Picking Flowers and Vertigo (Inca Trail

Crossing over two more mountain passes and several ruins was the agenda of the day.

This was my favorite section of the trail, despite the fact that it made my knees age by a decade. The Incas had no concept of vertigo and were crazy about their stairs - near vertical in spots, especially on the steppes. Evidently the Peruvian authorities don't believe in railings either, giving natural selection a chance to do its work on distracted trekkers.

Every morning we did a sun salutation to Pachamama (Incan for Mother Earth) for good weather. Our guide Danny would pull out his little bottle of unidentified herbal essence and place a few drops in our hands.

Then the ritual: face the sun, rub your hands together, clap 3 times, cup your nose/mouth and inhale deeply. If you start coughing uncontrollably then that's a good sign.

Between the coca leaves and the unidentified herbal oils, to avoid awkward questions I'm going to hold off on my annual checkup for a bit...

Incas practiced human sacrifice to appease the gods. In that spirit, some of us were ready to sacrifice the youngest and purest of our tour group as an offering for good weather to continue. The sacrificial table lay primed and ready at every ruin we passed. Luckily for our candidate, a 23 year old waiter from Wisconsin, the rain held off until the evenings when we made it to camp.

There is always new knowledge to be gained. I learned that "picking a flower" is a euphemism for taking a leak. Naturally I just had to ask the guide...so what is it called when someone has to #2? "Ohhhh well that's...serious business". We came up with “picking a bouquet” to further the analogy.

I was blown away by the number and size of ruins, which are a mere fraction of what lies hidden under the vegetation. In Incan times nearly each of these mountains was carved out with steppes top to bottom, with polished white stone and adorned with gold. It must have looked like high rises carved into every mountain. Yet despite their advancement, all it took was a bit of smallpox to bring down a whole empire.