Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) (7 page)

I ordered my stomach to stop growling. Visions of problems worse than finding a place to pee along the Inca Trail allowed me to sit stoically in my seat until we reached that magical stop in the middle of nowhere, Kilometer 88. Including the Arendsens and myself, we were a party of seven. Pumawari Khuyana, known as Puma, was our guide; Raymi, Yanay, and Urqu, our Quechua porters. The Arendsens and I backpacked our clothes, some food, and a canteen, with the porters toting extra food, all the tents and the many little things needed to smooth the way for novice Andean trekkers like us. I was humbled enough by my less than stellar adjustment to the altitude that I didn’t make the mistake of thinking that hiking the trail at eighteen had made me an expert.

We passed inspection by the trail guards, who not only examined our permit but weighed the porters’ backpacks to make sure the northern
gringos
weren’t taking advantage of the natives. I’d heard tales of porters’s packs burgeoning from twenty-five to forty pounds the minute trekking parties were out of sight of the inspectors, but not in our group. Toting a pack to 14,000 feet was part of the challenge of the Inca Trail, even if the Quechuas were used to the altitude and we weren’t. Even if they were hiking with a wad of
coca
leaves in their jaws, and we weren’t.

The first part of our trek went smoothly as we paralleled the Urubamba River, a raging whitewater torrent, plunging down from the Andes on its way to the eastern jungle, where it would join one of the headwaters of the Amazon. But as we approached the River Cusichaca—narrower than the Urubamba but strewn with boulders and almost as violent—we ran into our first crisis.

“
Oh, no!” Hildy skidded to a stop. “No way, no how,” she declared. “I’m not walking across
that
!”

“
That” was a narrow suspension bridge over the Cusichaca, which appeared to be double-timing it on a race toward its junction with the Urubamba.

“
Hildy,” I said quietly while the Quechua porters demonstrated their expertise by trotting across the swaying structure, “that’s a little bitty bridge, no relation to the one Indy crossed in
The Temple of Doom
. Really, it’s what? Maybe thirty feet long and fifteen above the river. It’s not like it’s some great chasm.”

“
A hundred feet or ten, what’s the difference?” Hildy sniffed. “Nobody falls on those rocks and lives.”

“
Hildy . . .,” Max pleaded.

“
Do they inspect that thing?” his wife demanded. “Or did the Incas build that too? That’s it, isn’t it? It’s an antique, so nobody will touch it.”

“
Mrs. Arendsen,” Puma said, his dark eyes reflecting kindly sympathy, “every February the trail is closed for inspection and repairs. It is now only the third week of March. I promise you the bridge is safe.”

“
It held our porters,” Max pointed out encouragingly, “and their packs are heavier than ours.”

“
Perhaps if you took her hand . . .,” I suggested.

“
Come on, honey, we’ve come too far to back out now. You can even shut your eyes if you want to. We’ll be on the other side in no time at all.”

I felt for Hildy, I really did. Not everyone is cut out for the adventurous life, and she’d been a marvelous sport about arranging this trip for Max. But how was she going to fare at 14,000 feet? How was
I
going to fare? Last time I’d been here I was eighteen and in the midst of all those macho lessons Dad insisted on. Now . . . Flint’s words came back to me. All that frou-frou. I’d gone a bit soft. I knew it, even if it hurt to admit it. I could still handle myself—there were muggers and would-be one-night stands from Frisco to Bangkok who could attest to that—and I’d clipped Arlan Trevellyan’s wings a time or two, which was probably why he was out for vengeance, but things had been too easy for too long. I’d lost some of my edge.

So . . . the Inca Trail was a good place to get it back.

“
I’ll go first,” I offered, giving Hildy’s hand a squeeze. “You and Max can follow right behind.” I summoned my most insouciant smile, the one I’d used on Charlie Purvis, the Calusa County Sheriff, when he’d balked at Fantascapes staging a mock rescue at the SWAT training grounds. Hildy’s mouth opened. I cut off further protest by stepping onto the bridge, refusing to turn my head and acknowledge the possibility the Arendsens might not be behind me.

The bridge was narrow. It swayed in the wind charging down the mountain valley. Spray flew up from the rushing river below. Outwardly, I never flinched. I was woman. I could do this.

