Agapito ordered four Cusqueñas and offered up a toast to the evening, unsure why he was sharing it with Leo but sure that something was brewing that needed him to follow through with a few things. The air that settled on the night in Aguas Calientes was thick and panting, damp and invasive. The breeze that meanderled down from the Sacred Valley as the Andean air cooled was as pleasant respite from the otherwise stagnant and saturated cloud forest clime. On one such breeze Leo traded out his full-brimmed sun hat for some local woolens, a chu’llo with the ear flaps and llama figures skipping their way around his dome. He had bought it his first day in Cuzco.Agapito tried to lighten the mood. “Do you always travel solo?”
“Ohh, never solo, you know, there are always people. Like you, what was your name again, I’m sorry, our conversation has me confused?”
“Agapito, ‘Pito for short, no problem. Thanks for asking, in fact. Most people won’t stop and ask a second time and are ashamed to have missed a name the first time, you know. I always need to ask at least a second time before I can remember a name, and I try to use it frequently in sentences. Well, not with yours, that’s a bit easier. But Agapito is a bit more difficult and foreign, so I understand. Anyway, Leo, you were saying?”
“Thank you. I was saying that we are never alone, people like you, or sometimes a girl, always a companion. So, never entirely solo.”
“I see, that makes sense, I experience that too, fellow pilgrims finding each other on the path . . .”
“No, not pilgrims, backpackers. People who travel, like me. I don’t understand this pilgrim word. In fact, I have made many friends that I see over and over again. Here in Peru, then in Morocco, then in India, Cambodia. I went with a girl one time to Jordan. Have you been? No? Well there are caves there, caves where you can still hear saints whispering from early Christianity, where, when you yourself sit still you can hear all these saints sitting around long stone tables debating how to tell the greatest story ever,” Leo saw the chance to stop some of Agapito’s awkward questioning and didn’t want to lose it. And plus, like many seasoned travelers, he would rather tell his own story than listen to someone else’s. “And so we did this one church cave in Rihab where . . .”
“What did you do? How do you do a church cave?”
“Well, it’s an expression, we went to the cave and looked at it, talked about it, learned about history, things like that. Does this make sense?”
“It does, I just don’t understand the language people use when traveling, talking about doing this or that thing, doing this or that country. I mean, how do you do Peru? It’s a country, not an amusement park ride. Like now, are we doing this restaurant? Or doing Machu Picchu? It sounds just so abusive and arrogant to talk about doing a place,” Agapito continued, as Leo now really wished he were at home with a cigarette and his headphones, listening to the latest Ulrich Schnauss release.
Agapito’s rant faded off and Leo took the chance to interrupt, “Well, sorry my grasp of your language is second hand and I may not be so exact with my words.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that as criticism, and actually your English is excellent, getting better as the night progresses and your imbibing increases. Just a worthy point of contention with the traveling world in general, sort of like the importance of the journey over the destination and such. Anyway, what was going on in the caves as you were doing them?”
“Well, in visiting zee caves in Rihad with this girl Ernestine, oh a lovely girl, we were in love from college in Leiden and after graduation we both wanted to see the Middle East. In the Netherlands we have many Muslims and we are generally so welcoming and open-minded but these days there is so much tension. So many Muslims come and we take them, they live with us but they show much less interest in our country and culture than their own, and can be violent and insolent, really. Like people anywhere, but we’re having trouble now in Holland with thiz.”
“Oh, there and everywhere else, Leo, how can we get people to understand each other? I mean, it’s true, Dutch people I’ve met are an excellent bunch, much more naturally open-minded than folks from the US. And actually I’ve had it pointed out to me by a beautiful Dutch woman named Ernestine, huh, do you think it was the same one? Well, she pointed out that folks from the US choose comparisons as a point to reference – but still, like I was saying, you are Dutch, open-minded as they say, but even there you have violent conflict that you have trouble resolving, not to mention what’s going on in the Middle East, or what happened here in Peru in the ‘80’s. I mean, isn’t it usually enough to just get people together to talk through things and we find that we are all human, all struggling, all pilgrims seeking truth and then find something to laugh at in our paradoxical state? I guess the more people we gather together the more difficult it is to find a gathering point, since every human is like infinity coalesced, and so six billion infinities is greater than three billion, no?”
“Actually, no, one infinity is just as great as six billion infinities . . .”
