85. Manaus, Brazil

85.

Manaus, Brazil:

As the plane circles for a landing, I can see that this is a big, modern city--but best of all to me is the white ocean-going ship I can see far below tied up and waiting at the city dock.

At the airport I give a disgusted taxi driver the last cash I have—an American dollar and some Peruvian change—for a short, fast ride to the dock. I still have a few traveler’s checks, but in my haste to reach the ship--which may be leaving momentarily-- I have not changed any of them into Brazilian currency.

The beautiful big white ship at the dock is the “Anna Nery”, a luxury cruiser bound for Rio de Janeiro.

They have a berth for me so for the last thousand miles or so of the Amazon, I’ll enjoy excellent food, private stateroom with shower, stewards, swimming pool and all the accouterments of la dulce vita. No problem--the purser cashes a traveler's check and for only ten times the cost of the first thousand miles I get the royal works.

What a fantastic bargain!

I dress in my only surviving jeans and shirt--hoping to be mistaken for an eccentric American millionaire--and amble to the dining salon feeling mighty like a king.

The chief steward places me at a table of English-speaking Brazilians so I will feel more comfortable. Dr. Jose, an M.D. from Sao Paulo, welcomes the eccentric American millionaire to his table with a gift of several small aquamarines from Minas Gerais. The good doctor’s charming wife and lovely daughter chat with me politely in flawless English.

The chinaware! The silverware!! The food!!! A couple of days ago I was practically fighting for my life, eating slop, sleeping flat on a steel deck, tormented by mosquitoes--and now I am in the very Womb of Luxury!

These changes are doing something to my head!

...

84. Above the Amazon

Above the Amazon


84.

I can’t afford to stay in this expensive town until the next down-river boat leaves so I catch a plane for the middle third of the big river. The river shrinks as the plane flies higher. The silver ribbon on the deep green carpet below is so much easier to handle.

No wonder tourists like to fly from one interesting place to another! All that boring in-between country is just too much trouble.

The Swedish businessman seated beside me tells me what it’s like to sell refrigerators to the natives far below. His wife is happy in Sweden with the big paychecks he sends home. I’ll bet she is too! He gets off when the plane lands in Leticia and a Portuguese-speaking gentleman takes his place. I always thought Portuguese was similar to Spanish, but I can't understand a word he says.

...

83. Iquitos, Peru

83.


Iquitos, Peru:

Rubber (not Robber!) barons built this city about eighty years ago and it is pretty strange.

There are about six square blocks of tile-fronted three-storied buildings in a sort of “baroque-modern” architectural style surrounded by a few acres of dilapidated shacks surrounded by steaming jungle and it has an airport.

I spend an interesting few days looking around.

The language is still Peruvian Spanish and the town is easier on a traveler than Pucalpa

In the evenings, the streets fill with cycles, cars, taxis and people. The most popular shops here are fabric shops. The mostly handsome, brown or black, well-dressed citizens apparently love costume.

I am tall in comparison to the other men here though I am average in America.

The tourists, such few as there are, lounge in one or the other of the two high priced hotels in town drinking tall cool ones all day and boogying all night.

There is an “Amazon Museum” for the curious, but the muggy climate isn’t kind to their collection of stuffed birds, animals, reptiles and fish.

If you want to see something really scary though, try viewing their moldy stuffed boa constrictor with red glass bead eyes, massive jaws and a body like a tree trunk.

About the man-eating piranha fish, the forty-five pound killer frogs, the murderous Indians with blow-guns and all that which you have heard about and seen in the movies—well, there is a riverside lodge near here where professional natives put on a safe “wild Amazon” show for rich tourists -- but it is too expensive for this traveler to visit so I miss the whole savage thing.

...

82. Public Health Risk Solved

82.

Public Health Risk Solved

The Canadians have convinced the captain that he should contact the health authorities before allowing anyone ashore since there may be a risk of spreading the German’s hepatitis, so the captain anchors offshore until some medical people come out. When they eventually come aboard they don’t have the necessary hepatitis vaccine to give shots to the passengers and crew, but they do have plenty of smallpox vaccine so they give everybody a shot of that and we all allowed to go ashore.

The Canadians and I don’t get the shots since we have W.H.O. card proof that we have already been vaccinated for smallpox.

I leave the boat without the girl and that may be a mistake since I am sure I will go a long way to find another like her.

...

81. Marriage Proposal

81.

Marriage Proposal

There’s a sixteen-year-old Peruvian girl in first class who has been flirting with me.

She’s cute, with gold-capped teeth which sort of sets off her pretty smile.

Her brother, a youth of fourteen, tells me she wants to marry me and even produces an engagement ring which he has made of glass beads and copper wire.

I’m flattered. Wouldn’t she make a terrific souvenir of the Amazon Jungle?

But when the captain hears of the proposed engagement, he banishes me to the steerage below. It seems he has his own plans for the girl, but he shouldn’t be so greedy. He’s already got three young girls living with him in his cabin!

I spend the last night aboard with the common herd below in “Second Class”. I have taken the whole marriage proposal thing as the harmless play of some kids, but I find out the girl is absolutely serious. Sixteen is the proper age for a woman to marry down here and she is looking for a suitable man and I qualify.