When we were all safely on the far side, surrounded by the towering stalks of blooming century plants, I exchanged a grin with Puma while Max folded Hildy in his arms and told her she was a grand sport, the “very best.” Hopefully, we’d just passed the worst of our challenges. It was adventure time, and we were it. We had four days to follow in the footsteps of Inca runners, to plunge down into tropical rain forest and climb into the skies, explore long-hidden ruins, and sleep under brilliant stars forming constellations the Arendsens had never seen before. To lie under the Southern Cross and feel closer to God than in the most ornate cathedral.

“
Okay,” Max finally said to Puma, “we’re ready to move out.”

A surge of excitement stirred my blood as I adjusted the straps on my backpack. If it was one of my oddball premonitions, I didn’t recognize it. No hint that destiny lay in wait on a mountain high above the Urubamba Valley. A destiny not even my wildest dreams could have imagined.

Pumawari Khuyana is the best guide Inca Explorations has to offer. I suspect Roberto pulled him away from another group in an attempt to atone for not verifying the mysterious cancellation. Guessing the age of a Quechua isn’t easy; Puma could be anywhere from late thirties to as much as a very fit fifty. Quechuas, descendants of the Incas, make up for a lack of height with broad chests adapted to high altitude and sturdy legs that eat up the ground in precipitous mountain country unsuited to horses, let alone cars and trucks. Shank’s mare still rules the Andes.

Our porters were younger, one of them Roberto’s eighteen-year-old son, Yanay. All four Quechuas had thick straight black hair, round faces, bronze skin, obsidian eyes. Three flashed white teeth in easy smiles. Urqu, the oldest of the three porters at perhaps thirty, was more reserved. Possibly not so enamored with carrying the burden for another round of tourist trekkies headed toward the sacred city of Machu Picchu. Or was he simply intent on bucking for a job as a guide, concentrating on perfection and maybe forgetting that easy interaction with the clients is the biggest part of the job?

Fortunately, today’s hike along the Cusichaca River was at an altitude no higher than Cuzco. I was beginning to adapt now, not as full of energy as I’d been at eighteen, but doing pretty well if I only compared my efforts against Max and Hildy. Were we happy to see the campsite at Huayllabamba? You bet.

We’d had a long day, with a demanding climb tomorrow, but somehow we lingered around the campfire, sheltered by the ruins of ancient walls, reluctant to give up the magic of our first day on the trail. “Tell me about Nazca,” I said to Max and Hildy. “Did you enjoy it after we got the airplane problem straightened out?”

“
It’s got to be aliens,” Hildy declared, leaning toward me, her eyes, suddenly eager, reflecting the firelight. “I mean, huge figures like that—a monkey, birds, a spiral. How could natives construct something they couldn’t even see?”

“
They told us that, hon’,” Max rumbled. “They’ve found the places where measuring stakes were driven into the ground.”

“
Pooh!” Hildy huffed. “Even if one of the Indians was some mathematical genius, why build something five hundred years ago that can only be seen from the air?”

“
An offering to the gods?” I ventured.

“
Some people think they had hot air balloons,” Max offered.

“
And some people need to get their heads on straight,” Hildy scoffed. “Those critters were built to be seen from a spaceship.”

“
Puma,” I called toward the Quechuas, who were hunkered down against the far wall of the small ruin, “what do
you
think of the Nazca lines?”

His baritone chuckle rumbled over the fire. “Not very hard to move a few stones on a rocky plain. All it took was one very smart man to show them how. A Nazca? Spaceman? Who knows? But me, I think the lines were made for the gods to see.”

Poor Hildy, it wasn’t one of her better days. She couldn’t even win an argument. I quickly changed the subject, lowering my voice so just the three of us could hear. “Did you visit the Mochica pottery exhibit?”

“
Did we ever!” Hildy gasped, rolling her eyes. “I thought nothing could shock me, but . . . whew!”

“
I guess you’re talking about the erotica collection,” I said, wondering just how badly she’d been offended.

“
It was so awful it was almost funny,” Max interjected. “Photos weren’t allowed, or I’d ’ve gotten one of Hildy’s face.”

