Sacsayhuaman
The giant black labyrinth jutted out from the scraggly yellow grass and dirt. The stones were twice my size and hundreds of times heavier. At one point they were finely sanded and polished, but now they had become the victims of time as erosion marred their previously perfect surface. The boulders varied in shape, yet they slotted perfectly together, so much so, that you could not fit a business card in-between the cracks. Our eyes thirstily drank in the giant engineering marvel that is the ancient ruin Sacsayhuaman (Sexy woman). Alex Muth, one of my schoolmates on the trip, and I raced up the steps breathing heavily, our lungs burning for oxygen, unwilling to stop until we reached the top. Jack, Hayden, Quinn, and Ian were already waiting up there as we turned the final corner.
This place felt different from the other sights we had seen on our exhausting journey through Peru. This monolith crackled with the energy of generations long gone. You could almost smell the Incans who passed through many hundreds of years ago. We reached the peak of the dirty black structure that overlooked the suddenly insignificant city of Cuzco, and instantly my problems melted away through my ear and blew away with the breeze. The bitter cold air lost its sting, the harsh smell of grass and dung turned sweet, the bright sun dimmed a bit, and the bustle of the city disappeared as if God had pressed the mute button. Lost in the beauty of seeing green hills rolling like a grassy ocean surrounding a quaint old city build from the blood and sweat of slaves so many years ago, hauling each stone until perfection was created. We gazed for what felt like hours from the throne of the Incans, but it had only been five minutes. Awe struck and inspired we took photos and wrote journals about the sight that literally took our breath away. Stepping away from my stupor, I asked the tour guide if he felt the same way every time he led people up here
“No, beauty is only beauty because it is rare and unique. Once it becomes routine it is no longer beautiful, just ordinary.” He replied.
And then I realized how sad it would be to live in a place that looks like heaven, after a while nothing would seem beautiful anymore. As we stood on the brink of civilization, interspersed with introspection and wonderment, a calm breeze whispered quietly through our hair as the setting sun bathed Cuzco in a reddish-orange glow. We climbed down from the labyrinth and thoughts flashed through my brain, because as the sun set on the rustic city of Cuzco, it was also setting on my three week journey through Peru.
A memory came in to focus of the first night we flew in to Lima from Houston, just three weeks prior. The plane whined, tired from its 8 hour journey and the turbines screamed for deliverance but the end was in
sight. The first sight of Lima was exhilarating, very comparable to flying in to Phoenix, if it was set on the coast. The lights extended for miles in every direction, and the city was sprawling, where every square inch of land was covered in a light so bright that the stars could never hope to match it so they hid themselves, defeated.
Skip ahead two weeks to the bus ride in-between going to ruins. The ride was tiring and exhilarating; it felt as if any moment the bus could careen off of the mountain into the ardent valley below. Navigating
blind turns at a breakneck pace is scary enough without being on a mountain road fit for one car at a time. Many moments passed where I did not think that both our bus, and the car coming right at us would make it passed, but each time we made it without a scratch. The view was astounding as we were a good 400 meters in the air. Rolling hills, each a different shade of green extended for miles, surrounding a snaking river that forked its way through the earth like the very veins of the world. The only traces of civilization were present in the rough mud-brick housing sparsely dotting the landscape like minor blemishes on the face of God’s creation. The densely packed foliage was only broken by razed squares carved out from the gentle slope of the mountain, used for farming potatoes and various other cropped by the people who lived below. The light gently broke through the thin layer of cumulus clouds and ignited with the dust in the air to create a stunning visual display of light that served as a not so subtle reminder that there are things more beautiful than a silvery Porsche accenting the driveway of a three story modern glass mansion.
The whole bus ride to the next ruin as we navigated the Sacred Valley was set to the soundtrack of a silence that wasn't heard so much as felt; more thunderous and profound than any spoken word that it permeated the air with its thickness, as if to warn the consequences of breaking it. Such an image is only present on screensavers and digitally touched up portraits, but when pictures were taken, the colors faded and the landscape melted together to form a bland painting of what we had before us that it did not deserve to take up a megabyte of space on that memory card. Such are the inconsistencies of images; they serve as reminders, but cannot replace the experience or replicate the emotion that we all felt that day by just looking out of a bus window.
My vision comes back into focus and I am standing on top of Sacsayhuaman still, apparently lost in thought as Mr. Jarczyk comes to get me to go back to our hostel in the heart of Cuzco. As we walked away the sun had extinguished, giving way to a jet black sky where the stars had finally broken through.