Some of the boat’s crew has heard about the proposed marriage and follow me below and hassle me in various ways. They want to see how tough Americans really are and I am the only one handy. I am pretty weak from more or less constant diarrhea and am no fighter anyway but I manage to bluff my way out of any violence--lucky for me since I would certainly lose! I am also more or less saved from the toughies by the sighting of city lights in the distance: Iquitos—the end of the journey for this boat.

...

80. Party on Board

80.
Party on Board

The next evening there’s a big party on the boat. The owner has come aboard and wants to celebrate.

The Canadian challenges all comers in first class (and me) to an Australian-style beer-drinking contest.

When someone yells, “Go!” we pick up and gulp a full glass of beer and the first one to bang the empty glass back down on the table wins.

Well, it’s no contest. The Canadian snatches up his full glass, inhales the brew and returns the glass to the table in one lightning motion. I never saw anything like it. So we practice with him, trying to improve our style, until we’re all smashed. The Canadian, who usually speaks only English, is speaking fluent Castillian, the boat owner, who speaks no English, is coming on like Winston Churchill. I’m speaking Chinese and everyone understands! This proves my new theory that The Australian Drinking Contest solves the problems of international communication.

...

79. Monkey in Hand

79.

Every few hours the boat ties up to the shore and men unload cargo like bags of cement and cartons of Chicklets chewing gum.

The Canadian couple and I go ashore to explore the sun-faded villages.

The village inhabitants are dressed from a Sears catalog and the houses have plank walls with thatch roofs. There are no regular streets and no vehicles except an occasional Honda 50 motorbike plowing through the mud. It’s a long way from Ventura Freeway.

The Amazon becomes very wide and the sunset very like a Kubrick’s “2001” time tunnel. The pink, yellow and blue sky mirrored perfectly by the flat water horizon.

At midnight the boat ties up at another village. The Canadians and I are attracted by the blaring music and lamplights of a village cantina and go ashore. As we guzzle a couple of warm beers a kid tries to sell me a baby monkey, which shits in my hand. Everybody gets a big laugh out of that!

A canoe-load of oranges arrives and the passengers buy out the lot in minutes. Though there are millions of mosquitoes, the evening is pleasant. I sit on a cardboard container to watch the unloading: more cement, more Nestle canned milk. The workers try to warn me about something, but before I can figure out what they are saying, the caustic soda leaking from the case I am sitting on eats my jeans! Goodbye old friends!

...

78. Ship of Fools

78.

Ship of Fools

The captain allows me to stay on the upper deck (First Class) to keep the Canadians company, so I only see the German when I take him his meals.

Dinnertime! The second-class passengers line up—biggest and meanest first, then women, and then children and I take my place last in line—the polite American! I duck under the pig’s head hanging on a hook over the chow line, hold out plastic bowls for a portion for me and one for the German and go below to eat with him feeling mighty like a refugee.

Back on deck I look at the river and the jungle slowly moving by. On the shore a boy flings a spear at something in the water. Here on the river the circle of life closes even quicker than in Pucalpa. The strong live and the weak die. For human animals, strength means money. Money means health, security, food, women—life itself. The less money you have, the less of everything. No money and you’re dead. That’s the grim reality on this Ship of Fools.

I am being confronted with some pretty stark facts of life. Momma! Where are the police, the laws, the Social Security, the credit cards, the friends, the sanitation, the McDonald’s hamburgers?

The only things I have going for me are my fit body and my USA passport. And about that fit body, well, I hope I look a lot stronger than I feel because that original amoeba has staged a successful revolution in my intestines--but for my safety I can’t let any weakness show. I wonder what my colleagues back at the university are teaching today? My teacher, The Big Flow, is laying out some hard, practical lessons for me.

...

77. Down the Amazon

77.

Down the Amazon:

Today we depart.

The boat is a seventy-foot, Diesel-powered, steel craft with two decks and steerage below—not new, but sturdy.

I go aboard the boat early in the morning but there is no rush. Humans in the tropics pace themselves to stay cool.

When I come aboard I ask for the captain and am told in an echo from Melville: “He’s above in his cabin and he’s as black as thou art white.”

From this captain I buy a second-class ticket to Iquitos for US $8.

There are three other gringo passengers and about forty Peruvian passengers making the voyage with me. The other gringos are a handsome blond couple from Canada and a young German man. The Canadians are energetic, rich young tourists and the German is broke and hustling a long way from home.

The German comes aboard accompanied by a very homely Peruvian girl. He leaves his backpack and goes ashore with the girl and his bedroll for an hour of sex. He tells me later that she pays him for the service and that is how he earns his passage as a second-class passenger but that girl is so ugly I doubt if it was worth it.

The German is not feeling well. He retires into the steerage below decks and ties up his cheap plastic hammock. The next time I see him the whites of his eyes are banana yellow—hepatitis!

I speak to the captain about it, but he makes no move.

