Update from Machu Picchu
When I was in eighth grade, I had to decide what foreign language I was going to study in high school. I remember well the debate in my head between Spanish and French. If I chose French, I would have the best teacher at our school. Everyone knew Mr. Climer was a genius. But if I chose Spanish, I could visit Machu Picchu one day. This was my inner battle. A wager I totally made up. The National Geographic photos of Machu Picchu in Peru had haunted my imagination as a kid, a combination of Indiana Jones and natural beauty, and I dreamt of seeing it, touching it, and being part of it as far back as I can remember. Now, in eighth grade, I felt like I had to make a choice… choose Machu Picchu for some distant future journey… or choose the best teacher in the high school. Childhood seems to be full of choices like that, that we know will affect everything and we feel ill informed and too young to make.
I chose French. And it felt like losing Peru. But I did what my advisor told me. I don’t regret it, because he really was the best teacher in the biz, but in some symbolic way, I felt like I was sacrificing Machu Picchu to the altar of unrealized dreams.
Two days ago, I walked through the streets of Machu Picchu, 18 years after making that decision that took it from me. Every perfectly matched stone, every window, the sheer cliffs of the Andes, the temple of the sun, the roaming Llamas in the fields… I had built the place up in my mind for 20 years, and it still exceeded my expectations. Some very few places are like that, so spiritual and striking that all pictures and stories and dreaming fall short. I became a kid again. My eyes were so full of wonder I could hardly see where to step.
Six of my friends and I trekked for four days, forty miles, through the Andes to see this lost city of the Incas. Something has been reawakened in me. After 10 months of biking and hitchhiking and staying in hammocks and hostels, a bit of the magic of travel was becoming mundane.
But this, this week has lit me up again. I am blazing with smiles and ready to cruise on to Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, Argentina, all of it! Six more months of this trip. It feels like nothing.
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