We’re freshly back from Peru. I haven’t slept in nearly 36 hours, aside from a 30-minute neck-jerking nap on the Lima-to-Miami red-eye. Honestly, I’m feelin’ a wee bit loopy.
Mr. P has over 500 photos of our journey, and I have roughly an equal number of stories, but it is late; to organize any sort of blog post right now would be like trying to pilot a space shuttle while hammered on pisco sours.
Yet, I will present anyway the definitive picture of our Peruvian voyage — the money shot! After four days of hiking on a rainy and exhausting Inca Trail, we arrived to behold the stark, timeless, eerie beauty of Machu Picchu:
Our Best View of Machu Picchu
…
Then on the ladder of the earth I climbed
through the lost jungle’s tortured thicket
up to you, Macchu Picchu.
High city of laddered stones,
at last the dwelling of what earth
never covered in vestments of sleep.
In you like two lines parallel,
the cradles of lightning and man
rocked in a wind of thorns.
Mother of stone, spume of condors.
High reef of the human dawn.
Spade lost in the primal sand.
…
–Pablo Neruda, “The Heights of Machu Picchu”