“You know what I mean, though, right?”
“No.”
“Yes?”
“No”
“Well, I guess it makes more sense that Dutch and Muslims don’t make sense of each other then.”
Leo had spent a year of his university study in Cuba, in the agricultural department of Piñar del Rio, in the far West of the island. This was in 1994, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union and during some of the island’s most challenging times with their socialist experiment. He had studied sociology and was interested in exploring the result of the Soviet collapse on the domestic tobacco industry from Piñar del Rio. What he found was really what he had expected – the industry was performing better than ever – and his findings added little to the academic journals of the time. Ending his seven years of doctoral work he wrote, ‘I have unequivocally found out that I greatly prefer Cuban tobacco to any other.’ He also realized, during a horseback ride through some of the fields, drinking rum and coconut water that he would rather be unimpressed and unsurprised abroad than to be bored back home.
The sun began to rise again over the ceremony, which had already passed an entire night with dozens of deaths, screams, sighs and cheers. Pachacútec listened intently to what Agapito said of sacrifice, listened as though the empire depended on is actually. Meanwhile Agapito began to wonder what Koa was doing with her gaze, as it explored the steady drops of blood falling from the altar. The warrior continued to breath life as it fled away from him and she looked at his toes. Toes, for the first time since their birth, were relaxed on his feet, no longer required to bear the burden that life and gravity conspired against them.
“Why do you think people walk so much, Koa? And why don’t they let their feet rest?”
“’Pito, just as worthwhile a question is why don’t feet let their people rest? It may just as well be that whatever innate force led people to demand their feet to walk also led their feet to demand their people to walk. Why would you put the center of volition in the people and their will, why not in the feet?”
Agapito was watching Sand and Koa mingle fingers as the latter spoke and he wondered if the two of them planned their words so perfectly before these moments, because they were truly precise. The sun was rising fast as it does in the tropics and as the rays landed on her face she let her long brown hair fall over that side to block its intensity. This single motion along with the preceding pontification gave Agapito such an intense sadness that he collapsed to the ground. He had a scientific response to what she had asked but could not articulate it for the immensity of emotions he immediately felt. As if the obsidian knife had carved into his heart and also cut off his feet. He reflected on his travels as a shaman and on the struggles of the people in the Amazon, the struggles of the plants for life, even the struggles of each individual ant that carried a leaf in a line through the forest. He felt his own struggle and his own solitude. Simultaneously there was his pride, passion and will that would not let himself engage in the selfish emotion of sadness, but recognizing this only deepened his sadness.
Looking between the gaze that had settled between Sand and Koa, Agapito noticed a partly bald white man leaning against the Stone of the Seven Skies – this man had a backpack and was wiping his brow in the intense tropical sun. He looked at Agapito and waved his hand vigorously.
“Hola, Agapito, it eez Leo, how are you enjoying your most recent visit to Machu Picchu, pilgrim?”
Leo had lifted his hat an as he did a pulsing yellow and red orb hovered between his burned scalp and his hat. Agapito scratched his two-week old beard and looked over at Pachacútec.
“Go on, ‘Pito, answer the man, he is your pilgrim friend from Holland, remember?”
“How do you know, P-tec? Hehe, I’ve never called you that before, I like it though, like a stage name, P-tec. How do you know who this is?”
Leo mumbled something and was confused by Agapito’s nonsense talk. “Oh, have I interrupted you in something, I wanted to make it yesterday but was so damned hungover that I stayed in bed until last night and decided to come early this morning. I am so glad you are here still.” And then Leo asked, “Agapito, are you ok? You seem pretty out of it.”
When he heard that last question the previous day’s adventures came flooding back in to his awareness and the previous scene in front of him fluttered like confetti. The llamas and alpacas turned their snub noses upward and skipped off in four directions. Pachacútec stood up, pulled his hair back to a pony-tail and donned his silver crown studded with lapis-lazuli, crossed his arms and became a rock that blended into masonry on the condor’s wing at the temple. Sand dissolved back to the earth from which she came. The executioner looked Agapito in the eyes and with a glare that burned his being, he leapt upward into the sky, quickly being absorbed by the sun’s intense light. The Aymara warriors transformed to tourists and they donned their backpacks and sun hats and began to take pictures of Agapito leaning, collapsed now, against the stones at the temple of the condor. Koa turned herself into a collection of herbs and seeds and a solitary hand that reached out and presented itself to Agapito. He ate them and the hand disappeared. Leo remained and looked perplexed at Agapito crouched in the corner of the Temple of the Condor.
