We held our breaths as we jousted for right of passage with another passenger bus headed in the opposite direction. Our impasse arose as our bus shuttled all ten of us, plus our guide and driver, toward the 82 kilometer marker on the "Inca Trail," whose four day hike would culminate in the ruins of Machu Picchu. The only indication that we were actually driving along a road were the rutted dirt markings of tires. The road itself appeared to be more of a glorified dirt path, imitating a one lane road. Every few hours we would wind through small towns whose buildings leaned into the road and kept the trail from widening into more than the width of our bus. The houses we passed were of graying brown earthen bricks made by hand, and stacked on top of each other to connect the roofs with the floors. Thatched roofs, want for repair and rotted through, sported water flow-ways into the houses and impromptu sky lights. Peppered throughout our three hour bus ride from Cusco to the Inca trail head were various farm animals. Pigs, horses, cows, bulls, dogs, cats, and chickens all grazed or scrounged for what food could be found, while ignoring the rumbling of our bus only a few feet away. Encroaching on the road were budding cactus apples in bright yellows and oranges, lighting our path in blooming color. Towns gave way to our decaying dirt path, then returned again when the earth was safe from sliding out beneath it and continued to outline our way. Our horizons are the tops of the Andes, smooth rolling bumps that give the impression of being small hills themselves, separated from the range on which they sit atop. It is hard to believe that we are actually striding across the dulled serrated edges of one of the world's most profound mountain ranges. Within the valleys that these endless hilltops create we see a repeating geometric pattern of Escher-like rectangle parcels of farmland, rowed in corn and herbs stretching to the steeper hills that surround them. Disrupting the pattern at places, and defining borders in others, runs the river Urubamba that satiates the crops and provides water and rapids for rafters and local communities who rely on its constant flow.

After three hours of hand signaling to other buses we met head-on that either meant reverse or go around, and after our lungs had had their fill of the loose volcanic silt that we rode along, we arrived at the trail head. Full of anticipation, our entire group was eager to start their journey. A tarp was layed out on the ground and our bags were retrieved from the top of the bus, where they had endured the ride, the porters began to lay them on the tarped ground. "One more hour," our guide Maria informs us, as our porters erect a cooking tent and prepare to begin making our first meal on the trail, or at least our first meal within sight of the trail. With stifled anticipation we ambled around the rocky ground, some paying their one sol to use the bathroom, others taking their first pictures of the vistas that engulf them. I can feel the overall group feeling of anxiousness. We had all risen early that morning as the bus picked us up at our hostels; Michelle and I, being the first to board, had endured the longest wait to get to the trail and begin our trip. One hour of picking everyone else up, and three hours of driving later, we sat, stood, walked, and gazed anxiously as the start of the trail began below us, beckoning us to forego lunch and begin as soon as possible. We looked down the slope to the start of the trail where a mass of hikers had already converged. Their attention was given to a structure where Peruvian officials were stationed in order to collect entrance tickets, check passports, and elongate the travelers' wait as their muscles ached to drive them onward a few steps closer to their goal that lay through ascending and descending passes that stretched for four days and three nights beyond the sky-encroaching horizon. As we began to eat our lunch of brothy soup, baguette bread, and spaghetti, I noticed other groups starting to arrive. Having gone through the same ritual of laying out a tarp and removing their things from the bus, they sat, like us, on foldable stools in a circle. Each staring quietly into the expanse within the circle that separated them from those they faced. Silence was occasionally interrupted by testing questions and eager answers. Conversations were started solely to fill voids and to find out who they are in the group. Would they be the straggler, the funny one, the annoying, the quiet one? Who could they speak to? Who understands the beauty they want to discuss in the same encrypted language that hopefully a few in their group have deciphered? This is where the friendships begin.

