Trail. Or those who came by ways that they sound embarrassed to admit but shouldn't be, the trains that start arriving at 8:00 and the later arrivals flooding in all the way from Cusco. No matter what tier of tourist or traveler you are, Machu Picchu belongs equally to you as well. But it's because there's so many of us drawn here for the riddle and beauty and legend of its emptiness that it overflows with a cacophonous humanity.

It doesn't ruin the experience, but it does make those first few minutes even more precious. The very first fraction of the nine hours that I spent at Machu Picchu, climbing and descending its terraces. Seeing the absence before the abundance. Viewing it in morning mists, the clouds blindfolding the mountaintops, the shyness of the fog as it clings to smaller peaks below, like fraying coronas of liquid nitrogen, before an ascendent sun burns it all away. Before that god is chased away by grey herds of cloud and then rain. The arbitrary undulations that have occurred and been observed for centuries. 

The nine hours is long enough to recognize the order of Machu Picchu itself, beyond the simple level of commitment of the travelers that reach it. Or the tiers of visibility the Peruvian climate allows, depending on the time of day, the whim of weather. Time enough to spot how the architecture of the peaked roof supports echo Huayna Picchu above. The seemingly'crude rock in the Temple of the Mountain that from one specific point near'perfectly mirrors the outline of the mountain peaks directly beyond it. The curved walls of the Temple of the Sun that evoke the same torreĆ³n of the massive Temple of the Sun in Cusco, the Qorinkancha. But also the empty hierarchy of what it means to discover. Hiram Bingham was credited as finding the Lost City of the Incas in 1911, but it was never really lost. Quechua families still farmed its terraces, Bingham himself saw carved names and dates of previous explorers in earlier years grooved into the steps of the Royal Mausoleum. Yet everyone, Peru's Ministerio de Cultura, certainly Bingham, clearly the vandalizing explorers, and the even earlier graverobbers, want it to belong to them alone. Feel entitled to that. In truth it belongs to none of us beyond a temporary guardianship. Caretakers for a lifetime, or a generation, or a few minutes if we wake early enough. But no matter what timeline or duration, that palpable arrogance will inevitably melt away, leaving only the endangered constant of the rocks and the mountains that surround it.