Machu Picchu

The train to Machu Picchu seats exclusively. Local Peruvian Car: 3 dollars. Backpacker Car: 31 dollars. De facto segregation. I was never offered the Peruvian car, though technically I am a Peruvian resident and it should be offered to me. White face. White place. Backpacker car. The rationale is that the service in the backpacker car, which includes a seat and a small cart that offers beverages, costs more. I guess it makes sense. The Peruvian car only offers the seat. Beverage cart service mark up: 28 dollars. To be ironically fair, there were Peruvians in the Backpacker Car. Wealthy ones. So the segregation is therefore not racist, not blatant bigotry. It's the economically stimulated kind, ala los Estados Unidos, that makes sure that the haves and the have-nots don't kanoodle with one another. Kanoodling may lead to sharing, understanding. Mixing.

I sit back in my seat. "Coca-Cola please."

Arrival to Aguas Calientes, tourist dumping grounds. Get off the train. Go to the exit.

"Hostal. Hostal. 20 Soles. 15 soles. Hostal. Hot Water. Warm water. Water. You get your own room my friend. You get nice bed my friend. You get laid my friend. 10 soles. Hostal. 5 soles hostal. Just right here, my friend. Right around the corner, my friend. Real close, my friend. Hostal Numero Uno. Hostal Las Palmas. Hostal Machu Picchu. Right this way, my friend."

I go with the 15 soles hostal. I'm lead over a bridge. In the river below, trash pools dance like cans on the back of a newlywed limosine. In the corner of my eye I see the first class train arrive. Hostal workers scatter, replaced by men in suits holding signs with names typed in Arial Black.

"Here's your room, my friend."

"Hablo español."

"Yes. Very good my friend. Here's your room. 15 soles."

"Hay agua caliente?"

"Yes my friend. Hot water. Very comfortable. 15 soles."

I pay the cash. 5 hours of train and collectivo travel thus far. My stomach aches from starchy traveling foods. I just want a bed. I go into the bathroom. No toilet paper. Shit. Check the shower. No hot water.

4:30am. Wake up to hike to Machu Picchu. Catch the sunrise to see the paradise at the same moment when God will wake up and look at it again. Throw some cold water on my face. Choke down a granola bar and some yogurt. Grab my bag and I'm off down the street. The river churns, rages, growls and swallows the morning drizzle. GoreTex jackets already flood the streets. The bus stop is speckled with North Face, Marmot, Mountain Hardware logos. I move down the street to hike up to the ruins. Bus price: 20 dollars. Walking price: a sweaty shirt and a red face. The trail cuts through tropical forest, up steep granite steps, until an opening where the road comes in. Vvvrrrooooom! A bus flies by. Cross the street. Up the steps. Lush tropical forest. Candy wrappers and discarded plastic bottles. Road. Vvvrrroooom! Bus number two. I pick up the pace. Lush tropical forest. Granite steps. Pass a pasty white german. Pass a Limeño dressed in designer jeans. Get behind a Peruvian kid moving fast, lithe. Try to catch him. Tropical Forest. Granite steps. Almost get to him. Vvvrrrrrrooooom! Road. The kid prances elegantly up the steps across the road. I catch my breath. Last twenty meters. Ten. Five. Machu Picchu, one of the most beautiful places on earth. The line behind the green control station stretches for miles. This isn't even tourist season.

I wipe the sweat from my face and stand in line. Paradise seems to be a relative term and I am flabbergasted by the amount of tourists here. I get angry. Natural beauty should not be bastardized like this. Paradise should not have a line for miles. The masses change form. They become parasitic, filthy, ugly creatures, draining the life force, the magic out of Machu Picchu. The line morphes into a refuse bleeding tube sucking at the entrance of the archeological site. I stand critical, furious that I wasted my time and energy to arrive at the feeding grounds of the gluttonous gringo. And no matter how consciously I critisize, I too become the fat, hungry tourist. I blend into the bleeding tube and I wait my turn to bastardize beauty.

I enter and flee to higher places. A view. An escape. Something to be different. To honor the place. To witness beauty without the judgement of how it is, but rather what it is.

I get to a vista. Mist covers everything. I see no other people. The mist is too thick.

Amidst the mist I become cleansed. We all become cleansed. Our filth and parasitic nature is slowly sloughed off of our shoulders and we find a place to sit and wait. I forgive myself and ask forgiveness from the masses. The mist lifts. It's beautiful.

I cannot concieve of a world where Machu Picchu exists as nothing but a memory. For it to be a real sanctuary, a secret in the Peruvian Andes for nobles and gods, means that I must detach from any world that I can understand. I have to believe in a reality where stones can be hauled up mountain sides, where masonry work done with ancient tools is more precise than with modern ones. To understand Machu Picchu I have to understand that man can coexist with his natural surroundings and that man can create something as beautiful as the peaks that God created around the area. There is no way for my ignorant mind to be able to understand a live Machu Picchu. I settle instead for what I see before me. I realize that all of us are there to know that beauty. There is no fault in that.

I spend a few hours at Machu Picchu. I climb the peak that rests behind it. I get rained on on my return to Aguas Calientes. I feel better though. Tired, but better. I am heppy to have sat in the rising mist at Machu Picchu. I'll probably never go back.