In the dark hole where the German lies helpless the natives have started to steal his few belongings—first his pocketknife, then his spoon and eating bowl, then his clothes. Good grief! Never get helpless when you travel second class on the Amazon! When I bring him a bowl of the rice-slop that is dinner for we second-class passengers, he offers to be my partner. He suggests we buy a small boat in Iquitos and float the rest of the way down the river to Belem and the Atlantic, a mere 2,500 miles, then we will sell the boat for a fat profit! Good grief!

...

76. Yet More Pucalpa

76.

Yet More Pucalpa

By the last days of the long week in Pucalpa I am getting VERY bored so I think about entertainment.

It seems to me that people often like other people for their entertainment value. If a person is highly entertaining he is often successful and has what he wants. A new arrival is often entertaining simply because he is new. His story, his “song and dance” are new, but he’d better keep it changing or people will get bored and he’ll be out of it, except with those who feel more comfortable with re-runs!

Old Picasso, for example—first he was a master of his craft and second—he kept people wondering what he would come up with next—and he was always ready with something far out!

Maybe it's best to forget the gawkers entirely and just live in a way which keeps you yourself entertained by all the changes life hands you—out in “Edge City” as Kesey calls it. It seems to me that life in Edge City would be most satisfying. The “together” people must live in Edge City.

But the over-ripe odor of Pucalpa is starting to get to me and Montezuma is collecting some more serious and very painful revenge in my guts.

I am not getting much done and am feeling pretty low, but I am staying alive and that’s half the chore most of the time.

Maybe the week I’ve spent here is like time spent in a concert of unfamiliar music—not much fun, but educational.

...

75. Still More Pucalpa

75.

Still More Pucalpa:

I find a pharmacy and go in to buy some iodine to use as a water purifier.

The clerk is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.

She is the Queen of Pucalpa! I wonder what kind of jungle future she has in store.

I’ve been trying to find a copy of “Alice in Wonderland” in Spanish.

I know the book pretty well in English and have discovered that I can read books in Spanish if I already know them in English so it helps my study of Spanish.

The town library has a collection of about 500 books and it is one of them. And guess what’s playing at the local movie theater? Yep, Just my luck! Alicia en la Pais de Maravillas, so I go ask the Queen of Pucalpa at the pharmacy to go to the movie with me.

She won’t. I tried!

And now a word about the locals:

Though there are no tourists on the street, there are still a few “professional natives” lurking about, but the men here are never professional natives.

Men wear western-style clothes, Japanese watches. European cologne and shoes--but there are a few tourist bait women who wear the traditional folk-costume: black and white kilt and white blouse.

In one hand they carry strings of Job’s Tear seed beads and in the other toy bow and arrows. I am the Tourist of the Week and since they must feed their children and since I am an American the prices are up.

Odd! These beads are exactly the same as the Job's Tear beads professional natives in Hawaii sell to the tourists there—for exactly the same price! Am I on to an international bead conspiracy?

...

74. More Pucalpa

74.

More Pucalpa

The town of Pucalpa is comprised of two carless mud streets running parallel to the Amazon. There are lots of sleazy bars; a grubby movie theater and many small general merchandise stores. There are plenty of fairly well dressed, busy pedestrians and no beggars.

The life-cycle closes pretty fast here—what the humans don’t eat they throw, the dogs fight the pigs for the biggest scraps and what they don’t eat the zapalotes gobble--so there’s nothing left but shit, mud and the jungle—no civilized gaps like sewers in the chain.

My Spanish is improving from daily use.

I am watching the daily pig/dog/zapalote scrimmage when a guy comes up and tells me a joke in Spanish which I actually understand!

Joke: A zapalote is throwing up. Another concerned zapalote asks him what is the matter? “There was a hair in that shit I was eating!”

...

73. One Week in Pucalpa

73.

One Week in Pucalpa:

How does one spend a week in Pucalpa--a town not known for culture, beauty or anything else?

The first day I spend searching for a place to stay.

This is a liberty port for Amazon sailors and rooms and beds are crowded but I finally find an empty bed in a small wooden cell of a room.

How to pass the rest of my week in Pucalpa?

Every day I go down to the “dock”, which is just the well-churned mud of the riverbank, and watch the longshoremen work.

I see hollow-log boats equipped with motors and filled with people which come and go like buses on land.

And I observe Zapalotes, big ugly vulture-like birds which slowly flap over to the centrally located riverbank garbage dump to fight the loose dogs and pigs for refuse.

It’s also entertaining to watch the pretty, brown, miniskirted Pucalpa girls navigate through the muck in their modish stack-soled shoes.

...

72. Pucalpa, Peru

72.

Pucalpa, Peru:

I am awakened by the sound of women killing chickens.

As the light increases, the riverfront comes to life. Women get charcoal fires going and begin to prepare food to sell in their open-air eating stalls.

Soon brawny longshoremen arrive to eat breakfast--but the wind and rain get worse so they don’t stay.

I crawl from the wretched shelter of my truck and stroll casually down the beach in the rain.

The food the women have for sale looks and smells delicious but would probably kill me.

I settle for papayas that I can peel myself, and fresh, hot bread. I hope the recent baking will make the bread safe for my sensitive digestion!

