CONQUERING the INCA TRAIL

I could barely contain my excitement as the train ground to a halt at Kilometer 88. I expected to see the Andes towering gloriously above us, hinting at the secrets of the lost city of the Incas.

From the window of the antiquated rail car, I could see dogs and chickens running loose-- but no sign of those picture-postcard peaks. Clearly we were in the middle of nowhere, and I wondered whether this was the right place. But my traveling companion, Kevin Cadle, seemed sure. He was already out of his seat, motioning to me to follow.

I squeezed past the crowds seated on armrests and standing in the aisles and waved goodbye to the Colombian family we had traveled with for the last four hours from the central Peruvian city of Cuzco. Like most tourists, they were continuing on, taking the train all the way to Machu Picchu, the ruins that beckon thousands of visitors to view and puzzle over a 500-year-old mystery.

“Good luck,” the father said in perfect English as his children eyed us, not sure whether this pair of Americans in heavy hiking boots, shorts and T-shirts were adventurous or just plain crazy.

To hike the Inca Trail, you need to be a little of both, and Kevin and I certainly qualified. We could have continued on the train and arrived in a few hours. Instead we chose to stagger up a winding, 20-mile trail that tops out at more than 13,000 feet on a trip that takes 3 1/2 days. Our reward, besides meeting the physical challenge, was a chance to walk through history, hiking past nearly a dozen ruins and arriving at the Sun Gate, where dawn would light the Incan citadel. We would see sites that train passengers could not, and we hoped the trade-off--the ease and safety of the train versus the sometimes-wobbly trek to the top--and the physical test would be worth it.

Many hikers hire a guide in Cuzco or hook up with one of the companies that conduct group trips, but Kevin and I opted for an independent trek on the Inca Trail through high passes and jungle valleys in south-central Peru.

Traveling across the same stones laid by the Incas more than 500 years ago, we were thrust into a world barely touched by modern technology. The Incas constructed complex cities high in the Andes and developed a road system that challenged the ingenuity and scope of its Roman counterpart--but they did it without the wheel. They had no written language, so little is known about the founding of Machu Picchu or its decline. The Incas abandoned the city sometime in the early 1500s, but no one is certain why.

History does tell us that couriers once sprinted along these paths, delivering messages from across an Inca civilization that, at its height, spread from Argentina to Colombia. The runners cruised so fast--even at altitudes well above 10,000 feet--that they could deliver fresh fish to their king in Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, 130 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

Any hope that we could make that kind of time disappeared after we crossed a swinging bridge above the Rio Urubamba. We soon were doubled over and gasping, but it was the altitude--the air is thin at 7,200 feet--and not the distance that put lead in our legs. We had to step aside to let a stout Peruvian woman with leather-tanned skin and a walking stick pass by on the first incline.

We had just learned our first lesson: We were in decent shape--Kevin at 26 and I at 34--but we were no match for people who have acclimated to these mountains, even though we had waited two days in Cuzco to get used to the lower air pressure.

The porters who ferry loads along the trail have inherited the Incas’ ability to travel quickly. Not a single hiker we saw could keep up with them. Even weighed down with huge loads, the Peruvians had pistons for legs that could propel them uphill at a near run.

We hired a porter to carry our gear for the second and most difficult day. His name was Juan, he was 34, and he had been crossing and recrossing these steps since he was 11. Wearing sandals and a blue cap, Juan graciously slowed his pace to allow me to walk alongside. I appreciated his help during the difficult climb under an unrelenting summer sun, which had climbed along with us. Talking to him--using my limited Spanish and plenty of hand gestures--took my mind off each foot of elevation we gained. Much of Juan’s work, I learned, came from guided trips. For big groups, he and several other porters carry backpacks and food for their clients, walking far ahead so that by the time weary hikers make their way into camp, the tents are set up and water for coca tea is already boiling.

The Inca Trail is not exactly a wilderness experience. In the evenings, young girls would come around to the campsites--no more than slightly sloping open spaces in the middle of a horse pasture--to sell bottled water and soda. It seemed a little incongruous to have a cold beer--for less than $2--while setting up the tent in the middle of nowhere.

