Actually, it’s called the Inca Trail. It is the path that the Incas used to get to the Creme de la Creme of all Inca ruins: Machu Picchu. But anyone who has taken this trek calls it “The Inca Trial.” And that is because this trail is a sonovabitch! The Spaniards never discovered Machu Picchu. When the Incas learned they were coming, they abandoned their most spiritual city so that it, and the only trail leading to it, would succumb to the growth and vegetation and conceal it from Pizarro and his conquistadors.

   And it worked.

   So even when Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu in the early 1900’s, he didn’t find the trail. It wasn’t until very recently, that it was discovered.

   Now let me just say that, in the present day, getting to Machu Picchu is as easy as 60 bucks, a train, and three hours. But that’s only for pussies or your mothers. Real travelers do the Inca Trial. At least, that’s what everybody says. Being that Cuzco is the closest city to Machu Picchu (Cuzco was the center of the Inca empire) and is their main tourist attraction, there is an sense of ownership about Machu Picchu. And the first thing everybody asks you is: "When are you going to Machu Picchu?" The second thing is, “how are you getting there?"

   If you say that you are going by train, you will receive nothing short of a scoff. The train is for blue hairs and Canadians. The train is for wannabees. If you are to visit Machu Picchu properly, then you are to visit it by hiking.

  Of course, I had good cause to consider the train. I had that nasty knee business 6 months back and full recovery after ACL surgery is a year to 14 months. The lowdown on the Inca Trail is that it can be brutal to even those at full strength.

   No matter though. You are less a man, less an explorer, if you take the train. So, yes, you can say that it was partly duress that urged me to book passage along the four-day Inca Trial.

   I have heard the stories of all the ragged, broken hikers who returned from the trail. I had heard about altitude sickness and the blistering winds and the biting rains; heard about day-two and Dead Woman’s Pass. I heard about the gigantic stone Inca steps; each one the size and height of pool table; and this from people with healthy knees. Knees that could jump and run and bend and roast marshmallows and make love to beautiful women. Knees in their prime.

   But I also heard about the arrival to the Sun Gate at 5am, before the blue hairs on the train showed up, and the view down the mountain onto the top of Machu Picchu, and the ruins coming into view out of the middle of the Andes mountains. And the clouds switching between covering and not covering this amazing passageway through the Andes. I heard about the mystique of being on the very trail built by these strange and wonderful people, The Incas, and how it must have felt to be them and to live in, and off, this land.

  And when I was on the trail, and the mist and the clouds and the rain and my cane, were conspiring against me I would curse the Incas. Curse them for building this stinking trail; curse them for building steps so large you needed a crane to get down; curse them for living in altitudes so high you had to camp in oxygen tents. I cursed them until we stumbled upon the various ruins on the trail; about six or seven of them, emerging from the mist like haunted castles in horror movies. And the cursing stopped.

   DAY-1
   It begins along the Urubamba river of the Sacred Valley, is supposed to be an easy day. But, as I was climbing up the mountain with my knee brace, and cane, and hiking pack loaded to the zippers, chewing on coca leaves in order to alleviate the altitude issues, a realization came to me. I had made a terrible mistake. If this was the easy day, how on earth was I supposed to survive the notorius day 2--Dead Woman’s Pass.

   We camped that night and ate potato soup with a potato as an entree. As far as food went, the only decisions the cooks had to make was which way they were going to slice the potatoes and how crisp were they going to cook the popcorn.

  That night, in a hut, I swirled with The Quechua speaking natives in some kind of fertility dance. My dance partner, aptly named “Woman-of the-three-teeth-and-dirty-toes,” smiled and smiled. Whenever I tried to stop dancing, an onlooker, drinking something extremely potent from a two liter Coca Cola bottle shoved me back to the woman. My partner smiled and smiled. He gave me a swig from the bottle. I had to stop dancing to keep from vomiting.

   DAY-2
  This is the widow maker of all hikes. You climb 2000 meters straight up towards Dead Woman’s Pass, and to a total of 4200 meters of altitude. Even the coca leaves are impotent up here and I gasped and struggled. The path is made of the classic Inca stones. Only they are feet apart from each other, and each step itself is a mountain to be climbed. The good news was that it was uphill. And though it was taxing on my stamina, my knee (heretofore referred to as, My Crucifix) was fine. Uphill is not a problem. Downhill is another story.