When the rain stops, I go from boat to boat asking about passage down the river.

I discover that there is only one boat authorized to carry passengers down the river to Iquitos which departs once a week and it just left yesterday--so I must wait a week here in Pucalpa for the next sailing.

...

71. The Amazon River

71.

The Amazon River:

By faint starlight and a hint of moon, I make out a fleet of houseboats on what seems to be a lagoon with a broad sheet of water lying beyond.

The Mighty Amazon River?! Oh, my!

I think I might be able to sleep on a wet grassy knoll near the water, but I hear and faintly see some tough looking hombres cruising the area. The only lights I can see are a couple of range-lights on some riverboat in the distance. The town itself is absolutely dark. Maybe electricity hasn’t been invented here yet?

I strike out for the range-lights. They are on a husky-looking Petro Peru Tugboat tied up at a pier with a lot of smaller nondescript boats. The crews are evidently all asleep or ashore. It starts to rain again so I crawl under a big truck parked near the pier and sleep til dawn.

...

70. By Bus to Pucalpa

70.

In Huanuco I buy a bus ticket and depart for Pucalpa, Peru, the highest navigable port on the Amazon River.

It has been raining a lot and there isn’t much “road” left for the bus to travel on.

What exists is just a slippery mud pathway through the jungle.

We cross chasms on the most rickety highway bridges I’ve ever seen.

Once the bus driver’s assistant comes back to collect coins from us passengers then the driver stops the bus before venturing out on a perilous bridge. The assistant runs over to a small chapel beside the road--leaves the cash offering and hops back on the bus.

With a grinding of gears we cross the bridge safely!

Did we bribe Fate or has some local bandito decided to collect a little toll from buses to insure their safe crossing? Or maybe both?

The bad road only gets worse. The heat is awful too, but at least the suffering is cheap—I can buy bananas from roadside vendors at a stop for two cents apiece.

At midnight the bus literally slides into the totally darkened town of Pucalpa.

All the passengers exit the bus. I am last to go and reluctant to leave the comparative safety of the bus but the driver insists and I am out with my backpack standing alone in utter darkness.

I haven’t the slightest idea of which direction to go so I stand listening.

The jungle movie noises--you know, chirps, squeaks and squawks--are a bit louder louder in one direction so I head that way and discover the Amazon River by it’s sound!

...

69. Saved in Cerro de Pasco

69.

At “Galena” village, the train crosses a pass, which at 15,681 feet (4,781 meters) altitude gives this route the world’s record. An attendant passes through the coach with a portable oxygen bottle selling sniffs and gasps of the life preserving gas.

At La Oroya Train Station, Louise heads south to retrieve her beloved pushbike and I head north by bus.

My bus arrives in Cerro de Pasco late at night. Near the bus station, mobs of shouting people are milling around carrying torches and lanterns. Something heavy is going on but what it is I don’t know and no one is telling.

The friendly bus driver finds a truck that is continuing down the road to Huanuco and puts me aboard.

I find out afterward that the miners of Cerro de Pasco were rioting against foreign ownership (American) and exploitation of the miners.

That friendly bus driver may have saved my life.

...

68. I Follow the Wind

68.

New Zealander Louise Sutherland sits beside me on this fairly comfortable train.

Louise is a “push-bike” traveler who has ridden her bike all over the world.

She made her first bicycle trip 25 years ago and has been traveling, on and off, ever since.

She now rides a bike with three gears and a trailer, which she designed herself and had made in an English bicycle shop. She is the author of a book called “I Follow the Wind” which she sells at women’s club meetings in England, when she is asked to speak about her adventures. She left her bike in Lima to make this train trip, which is advertised as the “highest train journey in the world”.

She tells me that she had settled down to a humdrum ordinary existence and almost gave up her adventurous ways but recently woke up to the fact that she had become just another human plodding to the grave without realizing her potential to go and see this amazing world for herself.

Something to think about for sure.

...

67. Lima Again

67.

Morning.

Mr. Nerves hopes to reach Lima today and asks me to go faster so I blaze along the vacant desert road like a race driver. I suppose there are no traffic laws or policemen out here. Actually, there are few vehicles of any kind on this dried up roadway.

Here are the shabby outskirts of Lima!

Nerves takes the wheel and copes so well with the crazy city traffic that we soon arrive at his mother’s grand residence in a swanky suburb.

The home is old and aristocratic and so is Mom and now I see the game: Nerves is the pampered scion of an aristocratic family. The kid is his and so is Mrs. Jones, of course, but since Jones is an Indian, nobody admits their relationship—especially not old Mom, who merely offers Jones a room in the servant’s quarters and ignores her grandson.

Well, it is their reality and it got me a ride with amusing company the length of Peru so everybody is satisfied.

I bid Nerves, Jones and Mom farewell in my best Spanish and backpack across Lima to El Cheapo Hotel. The next day I catch a train to La Oroya high up in the Andes. Some backpackers in Cuzco told me how to catch a boat down the Amazon River so that’s where I’m headed.

...

66. Me Chauffeur

66.

Me: Chauffeur

Nerves pretends to rent separate rooms for himself and Mrs. Jones, but it is obvious they are shaking up. I go along with the comic routine.