With lunch finished, we shouldered our bags and as a disunited whole, began our walk toward the trail head. We handed the guards our passports and entry tickets. He took them from us without looking up, and handled the pages of each with a flurry of familiarity arising from the repetion of this one task. We were then instructed to fill out the guest register: name, date, passport number, and country of origin. I filled in the information, finishing it with "USA," and vainly scanned the page for other American travelers. I found one. Five hundred travelers a day are allowed on the trail. The trail takes four days, that gives the opportunity for 2000 potential hikers along the four day hike. One out of 2000 of which was American. I was reminded of a blatant fact I had been aware of the moment I set foot in the international departure section of the Houston Airport: there is a great lack of international American travelers. I thought about 9-11 and all the reasons associated with not traveling overseas. I was upset by what seemed to be a societal decision not to experience travel outside American borders. (Those reading this have already shown a desire to travel, and are most probably excluded from this assumption. However, it is lamentably obvious that we are in the minority).

We crossed the river Urubamba on a cable and wood bridge that swayed from side to side and bounced up and down like a suspended trampoline, as the backpack laden hikers excitedly quick-stepped across it. Pictures were really starting to fly out of camera shutters, and film rolls were quickly being christened. The irises of cameras and people alike were filled with flowing water, smiling hikers, and a meandering trail that cut a swath through the mountains, not caring if anyone at all thundered across its back to where it was headed.

We hiked at our own paces, Michelle and I defining the rear of the group as we constantly commented on the vastness of our surroundings. Hiking into high altitude mountain passes dwarfs a human ego, and aggrandizes one's thoughts, as if thinking big were the only way to cope with the grandiosity of nature. You think about the world in relation to yourself, you think about where you've been, how far you've already come, who you've left behind, and who is hiking beside you with the same heavy weight. We walked for hours, our conversation suffering as our breath failed us. Occasionally we would stop and wait for other group members as our guide would inform us of various Inca related facts. We stopped by century plants and discovered they were used by the Incas to make alcoholic tonics. Today the same plant is used to make Mexico's national drink, not diahrrea-inducing amoeba water, but rather tequila. We passed by ruins whose garden terraces still bore fertile land that now grew hearty Andean grasses and weeds. Hand crafted rocks built on a hillside of rock and dirt, these totems of Incan life still held strong along cliff sides and in cultural significance. In some parts of Peru these same terraces are still put to practical use in growing food for the community.

Walking, adjusting our bags, stopping, learning, and breathing hard we walked for six hours until we reached our campsite. There we found our tents already erected and want for inhabitants. Just above a Urubamba tributary, shielded from us by a twenty foot drop and a thin line of scraggly bamboo, sat our tents. Our porters, having struggled under the burdens of hundreds of other trips and hundreds of other pounds of equipment had passed our labored trudgings along the trail and not only set up our tents before we arrived, but also brewed hot water for coca tea, hot chocolate, and coffee, and had prepared a small snack of popcorn to satisfy us before dinner.

The night air tugged at our skin and begged us to put on our jackets, wool hats, and gloves. We gladly complied as our muscles tried to stay awake for the remainder of light that sank reluctantly behind the crags in the mountains. Feeling as if my muscles had never before worked, or my lungs never having breathed, the hours of self propulsion up hills and through dry landscapes with thickening groupings of trees, had taken their toll. I labored to sit conversing with my fatigued companions. A shared struggle binds strangers quickly. For us, our first confrontation with the climb was immensely sufficient in binding our equally exhausted but happy humors.

We conversed about where we were from, what we were doing in Peru, and for how long we would be doing it. By the end of our four day trek, I would come to consider six of these people great friends. Edna and her son Hector from Mexico, vacationing before Hector started college. Broos from Belgium, meeting friends and girlfriends of friends. Marco and Michele, two friends from Brasil who just happened to be traveling to the same place at the same time. And William, a semi-ex-patriot Englishman living in Switzerland and traveling abroad before begining higher education. From different continents, speaking different languages, and sharing the same goals and accomplishments, we sat beside eachother under a thatched straw roof supported by four bark covered tree trunks that looked as if they had grown there simply to support the roof. We talked and ate the dinner of trout that was prepared for us until our eyelids threatened to shut out the camp light, and our heads became murky under our wool hats. We crept off to bed one at a time in preparation for the hardest day of hiking. The next day would place us at our highest peak, 4200 meters (13,776 ft.). I slept heavy on aching bones and an altitude induced headache in anticipation of tomorrow's arduous test of will. The tiny stream below us dulled its sounds under my cover of fatigue, and I sunk into sleep as a rock glides to the bottom of a pond.

Still to Come...Machu Picchu: The Second Dawn