While staying in Cuzco, Peru, heart of the former Inca Empire, I saw again an acquaintance I had made camping in the mountains of northern Bolivia, and English fellow named Charlie Burns. Cool and easygoing, Charlie was a DJ back home and now and then shot into record shops to pick up tracks of world music he would later use in his mixing. One night while eating a cheap chicken dinner off the main square I left Charlie to run to the toilet (at my hotel), and returned to find that he had made friends with a splendid French guy named Gregoire Dey. Gregoire was a the end of a six month trip he had taken beginning with business school in Mexico and working his way down to the Andes. His girlfriend back in France was the woman of his dreams and he was eager to get back to her and propose. Charlie and I agreed to hurry up and hike the Inca Trail the day after next with him.

The next day we went to Pisaq, a nearby ruined Inca city only 45 minutes public bus ride from Cuzco and there I saw what remains as the best "modern" Native American architecture of my life. The buildings there had spectacular lines and angles in blocks of polished stone with joints so tight a razor blade could not fit between the pieces even after 500 years of wear and tear.

That evening back in Cusco I left my companions and went up alone to the huge ruin of Sacsayhuaman, fifteen hard uphill minutes from the main plaza. Modern interpreters of the Inca empires' capitol speculate that the whole city of Cuzco as seen from the air is in the shape of a giant jaguar or puma. The head of this puma is the hilltop building complex of Sacsayhuaman which some speculate was a theological university of the ruling Inca shaman class. At the heart of Sacsayhauman's 18-wheeler truck sized stone "campu" lies a circle of rocks speculated to be the base of a larger round observatory referred to as "the eye of the puma." Some more new-age- oriented archeologists attribute the Inca's ability to construct huge cities in plans of birds and animals (actually one can find examples of many cultures doing this for the last 3000 years in South America - the Nazca Lines for example) to their highest priests having achieved the ability to make their conciousness leave and soar far above their physical bodies. Some believe that "the eye of the Puma" was the maximum observitory from where priests kept an eye on the whole of the empire (streching from Chile to Ecuador) and beyond (since there is a tale of some shamans having forseen the European military developments and subsequent invasion of the Americas).

Like other evenings I hiked up to the "the eye of the puma" and sat and cleared my mind, letting the mental knots unravel as the last rays of the sun died red on the jagged horizon. Like the other times I had done this I ended up napping, laying down, legs still crossed, head out of the wind scrubbing the hilltop, mind relaxed. This evening I was suprised by a group of three people, two girls (one of the girls named Melisa) and a guy guiding them on an informal tour peeking over the edge of the wall and spotting me - "who is that?"

I introduced myself and accompanied them down the hill to old town Cuzco. We made a date to meet up for some drinks later - I will bring my boys Greg and Charlie along.

I told Gregoire and Charlie about the rendezvous as we walked to have our dinner of guinea pig and chicha we had ordered the night before. The restaurant was at the end of a long sketchy passage winding through the back of an old house off one of the less-touristy streets in the colonial old city. Guinea pig, or "cuy" is a local favorite in all of the Andes. It is easy to maintain, a silent houseguest usually penned in with chicken wire behind the couch in most houses and flats, and fed on cheap wild grasses sold on every street corner by Indians for this purpose. Chicha is an alcoholic drink made from corn chewed up in the mouths of those preparing it and spat into a large jug for fermentation, the human saliva acting as some sort of catalyst in the process. This was served to each of us in a huge glass with a mashed up banana inside, the overall taste of it sweet and creamy.

After eating we all bought matching huge conical felt hats (supposedly used by rural farmers in regions of Peru I did not see) and strutted our stuff into the main plaza where we met up with the threesome from the "eye of the puma." We went out to some bars, danced and long after my two companions returned to their hotels I was still up until 5 AM where I had only enough time to shower and pack before we were all to meet up for our train through the mountains to the kilometer stop where we would begin the four-day Inca trail trek.

Leaving the girls I made a loose commitment to meet up with Melisa in Aguas Calientes at the end of the Inca trail on the off chance that we finished one day early and arrived there when she was still around (she was not doing the trek but had plans in a few days to go straight to Macchu Picchu and the nearby hot spring town of Aguas Calientes).

The weather on the trail was horrendous, fast moving cold rainstorms made it difficult at times to even see where we were going on the steep up and down stairways winding over the high mountains (all of this way above 9000 feet), we were soaked, Gregoire was perhaps the fastest hiker I have even gone with, and we made it to Macchu Picchu the third morning, one day earlier than normal.

Arriving in Aguas Calientes and checking at the desk of the first place listed in the Lonely Planet guide I was delighted to find the following note:

"Tuesday 10ish

Jason!

Felicitaciones!! I’m staying at the “IMASUMAC” hostel on the main street. We arrived late last night as on Sunday I was brutally ill and had to go to the hospital.

Anyhow, I hope your feeling reborn after re-pacing the steps of the Inca Gods, and taking in all the mind-blowing beauty of this fascinating region – oh, excuse the cheese please.

Ummmm, if you do make it in 4 days I will be truly impressed as on Sunday we were both dying with splitting headaches, and gurgelly bellies, I can’t imagine hardcore hiking. Hope to see you, we will probably leave on the afternoon train on Wednesday as we have an early Thursday flight to catch in Cuzco.

(map to hostel) its just a few doors away from Chez Maggie Restaurant. Rm 9.

Well if we don’t cross paths have a great stay and keep in Touch

Melisa"