In the morning we visit the Ariquipa Thieves Market. It is the Real Thing: dealing with honest-to-God thieves for really stolen merchandise. For me it is so real its unreal. Nerves buys some cheap stolen underwear.

All day long I drive like hell, leaving the mountains and entering the vast desert lying between the Andes and the Pacific.

Once or twice Nerves swallows a handful of pills and wants to drive. He does a macho Grand Prix thing for a half hour or so, but he can’t keep up the concentration and turns the bug back over to me. While he has the wheel, though, we are pretty close to death but I take it philosophically. It’s a nice day—probably as good as any to leave my fragile, temporary human shell—so I keep on smilin’ through.

We reach the sea after dark and go through the same “separate rooms” farce at a weird hotel in a nameless village which could be the spooky model for a Ray Bradbury “October Country” story. A cold wind is blowing the inhabitants through the empty streets like autumn leaves. An old scarecrow stops me to say how great the USA is but he snorts with disgust when he discovers the sad fact that this American doesn’t smoke and has no cigarettes to share.

I have tried to eat like my employers, but they do swallow the huge quantities of chicken and rice and stuffed cabbage and soda pop, so I am feeling rather ill and stagger off to bed early.

...

65. American Chauffeur

65.

I look into a mirror for the first time in several weeks and an interesting strange visage with sunburned nose and ragged beard stares back at me. I have become a traveler.

In the room next to mine some hip American tourists are arguing about where to go to eat dinner. So much time is wasted in futile talk! Solitary travel is lonely sometimes but I never have to discuss meal plans in Cuzco.

I’m waiting on a sidewalk for the bus back to Lima when a new, blue VW bug pulls up to the curb. The man driving offers me a free trip to Lima in his car if I will drive part of the way. Why not? I climb in.

The Peruvian, who teaches at the University of Cuzco, is going to Lima for his health. The extreme altitude of Cuzco is making him ill.

We drive a bit around town. His first stop is to pick up a lady with a year-old boy.

Ahhhh! She is young, stacked and I can tell that she and the Prof have “got a thing going on” as the popular song puts it—so, like the lady in the song, I call her “Mrs. Jones”.

The professor is dropping pills by the handful so I have to call him “Mr. Nerves”. He only speaks English to me and doesn’t know I now speak some Spanish. When they are discussing their Great Romance, Nerves and Jones keep their faces vacant so I (their American chauffeur) won’t catch on. Well, it’s quite a charade, and I, of course, play my role as well as I can. Mr. Nerves wants me to drive fast so I move the bug along the mountain road in a blast of gravel—across a 4,500 meter pass, by pastures where alpacas graze, through adobe villages, past an overturned bus surrounded by glum passengers—to Ariquipa.

...

64. Tour of Cuzco

64.

Back in Cuzco: I meet a skinny Japanese person who calls himself “The Bank of Tokyo”. He draws, teaches karate and yoga and is willing to exchange American dollars for Peruvian Soles at a black-market rate. He has a pretty Peruvian girlfriend and no desire to return to Japan.

This hustler and his girl take me on a tour of “underground” Cuzco.

The dens we visit feature candles, incense and stoned hippy freaks from all over the world sitting on dirty carpeted floors tripping on drugs and soft guitar music.

These bearded young men and half-naked girls don’t move, speak or even see. Wasted, they live in their own drug created reality. Well, there are millions of people on this planet and millions of different life styles. I suppose creative people will always find some way to live that suits them.

The “normal” shabby Cuzco bars where the natives go at night are full of ugly old men. If a woman comes in, ostensibly to buy cigarettes, they grin and paw her as she passes. This inexpensive kind of sexual encounter makes these old goats’ evening enjoyable

There are also one or two world-class hotels in Cuzco for those tourists with two weeks and a pocketful of money, but unfortunately, I do not see their interiors!

And what sort of meaningful lifestyle am I experiencing as I make these critical observations? Do I, perhaps, feel a little bit superior to the people I have just described? Hmmm?

Well, I do like my freedom of traveling without a destination and I don’t seem to want or need drugs or even intimate companionship right now. I find all kinds of teachers and learning situations on my present path and I especially like the guidance that seems to come from within.

Dare I call it “insight”?

Anyway, I feel that my chosen “earthprobe” lifestyle is good for me right now.

...

63. Macchu Picchu Park

63.

Macchu Picchu Park

The park is securely fenced and gated, of course, and there are the usual fees to pay and tour guides to avoid, but once in the park no one could fail to be impressed by this enchanted mountaintop.

They say that the master builders and inhabitants of Macchu Picchu were gone long before the Spanish arrived—and, except for these stone ruins, every trace of their civilization has vanished. There are garden terraces, gushing fountains of clear water, broad stone stairways, mysterious doorways and the great walls, whose colossal stones were cut to fit each other with such precision and so many angles that they have defied the destructive power of the frequent earthquakes of this region for centuries. In an upper clearing in the ruins, I see the extraordinary “sundial stone” whose peculiar angles have provoked thought and provided interesting puzzles for modern archeoastronomers.