In Aguas Calientes two nights before, where we had left Leo and Agapito bantering away and slowly beginning to appreciate each other’s company, the pile of Cuzqueñas made Agapito realize that maybe piling stones up to make the great pyramids of Guatemala and Egypt wasn’t such an astonishing feat after all. Their table had acquired an impressive amount in just a couple of short hours. And granted, piling beer bottles are not quite the same as many-ton stones, but he imagined the process may be similar – find a friend and put yourself to task with them. And that’s maybe the heart of human ingenuity and all great works manifest of that.Leo was pretty drunk now and appreciating the humidity and tropical climes of Aguas Calientes, where his flip-flops, locally bought futbol jersey and cargo shorts were sufficient for the night’s clime. They had made their way through conversations of race, travel, love, sports and different approaches to education. There was a bit of a pause after the last one before Leo broke the silence. His English at this point was impeccable.
“Have you ever come across San Pedro in Peru?” Leo inquired. “In Mexico I have done mushrooms, in Morocco and India I have smoked a lot of hashish and at home in Holland I have done a whole variety of party sorts. I was wondering about San Pedro here.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Well, I know it is mescaline, like peyote or the synthesized version, and that it lasts a long time and is a really wild trip. More than that I don’t know, but many travelers I have met have told me it is a really fun time.”
“To be honest I have no idea what fun means when talking about hallucinogenic plants, fun seems like a description of recreational activities and I see it more as medicine than recreation. I have done San Pedro countless times, including a full month wandering around the Bolivian altiplano with San Pedrito as my guide. You can actually, incidentally, buy it at a number of stalls at the San Pedro market in Cuzco. Go with a guide, though Leo, definitely with a guide, and some good friends. And I’d just say it’s not about getting high or getting messed up but about having some specific intentions that you want from the experience. Coming back to our pilgrimage talk, it’s all about having a direction and intention and then from there the learning comes fluid. Most people take hallucinogenics to get out of their mind, but I can guarantee that with San Pedro, setting the right intention will allow you to get so amazingly in your mind. Actually, speaking of being in your mind and by that I mean present, consumed by the present, floating it in and freely swimming down deep or even splashing your way out over the break like an orca, you know the way they jump and splash and then go back down for more. Or up for more . . .” he was quite noticeably slurring his feigned philosophy at this point. And had his chin rested heavily in his left hand. They said goodnight and headed back to their hostels
The next day Agapito hiked with Tristeza and her mother Rosmari to arrive at Machu Picchu with the first bus and the growing line of pilgrims right around sunrise. Rosmari was from the Sacred Valley above the town of Urubamba and had moved to Aguas Calientes three years before to sell her woven crafts at the market in the train station. She felt that she could do better there but when she arrived she realized that so many other women from the Sacred Valley had the same idea. And she found it almost impossible to compete with the factory-produced products from the city – the flapped hats that say “Cuzco” or the mugs that say the same, or the t-shirts proudly claiming “I survived the Inca Trail”.
Who would pay for her two weeks of time she spent in making a baby alpaca sweater? She asked this to Agapito in a Spanish cut deep with Quechua, as they waited in line next to a Japanese couple that was staring at them. In fact, the whole line was looking at them – she was the only person in the entire park dressed as an Andean. Her embroidered hat was fastened around her chin and the intricate floral and swirling patterns matched both her outer coat and her outer skirt. Her chin-strap had dozens of beaded strings and they framed her weathered and sun-worn cheeks and enormous smile.
He had decided to spend most of the day showing them around and sharing what he had learned. Mostly he wanted to hear what they saw in the place, since really it was their site, the ones that lived so near. He translated what some of the guides were sharing with their clients and they wanted to know how people knew so much about the place. They hiked to the top of Huayna Picchu, the precipitous peak that stands above the main city. There they found their way through caves, up the vertical stone staircases to the summit where they could look back at their climb and at the main city 1000 feet below.
They sat and Agapito set out a small square textile to begin a hallpay or coca chewing-round with them. Rosmari began to shy away and became silent and a bit embarrassed. She first tried to politely refuse but as Agapito persisted she was obliged to disclose that she became evangelical when she moved to the city and no longer uses coca leaves.