   It took six hours to get to the top, to the famous Dead Woman pass. It was raining hard and our cheap plastic ponchos were becoming tattered from the trail. It was freezing up there and we were soaked, but it was Dead Woman’s Pass. And all I can say is that we--especially I--knew that something had been accomplished.

  It was the next two hours downhill that was my undoing. Well, it was two hours for most folks. It took me three. My crucifix was red and swelling and every thing I did, every step I took, every sentence I spoke, began with me asking it if it would be OK. . .

   ME: "Ahem. . . Uh, Mr. Knee?" [tentatively, with quivering voice] "I was wondering if I could have a drink of water, would that be OK with you?"

  KNEE: "I'm not sure.Let's sit down and think about it."

   So, yeah, it was bad. And I was starting to overtly favor the good knee.

  Funny thing is, I wasn't the last one. There was a woman, about 35 years old, behind me. She was in a terrible fright. The thing of it is, some of these steps going down were like you were looking straight down the mountain and one bad step--goodbye. It was scary for everyone, but this poor woman was terrified. She took every step with amazing concentration and caution and fear. She was an hour behind me.

   We camped that night. The rains kept pounding. My boots were soaking, my pants were soaking, the tent was soaking, the group was sulking. The next morning, I dressed in the cold and got into my wet clothes. Doing this is as miserable as putting on a used condom (or so I have heard).

   I knew the whole time that, even though there was intense suffering, there was intense pleasure too. I mean Machu Picchu awaited. The Creme de la Creme of the Inca Ruins. The raison D'etre of Cuzco. And there was this wonderful mountain scenery; even though much of it was obscured by rain clouds. The mist ran over the place like the Incas planted interminable fog machines. And you would walk in the rain and the mist and you would see something up ahead. It would emerge out of the cloud mist as if you were standing still and the ruins were moving in. And there it was. That fabulous Inca stonework, the military outlook posts, the stargates and you would think, "How the fuck did I get here?"

   But as far as My Crucifix was concerned, things were getting worse.

   DAY-3
   . . . was almost all downhill and I was three hours behind the group. I noticed that my good leg was developing a sharp pain from compensating for the bad one.

  You really need to visualize what I looked like to appreciate the subtle comedy of my visage. I had on this big black brace that looked like my leg was constructed by welders (I had to wear shorts because it wouldn't fit under pants). I carried a black, fold-up cane that had lost the rubber tip on the bottom so it would tap annoyingly as I touched it down on the Inca Stones. That tapping sound accompanied me on the entire trail and became the subject of more than one nightmare (in one dream I am tapping down the hill and it alerts an enormous condor who senses I am an animal in distress and carries me away with his talons). I had a poncho, now tattered and useless, that covered my drenched body, and people were flying by me on the trail as if I was that old guy doing 35mph in the right lane on the freeway.

   But, I was a kind of hero. Everybody knew my situation, sympathized with my crucifix. It was a daily discussion. 'How is Ed? How far behind is he?' It was impossible not to notice my pain. But they all expressed their amazement, and I admit it was a wonderful source of pride when I was told so.

  There was even a physical therapist on the trail who knew it was ACL and told me that she would never have recommended it to her patient and that I had a lot of guts.

   And so I played the superman role--"Don't worry about me young lady. I'll be fine. Why yes, a backrub would be very nice."

   I thought I was dying. I could sense the end of the trail. But I was way behind everyone else. In fact, I was so far behind, I walked with the frightened woman for the last three hours. She was a mess. I was actually faster than her, but I couldn't leave her now. She was petrified and alone. I had to help her down nearly every other step. I considered hitting on her; fantasized about how it would be to seduce this woman on The mystical Inca Trail. To hear her howling out to Manco Capac in Quechua, the language of the ancients -- speaking in tongues, so to speak. I'm thought she would have been offended if I had made a pass, but we did have a connection, and I was her savior for the day.

   We were still hours behind the group. We knew they were all relaxing at the third and final campground, which was a lodge as well and if you wanted to, could rent a room and a shower. It infuriated me to think of them, dry clothes, feet up, perhaps with a hot bowl of soup in front of them, steam rising from the potatoes -- oh glorious potato, what I wouldn't do for you now.