These ruins, so alien and so unexpected in this remote setting of mists, wildflowers, tropical birds and butterflies, with the eternal thunder of the great Urubamba River echoing up from its twisting course a thousand feet below, impresses me more than any scene I have ever witnessed.

A few days later, I catch the early morning “Indian Train” back to Cuzco. The old coaches on this train offer an extreme contrast to the bright tourist train of the few days earlier. This train is chockfull of Indians with bags and bundles of merchandise for the Cuzco market and there are also a few penny-pinching backpackers like me. Naturally, there are no seats available, so I stand most of the way.

...

62. Aguas Caliente

62

Aguas Caliente:

There is only one place for travelers to stay in this six-house village--an unsightly one-room concrete-block pension.

I rent one of the several empty cots. This will be my base camp for exploring the famous lost city, but first I want to sample the nearby natural hot spring baths I have been told of by other backpack travelers.

Up a faint footpath into a narrow defile behind the village I find the springs: clean concrete tubs with sandy bottoms filled with clear steaming water. No one is around. Off with the clothes and into the crystal pool! Oh, good! I float like a lemon slice in a bowl of hot punch feeling better and better and then dash over to the nearby tumbling mountain stream for a startling splash in the cool water, then back to the hot tubs! The only company I have during the entire lovely afternoon is a cloud of pretty butterflies.

Back in the village I buy and eat fried river fish, bananas and fresh baked bread. After nightfall a few little children come out to play in the little town square. There is no electricity in this tiny community so candles glow and fireflies wink in the darkness.

At sunrise I hike back up the tracks through the tunnels to the foot of the needlelike peak that is crowned by the "lost" city. Where the footpath up the mountain begins, I discover a bamboo shack which shelters seven or eight international backpackers, some of which have been living here for weeks or even months.

You can buy a meal here too, so I order coffee and a thick pancake from the native woman who runs the establishment, then set out on the strenuous two-hour climb to the ruins.

...

61. Macchu Picchu Station

61

Macchu Picchu Station

As the train slows to a stop, cunning, better informed tourists stand and jam the train exits, then sprint for the four blue microbuses that will carry them up the hairpins of the paved road leading to the famous ruins.

The buses are filled in an instant and the first lucky passengers careen off toward the “lost city” barely visible on a pinnacle far above. Left below, the majority of the grumbling tourists must wait for the buses to return for another load.

I am in no hurry.

Perhaps a little smugly I leave the impatient throng of tourists and hike back down the train tracks. I have heard that if you walk back through the two dark train tunnels before the Macchu Picchu station you will find a tiny village called Aguas Caliente. That’s where I’m headed.

60 Tourist Train to Macchu Picchu

60.

Tourist Train to Macchu Picchu

From Cuzco I take the flashy, modern tourist train to Macchu Picchu Station. The train is filled with tourists—not the grubby off-the-beaten-path backpackers I have grown accustomed to, but well-dressed Japanese, Europeans and Americans.

The train makes two stops before arriving at Macchu Picchu and hundreds of camera lenses glitter in the morning sunshine as everyone hops off to take photographs of the handful of fruit and popcorn vendors and “professional natives” dressed in festive costume, who pose for photographs for a small fee.

The train follows a wide valley, then the rails curve entering a narrow gorge. Abandoned Inca terraced fields add interest to the lower slopes of both sides of the canyon.

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59. Sajsayhuaman

59.

Sajsayhuaman.

Next day I hike up the hillside blooming with wildflowers above Cuzco to the ruins of the great Inca city, Sajsayhuaman.

I sit on a large square stone at the top of the heap of ruined stonework.

Below me is a broad green vale where llamas graze. Flanking the valley are terrace-walls made of the famous colossal stones changing color as steamy clouds pour overhead filtering the sunlight.

It IS tempting to call these amazing ruined walls “architecture of the Gods”. They are so strange!

On a hilltop toward Cuzco a big white statue of Jesus spreads stiff arms. Two lovers stroll by below me. I place myself in the center of a ring of huge stones––perhaps the foundation stones of an adobe tower or observatory—and turn my face toward the setting sun.

This ancient acropolis, now covered with grass, wildflowers and little tourist paths, is a good-vibe place for me. The inheritors of this vanished magnificence live in little mud huts near the stream that flows down the valley. You can hear their dogs, chickens and transistor radios.

They say Pizarro destroyed Sajsayhuaman four hundred years ago. Could such a city and such a civilization utterly disappear in such a short time?

Or is the wisdom and skill which built this vanished civilization still available to those who seek it?

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58. Borrowed Illusions

58.


Borrowed Illusions

Just what is going on in this old Cuzco church?

Well, it looks to me like the military conquerors and colonists from Spain used the psychological warfare techniques developed by Rome to control their European minions--based on the always-powerful pre-Christian God-man myth plus a heavy fear-trip as perpetrated by the Spanish Inquisition--to subdue the South American human beings. But it is also clear that these present-day totally subdued and entirely brainwashed “natives” love living in their borrowed illusion and would not willingly give up any of it.

