“Haiku! Haiku!” our guide yelled. The Quechua term for “let’s go/get going” became threaded into the fabric of my days and my dreams during the passage across the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. I never would have imagined the extent of the challenge of the 3.2 day, 30-mile hike based on Active Adventures – South America‘s website description alone. Maybe it was the fever that took up high residence the day before we were to begin our journey — and had yet to leave the day of — that altered the description’s import, or lack there of. Or, that I later lost the ham/cheese sandwich I gingerly ingested the next morning on the bus en route to the park, and in front of 17 other people, while waiting for our guides to finish checking us into the park. Though I calmly and artfully turned my back and removed myself ever so discreetly from the group before the offending moment of truth, one collective gasp rose up from behind me before the guides rushed those from which it had issued forth closer to the trailhead — and away from me. Never mind the poor cactus upon which I heaved my vengeance…thrice.

Wrongly, the guides thought I was having a bout of altitude sickness, evidenced by the Andean elixir they poured into the palms of my hands, instructing me to rub it heartily between them before bringing my palms close to my nose and inhaling deeply. Opening of the lungs to combat the altitude was not what I needed in that moment … or, as it turned out, for the next 72 hours. But the heady floral alcohol-based concoction used by shamans to “open” one’s energy was still hard to refuse despite the misdiagnosis. Read More