“
I mean I know there are lots of books with naughty pictures,” Hildy declared, very much on her dignity, “but to put it in pottery—3-D. I couldn’t believe it!”

“
Don’t forget the homosexuality and syphilis sores,” Max deadpanned. “Guess the Mochica didn’t believe in holding back.”

“
Europeans gave the Peruvian Indians smallpox,” I said, “and they retaliated by giving the world syphilis. A fair exchange, I guess. If very nasty. I hope you weren’t offended,” I added a trifle anxiously.

“
Laine, we wanted the full Peru experience,” Max said. “Thanks to you, we’re getting it. With the most exciting yet to come. I’ve dreamed my entire life of seeing Machu Picchu, and to come at it from high up on the trail, the way the Incas did, is as close to heaven as I ever expect to get.”

“
A-men,” Hildy murmured. “And that’s what I keep telling myself every minute of every hour. I’ll survive because Max loves it, and I’ve got to admit, even though I did some huffing and puffing today, the scenery—the rivers, all that greenery—that was mighty fine, Laine. And if Machu Picchu lives up to its rep—”

“
It does,” I assured her, “and there are some pretty spectacular ruins along the trail as well. You won’t regret it, I promise.”

A short while later, after Hildy and I had sneaked off for a bit of privacy, we headed for our tents. I eyed my sleeping bag, all neatly laid out by Urqu, who seemed to have decided I was the one he needed to impress. When was the last time I’d roughed it? (If a down sleeping bag in an igloo tent, set up by Quechua porters, could be called roughing it.) Obviously, I needed to get to the fitness center more than once a week and take some brush-up martial arts lessons. I wasn’t really rusty—Dad sometimes tasked me with some very odd jobs—but I wasn’t tip-top. As proved by my altitude sickness in Cuzco and my aches from today’s easy hike.

And tomorrow we had to climb to Death Woman’s Pass. At 14,000 feet.

That Death is considered female just goes to show men are the same the world over. Not only did they get to name everything, but if it’s dangerous, they label it female. Like ships from the heyday of sail. Bombers in World War II. And, not so long ago, every hurricane that came along.

Myself, I’d call Death Woman’s Pass a son of a bitch. Except bitch isn’t exactly complimentary to females either. Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you suffer step by step along with us. Enough to say we started our climb the easy way through jungle-like greenery, which gradually turned to well-spaced woodland. As the air grew thinner, the growth turned to scrub and the ascent grew steeper, Puma called frequent time-outs. Bless him. Our only reward as the trees shortened, then disappeared completely, leaving us to mossy grassland or bare rocky slopes, was that we could see out over the river valley, where an occasional whitewater crest on the thin ribbon of water caught the sunlight far below. In the distance the jagged snow-crested summits of the high Andes made us realize just how puny our climb was.

Hildy, looking slightly green, declared she needed a lung transplant. When I pointed to the glorious view, she said something I won’t repeat. By the time we hit Death Woman’s Pass, Hildy and I had formed a strong bond of hate. For our Quechua porters who so obviously could have done this climb at twice the speed. And for Puma whose good nature never wavered, even when we were calling for breaks every fifteen minutes.

We practically tumbled down the far side of the pass, but not far enough. Puma called a halt at a camp site above the valley of the Pacamayo at close to 12,000 feet. Only one more pass, he told us cheerfully, and not so high as Death Woman. The Arendsens took it stoically. Like me, they were too exhausted and oxygen-deprived to put up a fuss. We ate, we slept, and moved on, crossing the Pacamayo River the next morning without incident.

Time out for a half-hearted exploration of some Inca ruins, one of the
tambos,
or way stations, set up for Inca runners. Then up again through a second pass, leading to a blissful descent toward a small lake and our first spectacular Inca ruin, Sayacmarca. It means “town in a steep place,” and Hiram Bingham, the Yale archeologist who discovered Machu Picchu, wasn’t kidding when he named it. My lungs were so glad to be back down to the 10,000-foot level of Cuzco that they allowed me to explore a bit, once again admiring the durability of Inca stonework, even when it was just stone on stone, not the chiseled fittings found in their palaces and temples.