Perhaps we are all most content living in our own favorite, familiar and comfortable daydream and, since there is security and power in numbers, we like it when multitudes share our fantasy to some extent. Maybe this is why missionaries and military expeditions still exist today—to make the world safe for someone’s favorite illusions.

I flow out in the evening to watch the Good Friday parade.

The military might of Peru is represented by plenty of snappy troops formed up in front of the old cathedral. Political bosses wearing black suits with red sashes lead the parade as it leaves the cathedral. Men carrying statues of various saints flickering with battery-powered psychedelic colored electric lights follow them.

In effigy, "the late J.C." (Jesus Christ) is there in a spiffy new coffin. The pyramid lady herself, His statuary mother, dressed in a starry dark blue robe, is quietly strobbing along behind Him.

It is wonderfully colorful street theater. The streets are jam-packed crowded and everyone is deadly serious. There are no “unbelievers” here and no one smiles.

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57. Cuzco, Peru

57.

Cuzco, Peru: Great luxury! I get a room with a hot shower! What wonderful pleasure: my first hot bath since I left Mexico. I lather up my hair and the beard I have allowed to grow and just soak up that fine, wet heat!

Civilization is a hot bath!

Cuzco is such a high city that when I walk I seem to float, but I tire easily.

Today is the Christian holy day, “Good Friday” and the worshipers are out in fervent mobs.

I enter one church where the people have lined up to kiss the painted bloody toe of a realistic Jesus corpse statue. Mothers lift tots into kissing range for the gruesome rite. A priest in the pulpit is exhorting his serious congregation—my Spanish is not good enough to follow his argument, but the cadence is familiar. A priest learns the traditional formula and repeats the words verbatim to his mesmerized flock— fellow dreamers in the Ancient Illusion—the Grand Conspiracy; which can make the unreal, real, or the lie, truth.

But for almost all of us, redundant falsehood, repeated from childhood, IS truth.

The “priesthood”, whether religious or political--which maintains the patent on the formulaic words from generation to generation--thus holds the veritable keys to “truth”. We poor fools never know the difference between this mumbo-jumbo and the real truth, which benefits no bureaucracy.

Real truth, that is, “reality”, is useless as propaganda; meanwhile, we are born into falsehood, live in deceit and die in deception.

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56. Onward by Dodge Truck

56.

Early next morning I am up and bargaining for a cheap ride to Cuzco.

I get a good price for a place in the back of a Dodge truck, but little brown people wearing felt hats already occupy every bit of “sitting space”. I climb aboard last. They tie my backpack to the tailgate and we’re off. I stand in a surfer’s crouch, bending my knees to keep my balance. As we whip around mountain curves it takes all my strength to keep from being pitched overboard. Under me, between my legs actually, an old woman shepherds two loose, live chickens.

Up the mountainside and into the swirling fog: on the top of the mountain is a wide plateau with thousands of tiny pools reflecting bright blue sky and white clouds. We pass the straw-stack huts of the human inhabitants of this place and small herds of goats and llamas. These are the first out-of-zoo llamas I have ever seen.

It gets colder and starts to snow. Good grief, if the scenery wasn’t so spectacular I would be miserable indeed.

Over a 10,000-foot pass in a blizzard, then down into a valley where oranges and figs grow, and then back up into the mountains and we roll into Cuzco.

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55. Abancay, Peru

55.

Abancay, Peru:

Here in a deep tropical valley surrounded by towering mountains is the most beautiful town site I have ever seen. The lower slopes of the mountains are covered by a patchwork of fields in every shade of green so the farmers up there must work extra hard.

The town people are mellow and men and women wear floppy felt hats that make them all look like gnomes.

There is one good touristic hotel in town (too expensive for me) and three el cheapo pensions-- but plumbing seems a problem so the whole town stinks. What a pity.

I’m hiking on a footpath out of town when some little boys overtake me. One opens his school lunchbox. There is nothing in it but coca leaves from which cocaine is extracted. I recognize them because I have seen piles of them for sale in every market in these hills. “Do you know how to eat these?” he asks, giving me a handful. The boys walk with me while I chew a few. The path begins to glow.

The boys urge me to hurry past one adobe hut where they say a “bad man” lives. I trust these little kids and hurry past the house. I am really getting to appreciate the straightforward honesty of children.

The boys leave me by the bank of a clear mountain stream. Icy water is rushing over a bed of colorful pebbles. There are lots of wildflowers: purple rabbity faces and blue and white daisies, yellow butterflies and slow bumblebees cruising two by two… It is a wonderful afternoon.

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54.. Got to Be Some Changes Made

54.

For my own self-protection, I decide I must change some old habits.

I’ve got to stop coming on like “Mr. Nice Guy”. I’ve got to come on like a tough or hard person.

Outside America, and maybe even in America, “niceness” seems to be a sign of weakness and an invitation for trouble. People may take less advantage of me and perhaps give me a little more respect if they fear me a little.

I really hate being hassled by children and that’s exactly what these human animals often are in terms of education and experience. That is certainly an unkind and undemocratic thing for me to say, but it seems true to me today.

These “children” can certainly be useful to leaders who understand their condition—look at the amazing stonework terraces and irrigation projects they have built all over these mountains. The Incas were certainly leaders of great power and vision, but without their direction, these people are lost.

