Reported by Marick Payton

Reaching Our Destination: Magical Machu Picchu

After a day in town to more fully explore Cuzco, we caught an early morning train to Aguas Calientes, the little town at the base of Machu Picchu. Our truly fearless leader, the vegetarian Helge, had gotten a little too adventuresome the night before and eaten the salad with mayonnaise at one of the better restaurants in town. Both, we had been warned, were high risk fare. He was now sicker than the proverbial dog and could barely manage to get to and from the train station. The train ride was a delight, on it’s own, beginning with a back and forth seesaw up out of Cuzco and then on to Aguas Calientes. As we descended into the Urubamba river valley to the 8,000 foot elevation of AC, the vegetation grew lushly tropical. Indeed, we were entering the edge of the Amazon jungle region.

Arriving at our destination, we hiked a couple of blocks, through a gauntlet of vendors, to our hotel to quickly check in and catch a bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu. On the way up, Karen expressed her frustration with Helge, who was insisting on toughing-out his illness without benefit of the bountiful pharmacopoeia that others had brought along to deal with such problems. He had been to MP twice before, she noted, and this was her first and, perhaps, only visit. She had fully expected to to mark the occasion with a memorable romantic encounter between the two of them, and now Helge had gotten sick on her. In the true spirit of comradeship and sharing that so characterizes the motorcycling community, a number of us offered to step into the breach, as it were. But it wouldn’t have been the same, I guess, as she graciously declined the offers. It was great to see the beaming smile on her face the next day and know that Helge had surely recovered. At dinner that night Helge began playing with a charming little three-year old girl. He took her doll and cuddled it up protectively, to her delight. This entertaining and heart-warming interaction went on for half an hour or so. The guy charms people where ever he goes.

Machu Piccho is truly a magical place. While much lower than the places at which we had spent the last two weeks, it seemed much more mountainous. In the Altiplano everything is so high (and barren) that it doesn’t really look like high mountain country. Here, the peaks were picture-book craggy and dramatic. The ruins, themselves, are huge and excite the imagination. After our afternoon of initial exploration, we returned the following morning to hike the two local trails, a “relatively easy” one up to the Sun Gate or the scary one up the nearly vertical slopes of Wayna Picchu. Feeling relatively unadventurous that morning, I opted for the Sun Gate, along with about half of the group. This was a pleasant hike, to be sure, but the Sun Gate was covered in overcast, leaving me feeling rather disappointed. So, I decided, along with buddy Lance, to go do Wayna Picchu also. We met the others coming down as we started up and were somewhat reassured to see that all of them made it out, despite the admonition to name a next of kin before starting up. It was a challenging climb, particularly as the second of the day, but we kept each other going and were exhilarated to reach the top. The key, I felt, to making this climb without undue nervousness was very similar to that of riding a moto fast and well, keep your eyes on the path ahead. That night, for a few moments, Lance and I were the heroes for having done both trails. The fifteen minutes of fame for which I had been waiting these 60 years. Then it was over and we were just a couple more smucks riding our motos through South America. Oh, well, we have great memories!

While in Cuzco we met Ricardo, an Argentinean also exploring the back roads of South America. He truly looked the part of the moto adventurer with his scruffy beard, big smile and the dirtiest Transalp you can imagine. This was one of the occasions when I most regretted that I didn’t know Spanish more than that needed to get directions and deal with shopkeepers as I would have loved to swap tales with him. Dwight could and did and sent us all a wonderful picture of Roberto, to boot. Speaking of Dwight, I am reminded that one of the great, if simple, pleasures at the end of a long day’s ride was finding a good espresso and, if we were truly lucky, a great ice cream to go with it. Dwight and his spirited wife Scooter shared this enthusiasm and we spent a number of fun evenings together in this pursuit.

Speaking of diversions, several of our group were addicted to the Internet and email. While Dwight, Scooter and I were engaged in our epicurean quests, they were as fervently engaged trying to find the local Internet cafe. Surprisingly, they were generally successful, even in the most out-of-the-way places. Indeed, even little Aguas Calientes had such an establishment. Of course, since the town routinely experienced brown out conditions except for a few hours a day, conditions anathema to high tech electronics, the window of opportunity was a narrow one.

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