We weren’t alone on the trail, either. We were there in July, the height of a season that lasts from May to September. Our fellow travelers hailed from many European countries, South America and Australia, so the conversations usually ended up in a muddy if merry soup of Spanish, English, French and German. (Spanish is not the first language of the locals; they speak Quechua, as did the Incas and pre-Incan civilizations.)

Under a cloudless sky we reached the aptly named Dead Woman’s Pass, at 13,700 feet, near the end of the second day. We congratulated each other and quickly found a spot that blocked the wind. A dull headache and a touch of nausea reminded me of how high we had climbed. The exertion left both of us lethargic and muddle-headed, mild symptoms of altitude sickness, not serious but enough to get us moving to a lower elevation after a brief stop to scan the horizon. Looking out, we gazed over the terrain as it shifted from dry grasslands and high desert to jungle hillsides where the trail rolled in waves.

Centuries ago, in times of war, up to 50,000 warriors would travel to battle neighboring tribes, and the surrounding communities gathered dried corn, dehydrated potatoes and sun-dried llama meat to supply way stations, or tampus. We took a cue from past travelers and made one of these, Runturacay, our stop for the second night.

We would dine on nothing as exotic as sun-dried llama. On a high ledge surrounded by thick grass, Kevin heated our dinner--dehydrated chicken fajitas and tortillas--over a miniature cookstove. Our rations, which had come with me 6,000 miles from the U.S., required only boiling water, but the preparation in a pot, perched on a single burner that swayed in the slightest gust of wind, was trickier than we had imagined.

We set up a two-person tent and settled into our nylon camp chairs to eat as we watched the sun slowly slip away, bathing the jagged pinnacles above us in a golden light, the earth before us dropping away into a deep gorge. “This is my favorite campsite,” Kevin said almost solemnly, as though he was trying not to disturb the aura of the place. I could not imagine a more beautiful place.

As it turned out, it got better.

On the third day, we climbed to 12,600 feet, an hourlong trek out of camp that left me, once again, trying to catch my breath.

“Mucho trabajo, no?” asked a porter carrying a bulging straw sack topped by what looked like a cast-iron stove. Yes, it was a lot of work, I agreed. Looking up, I surveyed the bleached-white Cordillera Vilcabamba, a faraway range that showed each of its folds in the crystal air. On its shoulder sat a full moon, still in view as we crossed the pass in the early morning. The sight made oxygen deprivation just a bit more tolerable.

From the third pass, the trail dropped steadily through cloud forests and into a humid jungle, the temperature climbing fever-like on the 4,000-foot drop. Here we had to negotiate the Inca Steps, as steep as a staircase carved into the face of the mountain. Never had going down been more difficult; my quadriceps burned and my legs quaked to support my weight and that on my back.

We searched for shade among the ruins we passed. Some had melted back into the vegetation, while others, like Win~ay Wayna, have been cleared and are being rebuilt. Only five minutes from a youth hostel, Win~ay Wayna is terraced into the hillside like an amphitheater. Along one edge are ceremonial baths, a cascading series of pools. The Incas channeled water from a nearby waterfall that even now runs ceaselessly. Emerging waist high from a rock wall, each of the fountain’s clear streams falls into a pool at your feet before being swallowed up again in the rock. Below the baths, workers were diligently reconstructing the dwellings of the farmers who tended this small habitation. They were taking the same stones that have tumbled onto themselves over centuries and piecing together walls, a sort of giant jigsaw puzzle.

We headed to the red-roofed Trekker Hostel to vegetate for a while, staring out at more of the seemingly endless snowcapped spires of the Andes. Everywhere, young people sat in groups, sipping an Inka Cola or a Cerveza Cusquena, the local beer. The hostel had a full bar, restaurant, hot showers and, most surprisingly, a television.

The hostel is at the gateway to Machu Picchu. The quest for the lost city for all trekkers would begin well before sunrise the next morning, when flashlights guide hikers on a two-hour track along a precipitous stretch that plunges thousands of feet off to the right.

“Maybe it’s better that we can’t see what’s down there,” I commented as we watched each footstep in the yellow beam of light.

The walk through the darkness wasn’t quite enough to earn us Machu Picchu, though. We had to scramble on hands and feet up a steep Inca staircase that brought us to the Sun Gate, a notch in the mountains.