“Si!?” Agapito clarified.
“Si”
Oh, well, what do you do in moments like those? As a foreigner he had really taken to the coca rituals found in the Andes and now, here with an Andean woman he was forcing a habit that she did not engage in. He apologized and Tristeza pointed out a brilliant orange orchid jutting between two stones. But, he thought, coca has been used for millennia and is such an important part of life in the Central Andes, how can she just give it up for a religion that is not hers? That is sad, he thought, a loss of cultural diversity in some form and, who knows, maybe actually detrimental to her health. But his assumption was that something “traditional” in the Andes is unchanging and should continue. What about in the US? 200 years ago we grew hemp and even 50 years ago we used it in just about every form of manufacturing. Now it is illegal and most don’t even know this or that it is any different from marijuana. Regardless of how unfortunate both of these scenarios is – Andean losing their culture and us losing ours – the point here that Agapito missed and that many travelers do as well is that there is a romantic assumption that traditional cultures should not change because we in the north do enough changing for them. But maybe Agapito was aware of these things even as he felt sorry, for no reason at all, for Rosmari.
He pictured her in an incomprehensibly large ocean, afraid and out of control, unable to see the horizon for the size of the waves and her boat just a bit too small, the sail a bit too worn. But again, where were his assumptions that she was thrashing in a sea of change and globalization coming from? Most likely from his own guilt and shame, or at least lack of pride in his culture. He found himself in a bit of a philosophical dilemma.
Can I show you something else? He asked Tristeza and Rosmari in Spanish. There is another temple down below us here, a bit of a walk but well worth it, often called Temple of the Moon. They nodded, looked at each other and giggled, nodding again. They headed off Huayna Picchu along the sharp ridge that heads to the east and climbed down through cloud forest, constructed wooden ladders, almost halfway to the Urubamba River below. His two companions moved so confidently and agile, through the forest or the precarious trails; they were unaffected by the heights and showed no fatigue in their hiking.
Alone with Leo and the photo-takers and the Temple of the Condor Agapito finally greeted Leo, “Did you come for the ceremony? It has been spectacular so far, epic in proportions and beautiful in its conduction, all night really, with so many beautiful folks from all over the kingdom. This one here with the obsidian blade is a dark one for sure, consumed by demons from somewhere, but I have seen past the blade and think that he, too, is trying his best to live an honest life. He just kills a lot of creatures. Odd, I have been here so many times but never met this one. He live right here under the condor’s left wing. Have a seat and observe for a spell.”
“Oh, right, San Pedro, dear god Agapito, have you been here all night?”
“And many more, right? I was journeying in the Amazon and was a famous healer and part of this massive city and an entirely different time and, wait, we shouldn’t talk too much, I am just waking up and need to hang on to these images and not yet be distracted by full consciousness. Hold on, I’m going to write in my journal, come back and talk in a half hour. Sorry, great to see you Leo.” He began to write in his journal – of pilgrimage, meeting Leo, Tristeza.
There came a part that he held only vaguely in his memory. He was on the top of Huayna Picchu with Tristeza and Rosmari talking about religion and their views on Evangelicalism, Catholicism and Andean traditions, and then they hiked down to the Temple of the Moon. There they connected with his good friend Daniel and, oh, that’s right Magdalena, Maria and the two Brahm brothers.
It came back in pieces to Agapito as he wrote in his journal. Daniel was explaining the smoothness of the stones and what that could mean for our understanding of advanced technology. There and then Daniel suggested that they take San Pedro to help understand the hidden language of the stones, just as the Peruvian ancestors had. Agapito had been fasting that day anyways and so felt adequately prepared for this second pilgrimage – a pilgrimage within a pilgrimage, per se.
And there we return to the initial proposition of pilgrimage. What makes a pilgrim? Is it about the place? Or the person? Or the mode of the journey? Or is it simply a matter of intention? At that very moment, and precisely because he had been meditating on these questions for days now, he decided to take San Pedro with Daniel, Magdalena, Maria and the two Brahm brothers.
He was obliged to leave his two Quechua companions at that point, the two whose faith now precluded them from participating in this next journey, but whose gratitude for the visit to their own patrimony was infinitely appreciated with their head bows hugs and massive smiles. And with his new pilgrim companions he set off in a march toward the Temple of the Condor as the day was now growing late.
