Machu Picchu

The euphoria of thin air

Story + Photography by Carolyn Males

June 1995

I am standing in the early morning light by a large pyramidal rock 8,000 feet up in the Peruvian Andes, my hands pressed against its gray surface. I hadn’t expected to find myself here in the ruins of the ancient city of Machu Picchu again, this time seeking a mystical experience. A year earlier I had wandered past this very spot, watching a coterie of New Agers getting vibes off this same chunk of granite. Later that night they had swarmed the bar at my Cuzco hotel, and over Pisco sours, their eyes aglow, they spoke of spiritual vortexes and healings experienced among the ancient Incan ruins. At the time, I’d found their rapturous reports a tad over the top, although to be truthful, the dizzying altitude, combined with the intoxicating magnificence of this long-abandoned 15th century citadel, had unleashed a childlike urge to twirl around the ceremonial plaza, skip through stone doorways and dance along the stone terraces –– all wrong in this context. Happily, I had resisted the impulse. 

Everything leading to my second trip here had been earth-bound, rooted in the hardship of other lives. Before my arrival I’d been traveling with an anti-poverty group visiting settlements of makeshift huts on the windswept rim of the altiplano above La Paz in Bolivia. Now during my three-hour train ride up from Cuzco in Peru’s Sacred Valley to this UNESCO World Heritage site, I’d been noting the abandoned buildings tagged with graffiti by the Shining Path, the violent insurgent group who’d been wreaking violence in rural villages. 

Then the engineer blew a long whistle and slammed on the brakes. With a loud bang and a jolt, the train screeched to a halt. Windows exploded, sending showers of glass shards over the Italian track team that had been sitting in the front rows of our car. The men brushed themselves off and scrambled out with the rest of us to survey the damage: One crumpled bus and its distraught driver were flanked by a handful of men who’d been trying to push the disabled vehicle out of danger, plus our unhappy train engineer with his wrecked railway car. No one, except for a few minor cuts on the runners, had been hurt. Forty minutes later the carcass had been heaved off the rails, and we journeyed on. 

That afternoon, when my traveling companion, photographer Pam Taylor, and I arrived at Machu Picchu, we hired a local guide to take us around. Francisco quickly swept us from today’s world into the past as he offered up stories, sometimes dramatically acted out, about the everyday lives of those long ago farmers who worked their terraced plots, priests who carried out religious rites and the Incan royals who had built the town as a retreat. They’d abandoned it a century later for reasons unknown, just before the Spanish conquistadors tore the empire apart. Tangles of trees and heavy vegetation had grown up, enveloping the granite and limestone buildings and plazas, forgotten by all but a few locals until one pointed out the ruins to Yale professor Hiram Bingham in 1911. A year later the site had been cleared, and restoration was underway. 

 A strange transit 

Now primed for a transcendent moment by Francisco’s tales yesterday, Pam and I approach the Sacred Rock. Skepticism wars with euphoria inside me as I edge my toes closer, close my eyes and lean in. At first there’s only the sensation of flesh against the hard surface. Then it happens. My head feels lighter and lighter, and then my body rapidly follows. Up, up the mountain I go as if being transported on the wings of a rapid-transit angel. The world falls away, and I enter a realm of light. I waver there and then as silently as I ascended, my feet land back down on earth. I open my eyes and step back. I, cynic, skeptic or however you want to label it, have become a believer. I look over at Pam, and from the rapturous look on her face, it appears as if she’s undergone a similar experience. 

Crackling with energy, we leave the confines of Machu Picchu and hike over to Huayna Picchu, a peak that towers 850 feet above the ancient ruins. At this early hour, with much of the Andes still in purple shadows, we make our way across the swaying rope bridge to the mountain’s base. Then we begin our climb up steps carved from the rock, set in thickets of ferns amid yellow, pink and purple blooms. The steps, slippery with lichen, require careful, slow navigation, especially as we skirt around less hardy souls, who’ve plopped down on the stones, huffing and puffing in the thin air.  “How much longer?” we ask trekkers already on their way down. “An hour” seems to be the standard answer. But not for a group of gray-haired Germans, who come up behind us at a fast clip, their walking sticks clinking along the rocky terrain. They quickly pass out of sight. 

To get to the summit, we snake our bodies through a narrow crevice. (We later learn we’ve taken the hard way. An easier passage lies further down the trail.)  If we weren’t panting from the climb, once atop, the endless view of the Andes, green against an azure sky with white roads zigzagging down their sides, takes our breath away. We are alone as we find a small ledge and sit in contemplative silence, watching condors circle over the gray ruins of Machu Picchu fanned out below. 

Then a disembodied male voice shatters the silence. “Take this, will ya mates?”  The sound seems to be coming from the vertical tunnel of rock we had shimmed through. I look over to see the neck of a guitar, encased in woven Peruvian material, slowly inching up from the hole. I stand up to grab it. “This too, mate.” A mysterious black box emerges next, followed by its owner, a long-haired Brit. 

For a long moment he looks around at the glorious panorama; and then with great flourish he unwraps his guitar and plugs it into the black box. Ah, an amplifier! “You thought you came up here for the peace and quiet,” he says with a laugh. Then standing with his feet apart, his body silhouetted against the sky, he pumps out “Purple Haze.” And that old Hendrix tune, strangely enough, feels just right. 

Afterwards, he settles himself down on a boulder, and strumming a few chords, he speaks of traveling through South America, earning his way by playing his guitar in town squares. Then he adds a coda, alluding to some mysterious dealings in the gem trade. “Wanna come along?” he asks. We politely decline.

Just before we made our way down, he promises a last song. “I gotta play this one.” Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven fills the air. And yes, we’ve been transported. Real, surreal and ethereal in one short trip.