Day two on the Inca trail saw us on a muscle-cramping, heart-tearing, pulse-like-a-kettle-drum climb that lasted six straight hours.

The second day is completely about the hike. Whether writing a description, a novel, a short story, or just trying to survive it, the steep ascent to the highest point on the trail marks a turning point in the path.

When you arrive at the highest pass on the trail, taunting you as you climb up its 4,200 meter scowl, you leave your uncertainty about your ability to finish it. Looking far down at the still-ascending climbers, stepping and breathing, stepping and breathing, drawing the image of ants on respirators, you know you can make it to where the final Incan strongholds stand in defiance of the conquering Spaniards.

A knock on a tent sounds like a fist striking air and meeting with a wind that whistles through its knuckles. That morning at five we woke to the scrape of a knock on our tent wall. ¨Buenos dias,¨ came the soft but confident voice of the silhouette that beckoned us awake with offerings of ¨¿coca te?¨ Sitting up murky eyed and stiff from the ground, I found my sleeping bag twisted around me, effectively pinning my arms to my side. I looked over to Michelle as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and stretched it from her body. I untangled myself from the down cocoon and mumbled a friendly ¨good morning¨ to the figure outside. Forgetting where I was for a candle flicker of a moment, I changed idioms and quickly added, ¨buenos dias.¨ Again came the query, ¨¿coca te?¨

Point Clarification Approaches:

Layman's Dissertation: Somatic Effects of Coca Leaves on the Human Body.

Coca leaves have been used by almost all Andean cultures before and during Incan times. It is inherent to their cultural identity and sense of self. Elaborate rituals have been constructed around the foundation of coca. To remove coca from the Andes is to cut out an organ of the Andean cultures. The removal of too many customs, or the extraction of a vital keystone belief or action, results in a terminal culture. A culture good only for spare parts and second-hand donations to other groups.

Yes, coca is used to make cocaine. But so is kerosene. Kerosene is not ritualized or central to the historical survival of any culture, except only in the abstract. Why not chastise kerosene, make it illegal? Of course I´m being facetious, but my stance on various coca related issues is thinly veiled.

The effects of coca:
Coca is a proven energy booster, appetite surpressant, and cure all for altitude sickness, as well as sour stomachs. The leaf itself seems as if it has been honing its abilities for eons in order to help gasping gringos up steep mountain passes with the added benefit of soothing the foreign traveler's savaged soft stomachs, no doubt already ravaged by the evils of developing world water and leafy greens.

What was my altitude indused headache's hasty response to the question of ¨¿coca te?¨ ¨!Si, por favor!¨ I unzipped the tent wall and was greeted by a steaming plastic coffee mug brimmed in opaque green water in which floated roughly twenty leaves. Michelle and I sat staring out the opening in the tent, wrapped warmly in our down sleeping bags staving off the cold, and listening to the river still running its course somewhere down the cliff before us. As we drank lightly from our steeping cups, we watched early morning humming birds search for flowers among shrubs shouldered against a thin screen of bamboo that lined the river's cliff. After a short while of waking up and enjoying our surroundings, we began stuffing our backpacks full of their belongings, then tightened the straps that held them in. Emerging from our tent, the early morning heat had yet to reach us, so we acknowledged our breath's misting as we breathed and spoke. The sun was painting the peaks around us with its golden pallet. We tucked our fingers tighter into our gloves and patted our wool hats down on our heads as we walked the short path to breakfast.

Our porters had already prepared hot water for warming drinks and bread with butter and jam to compliment the brown sugar oatmeal that warmed our lips and bellies as we spooned it into ourselves.

Leaving our tents for the porters to take down, we shouldered our packs and began our upward trek.

"Up, up, and away" sang Super Man, "carry me!" cried the hikers. We all struggled under the weight of light air. Porters packed high with plastic mesh bags easily twice their size, blazed past us with an oncoming warning of ¨porter!,¨ followed quickly by a smell of chicha (a masticated corn drink), a working body, and chipmunk cheeks choked with coca leaves. They hurled themselves up the mountain like crash test dummies on the test strip. Our job as unaccustomed trekkers was to take one step, stop, breath heavy, sigh, wipe the stinging sweat from our eyes, sigh again, breath deep, take one more step, and repeat for six hours. The only thing that changed around us was the flora that outlined the trail.

Beginning our climb we were shaded by trees that leaned into the path, reaching their branches out and up, searching to pat us on the back and wish us luck. After an hour of walking through a forested procession, the trail gave way to smaller shrubs and grasses that looked up at us as we passed. Later, the scenery would become noticeable only when our steps stopped and we granted ourselves a rest. Only then would we have the clarity of mind, and a removal of concentration from each stone we stepped on, to turn our heads around us and take in the altitude's beauty. Hills disappeared into hills and the sky filled in the spaces in the valleys with haze, marking the tenative beginning of the sky and the solid omnipresence of the Andean peaks. In the distance the mountain ¨Lagrimas Sagradas¨ (Sacred Tears) towered above us, wearing a hat of snow whose white dome contrasted sharply with its black rocks.

The trail that day consumed everyone's concentration. We had been warned it would be the hardest day. A day of proving oneself to oneself. We all made it to the top, gasping enough air to joke about our struggle. Through persistance, will, stubborness, and the realization that going back was never an option, we trudged up and over stone laid paths that turned with the curvature of the mountain they side-saddled.

At our new camp we drank deep of the water that remained. I tasted iodine and let it run down my cheeks and chin, greedily forcing more water into me than would fit at one time. I slept heavy that night, too tired to notice the fatigue of my body. An eight hour hike was waiting to wake us in the morning, but my sleeping body paid it no attention, as it reveled in its accomplishment of conquering the trail that even as I slept struggled uphill.