   Our guide kept sending porters up the mountain to carry our bags for us. But we declined.

  You must understand something. You can hire porters to carry your bags. It's real cheap. But part of it, part of the accomplishment, is to do it with your backpack. To have come this far now--and let this, this, this fucking porter (who can do the Inca trail with a townhouse on his back, his legs tied together, and his head stuck up Manco Capac's ass) who wants to disrespect me and take my bags because I am less a man than he is--would be a defeat of the highest order.

   We told him to go away and high-fived each other when he did. Before the day was over, he came up three more times.

   Perhaps it was he who moved the sign.

   Whenever you came to a possible crossroads in the trail, a small sign, cut in the shape of an arrow, pointed in the right direction. Only this crossroads had no such sign. And since our guide, and everyone else was already at the site, we had no way of knowing. We found out later that the sign had been vandalized and that a few other people took the wrong path. We wondered what evil monster would have done such a thing.

   The wrong path, by the way, is another hour out of our way.

   Another hour I could not afford. I was a mess. I needed sanctuary. My situation had gotten so bad that, my good knee had become my bad knee, and that I had to revert to favoring my surgery knee because now, in comparison, THAT was my good knee. AND I'm helping her down the trail, sometimes even bearing her weight when I had to lift her off a step and set her down.

   At the site, I declined getting a room and a shower. About half the group got a room. We, the other half, sat around the tentsite talking shit about them. About how they sold out; about how we were better than they because we were roughing it. I never told anyone that the real reason I didn’t get a dry room and a hot shower was because I was completely broke. (Who thinks you’re going to need money hiking the Andes?)

   It was a torrent that night. I kept waking up and curling up in tighter and tighter fetal balls as the water slowly took over my tent. "I’m sleeping in Lake Titicaca over here," I yelled out to my fellow tenters. Three of them went inside and got a room.

   DAY-4.
   This would be the easiest day, if you didn't have to account for the accumulated wear and tear on my body and my mind. It was mostly flat hiking and very little rain. It took about two hours (for me) to get to the Sun Gate. The Sun Gate is a small piece of ruins that rests in a pass between the mountains that overlook Machu Picchu which is about another two hour hike down (for the gimp). The day was misty and cloudy and Machu Picchu was obscured from there. But we were alive with anticipation knowing that our elusive goal was so very close. Most of the group hung around at the sun gate but I had Machu Picchu brain and I knew they would all catch up to me anyway. So I smoked a joint with a Brit and forged forward, onward alone.

   By this point, my entire body was torn up. If I could have opened up my torso and rolled my entrails down the path instead of actually hiking the rest of the way, I might have considered it. I was bedraggled and limping when I came upon the ruins of Machu Picchu.

   She stood there in silence. So did I. The mist hovered surrealistically in and around Machu Picchu. Completely awestruck, I climbed across this walled area and into the ruins. It looked exactly as it was--an evacuated city some 500 years old. I had beaten the blue hairs and most of the other hikers by quite a bit because I left earlier than everyone. I had this eerie feeling of timelessness which was immediately followed by that sinking feeling you get on Christmas Day. All that preparation and anticipation, wiped away by the actual moment. A moment that barely exists. I was here now, and I had nothing to look forward to. But that quickly passed.

   The clouds rolled in and out of the ruins so that one minute you would be standing next to this amazing building and adoring it, and the next, it would be totally obscured by a bleached white cloud. Sometimes only pieces of the ruins were visible, peeking from the cloud like an agoraphobe peering out his window.

   I can't describe Machu Picchu the way it needs to be described. It is definitely a "see it for yourself" kind of place. All I can say is, when the place finally filled up--and it was as populated as if it were a city still alive--everyone was walking around with dumbfounded gazes. As if God had stepped out of one of these clouds and told them they were divine.

   And that was it. We hiked down to Aqua Calientes, ate lunch, took a train back to Cusco. That night, despite our exhaustion, we all met and drank beers and danced and purged our bodies of fitness with pisco and beer. The next morning at 10am, I got my plane home.

   And now, sitting at my desk, writing this last log, it barely feels like I was there at all. Except that I've been energized. As if South America was a battery charger and I’ve been charging for two months. I miss Peru already. But my life is here, only I had forgotten that.

   Now I remember.