This traveler’s impression, and it may be unfair, but it IS what I see—is that very few people actually WORK here. They are poor, ragged, and if they are the heirs of a great civilization, they have lost the creative spark!

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53. CIA Spy

53.

I am walking down the street when a man in a brown suit stops me. His Spanish is pretty rapid but I catch the drift of his harangue.

He says that everyone in town knows that I am a CIA spy—but he assures me that I should not worry. He says that he will gather a group of men who are eager to hear whatever I have to say. He slips me his address on a scrap of paper and says he will wait for me with his friends in the morning.

But the next morning I am on the first bus out of town. I am about as far as you can get from being a CIA spy and I have nothing at all to say to his gang of nincompoops.

That’s how I cope with my own fear right now. That is, I run from possible conflict!

Polly, who, like me, prefers to travel alone, told me she had conquered her own fear by realizing that basically only three things could happen to her: she could be robbed, raped and/or murdered. Once she faced this fact, she became serene. She is a very special kind of person.

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52. The Local News

52.

The News

You are probably curious about how coffee is served here in this part of the world where most of the world’s supply of the beverage is grown.

In the best café in town they serve it like this: a cup of hot water, a spoon and an opened can of Nescafe Instant Coffee. No kidding!

I see by the morning paper that a bus operated by the company that just gave me the most interesting recent experience (Hidalgo) slipped off a cliff near here killing twenty-two people.

It has been such a common occurrence that the company has been suspended from operation, but I wonder how passengers are going to get from there to here without a bus since Hidalgo was the only company willing to travel the dangerous route?

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51. Time and Perspective in Art

51.

Time and Perspective in Art

Now, sitting in this mellow candlelit room, I am thinking about time and perspective.

It occurs to me that what we see as “perspective” is actually “time made visible”. I have absolutely no business speculating in a field I know practically nothing about, but it seems to me tonight that “plane geometry” operating as it does with no regard to perspective is merely a fairly useful fiction. Geometry, in experience, is always a function of time.

Well, there it is, and I don’t expect this personal revelation to change the world much, but, true or not, it is interesting for me to ponder.

In my latest drawings I use a “moving point of view” which does not capture a scene from one place at one time, but which is as flexible as my own changing point of view. I don’t think these “works of art” will be popular, but they are fun for me to make!

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50. Andahualas, Peru

50.

Andahualas, Peru:

I am writing by yellow candlelight in a clean, cheap room in this lovely mountain village.


But there was some trouble getting here.

First the bus was stranded by a local gasoline shortage. Since there was no gas to buy, we passengers-- mainly Indians who had been visiting Lima-- camped out for a couple of days and nights in the stalled bus.

Next a collapsed bridge stopped us. The bridge had actually fallen into a raging river, but we passengers managed to cross the river, picking our way on unsubmerged portions of the steel bridge.

I helped carry children and luggage across in the moonlight. It was really very exhilarating to have strangers entrust me to carry their infants in one arm, move from girder to girder with the free hand like a monkey and carefully choose my footing across the slippery wreckage.

An empty bus from the same company waited for us on the opposite side to carry us onward.

I met a girl on the stalled bus, which made the long journey more fun for me-- an Indian who spoke Spanish and her native tongue, Quechua.

I had never heard of that language before.

She said it was somewhat like Russian, though I don’t know what she meant by that.

She was fascinated by my paperback copy of “El Retorno de los Brujos” (“The Morning of the Magicians”) by Pauwels and Bergier.


I ended the trip aboard the favorite transport of the Andes: the two and a half ton Dodge stake truck. All these vehicles are painted decoratively and most have a name painted on the front, something like “Jesus is my Salvation” or “Batman Number Two”.

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49. City Thoughts in Ayacucho

49.

I eat breakfast for the third day in a row at the same good café. I notice that my presence has upset the usual “sociogram” of the place. Regular customers had their special tables staked out until I intruded, throwing a monkey wrench into their routine. Can they handle it? They will have to think a little--and before their first cup of morning coffee too. I feel a little bit cruel.

So, to take my mind off their seating problems, I think some more about cities.

Cities seem to sprout, flourish and die like plants. For the best living it may be best to pick a city on the way up––not one that has already arrived—but these conditions change fast. A city with a good reputation can already be a bad place to live by the time you hear about it and move there. It seems to take a long time for a good reputation to die—if you’re a city, that is.

People living in big cities seem to be dedicated to the exploitation of one another. The city is the Big Marketplace, where the young, talented and beautiful come with what they’ve got to trade for what they can get. In a city, costume is important. Youth and inexperience fall for the trappings, but behind the costume is the flesh and bone and behind that meat, the human awareness of the entity.

You come to town dressed up so fine--
But I wonder what’s going on in your mind?

(If anything.)

And, of course, youth does not last. The city dweller plugs along, living sometimes well and sometimes badly until the youthful energy is gone. If lucky, the citizen may retire back to the country to the good life and if unlucky, the citizen remains in the city to be exploited and abused by a new youthful generation until he dies. So it is.

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