And, suddenly, there it was, the picture-postcard view of Machu Picchu. Before us spread green mountains tumbling over themselves. The Temple of the Sun, the highest point in the village, stood above the gabled houses, terraced fields and wide-open plazas, marking the Incas’ celebration of the forces of nature--the sun, moon, stars, lightning and rainbow-- which they believed held spiritual power. The city, set on a saddle between two high peaks, didn’t feel quite real. Not yet. We climbed down to the ruins. Kevin wanted to explore the passageways and staircases that tied the city together, and I wanted to climb above them.

I headed for Huayna Picchu, the great promontory above Machu Picchu, which I planned to scale. I signed the register and read the warnings about dizzyingly steep steps, and despite my fear, I started upward. How the Incas managed to step sure-footedly along the side of the cliff I don’t know. I leaned into the rock to give myself a psychological balance against the spiraling emptiness off my shoulder. I stopped to let three young Americans pass. “Just wait,” the last one said as he inched, step by step, his legs shaking. “The real fun begins on the way down.”

I thought about turning around, but something kept me going. Finally I climbed atop a huge granite boulder, the summit. Here I had a perfect 360-degree view, the best of the trip. If I stood up, which I did cautiously, I could stare down at the horseshoe bend in the Rio Urubamba, 3,000 feet below. Snowcapped peaks rose in all directions. Huayna Picchu is surrounded by the great Andes, with virgin white clouds brushing the mountaintops.

After 3 1/2 days on the trail, I could finally breathe without hyperventilating. Perched on this spire, I relaxed as I got a condor’s view of Machu Picchu. Below, the tour buses had begun to arrive, and streams of visitors flooded through the Sun Temple and the dwellings set in rows on the hillside. From this angle, it looked as the thriving community might have before the Spaniards came to the continent in 1527. I could imagine the villagers tending crops, watching livestock. About 500 people stood below me, a number that matched the population of the city at its height.

By the time Francisco Pizarro founded Lima (the modern-day capital of Peru) in 1535, Machu Picchu had been abandoned. The Indians never revealed its existence, the conquistadors never found it, and nature reclaimed the city. When explorer Hiram Bingham arrived in 1911, he thought he had discovered Vilcabamba, the lost city where the Incas had retreated from the Spaniards. Instead he had come across a city that had escaped unplundered for more than 400 years.

Were there others?

From this perch, I could see a terracing nearby that had been uncovered just six years before. An even larger city, Espiritu Pampa, kept archeologists busy only miles from Machu Picchu. I was convinced that the jungle had not revealed all its secrets.

I rejoined Kevin two hours later. Sipping a soda, he told me how stones the size of Volkswagens had been quarried in the valley and carried up steep hillsides to build the city. How did they raise these stones, sometimes 20 tons apiece, into place and fit them together seamlessly?

“Maybe aliens helped them,” Kevin said, smiling wryly at one of the theories that has tried to explain the mystery. We laughed and realized that we might never know. But we did know, with satisfaction, that we’d met the Inca Trail’s physical and mental challenges to find a connection with the past.

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GUIDEBOOK

Walking the Inca Trail

Getting there: LanChile flies from LAX to Lima; from there, fly AeroContinente or LanPeru to Cuzco. Round-trip fares begin at $734. Train tickets to the Inca Trail (about $5) are sold at San Pedro train station in Cuzco or at a tour agency in the city’s main square, Plaza de Armas.

Outfitters: Wilderness Travel, telephone (800) 247-6700, and Wildland Adventures, tel. (800) 345-4453, book guided trips. Agencies around Cuzco’s main square also offer guided trips. Some rent camping equipment, but it’s better to bring your own; rental gear tends to be shabby. Costs range from $60 to $200 and include food, cook, porter, guide, train ticket and park entrance fee. Porters can also be hired on the trail for $15 to $20 a day.

An excellent resource is the South American Explorers Club, tel. 011-51-84-223-102.

For more information: Consulate General of Peru, 3460 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1005, L.A., CA 90010; tel. (213) 252-5910, Internet https://www.2dreamweb.com/laconsulate.htm.