As we walked through the streets of Cuzco I had the feeling that the curtain was rising on an archaeological play. In the program of tiered walls, layer upon layer of time, I read Act I in the wall’s foundation, the archaic art of the Inca, colossal stonework of mosaic precision. Act II, enter the Spaniard with his mud and straw construction. And at the top, Act III, the machine age, corrugated iron roofs. Center of Incan rule and religion, it was in Cuzco that the greatest temples were built, to the moon and the stars, handmaidens to their highest deity, the sun. On the plateau above the city were other Incan monuments: the huge fortress of Sacsahuamán, Kencco, the underground chamber of meditation carved from living rock, and the baths of the Incas, where crystal water flowed from an unknown source. All bore witness to the ingenuity of a race that worked without benefit of steel and moved stones larger than the jeep without beasts of burden.
The guidebooks say that no trip to Cuzco is complete without a visit to Machu Picchu, the mountain stronghold of the Incas. Since it was accessible only by rail, we bought our tickets—but not for the exclusive eight-passenger Autocarril, or even the deluxe thirty-passenger rail bus recommended by the tourist agencies. Early the next morning we clambered aboard one of the antiquated wooden cars with our fellow passengers—Indians, chickens, and pigs. Delighted at not having to ride in a baggage car, Dinah quickly made herself comfortable—on the poncho of a passenger who rebuked us for making her move. A few minutes later the Toonerville Trolley began what might be the slowest train ride in the world, six hours for the seventy-mile run. After creeping up the side of the valley we were soon clacking over flatter country at a breathtaking fifteen miles per hour.
The first little town was less than an hour away, but some of the passengers were already hungry when we arrived. The villagers provided dining car service. Through the open windows passed handfuls of popcorn, chunks of bread, and little fried cakes of corn. Dinah aloofly refused the dog biscuits we offered and managed to coerce an Indian woman into sharing a bit of off-colored meat. About halfway to Machu Picchu the engineer, too, developed an appetite, and the train stopped at another village for his lunch hour. Perhaps it was the swaying rick-rack ride, or it could have been the altitude, but, though relished by the others, the squinty-eyed whole roast heads of pig didn’t tempt us.
After three hours more the conductor finally called Machu Picchu and pointed straight up. From the canyon bottom I looked at the green wall of mountain and the dirt road that snaked up its side. Across an old iron bridge a truck was waiting to carry us two thousand feet up the Hiram Bingham Highway to the small inn at the base of the ruins.
Two days later, overwhelmed by the mystery of Machu Picchu, we sat again on the rock throne of the Incas. Alone with the silence that had enshrouded Machu Picchu for centuries, we looked down on a dead city, a gem of architecture on a pillow of green velvet grass. Across the valley rose a lookout point, a spiked peak like a minaret over the mountain dome on which the city was built. In the late afternoon light terraces were delineated; temples, towers, and walls stood out in bold relief. Once roofed with thatch, they were now vined with wild blackberries and an occasional primrose.
As the air grew crisp the rock throne was still warm beneath us, and we tried to imagine Machu Picchu as it might have been perhaps ten centuries ago—the workers cultivating terraces where yucca, potatoes, and corn grew, the fountains of clear cold water channeled from distant springs, the Virgins of the Sun in their gardens of orchids, begonia and lupine, the priests performing their daily rituals in the Temple of the Three Windows or in the observatory, where the prismatic pointer of the giant sundial still casts its shadow. And we could almost see the Incan sovereign as he climbed the chiseled steps to the same rock throne where we sat watching his god slide behind the misty crags.
A few dud firecrackers and one dangling wire were the only remaining signs of the three-day fiesta when I began work on La Tortuga. The jeep agency, which was also the noodle distributor, was the logical place to start looking for parts. They had star-shaped noodles, alphabet noodles, long skinny noodles, and short fat noodles. But they were fresh out of jeep parts. I tried the auto parts stores, the garages, and the salvage yards, but the parts stores had no gears, the garages had no parts at all, and by the time anything reached the salvage yards it was too worn out even for scrap iron. At the Cuzco office of the Peruvian auto club, in Ecuadorian tradition, I presented my letter of introduction from the office in Lima. In the Colombian tradition Mr. Guzman, the director, had a friend, the chief of the road commission maintenance shop, who just might have some parts.
Señor Escobedo was a calm rugged man with a weathered face. He showed me a dismantled jeep.
“If there is anything you can use, you’re welcome to it.”
Everything I needed was there and the parts were in good condition. Relieved, I thanked him and said that I would order new parts from Lima to replace them. “But,” I added, “I don’t know how long they’ll take to get here.”
“No,” he said, “don’t bother. I’d rather you help someone on the road and consider the debt paid.”
He said it as casually as if he had loaned us a cup of sugar. The real Good Neighbor policy in action.
With La Tortuga on her second wind, we left Cuzco for Lake Titicaca, an inland sea on the 12,500-foot Altiplano. The dirt road bordered the azure water; on the horizon reed boats under reed sails appeared like a golden flotilla of Chinese junks. Converging on Ilave, a village near the lake, were streams of Indians coming from the surrounding hills to celebrate the feast day of San Miguel. On the outskirts of town white tents like the first flakes of a snowfall dotted the sterile landscape.
The main street was as tightly packed as ears of corn in a bushel, but slightly less static. Nudging La Tortuga through the surging crowd, I tinkled the doorbell we had installed for that purpose. Above the bedlam it made absolutely no impression. Pulsating around us were dancing devils, the Indian version of Old Nick himself, with pointed ears, red nose, forked tail, and a long whip that cracked out at anyone who got too close. To the beat of drums women in fringed shawls of neon hue swirled their skirts in a petticoat pin wheel of color. Strumming ukuleles of armadillo shells, men in crimson-striped ponchos weaved in a short shuffling hop while others shrilled on reed pipes like so many mythical Pans. It was the first day of a five-day fiesta, and the dispensers of chicha were doing a flowing business. I could see it was going to be quite a party before it was over. Resorting to our bellowing horn, usually reserved for blind mountain curves, we gently pushed our way through the revelers. As we left the merriment behind we could still hear that half-savage, half-lilting music, its rhythm as elusive as the condor.
The rhythm was still haunting us as we continued along the shores of Titicaca to the Bolivian border, where, thanks to having all our papers in order for the first time, we made an uncomplicated crossing. A few miles farther a symmetrical mound pushed up from the Altiplano. At its base was the cradle of pre-Columbian civilization, a South American Stonehenge. Crumbling, inscrutable, uncared for, the tall stone fingers of Tiahuanaco thrust from the ground in an acre-sized rectangle. At one end stood the granite Gate of the Sun, a solid block of stone incised with mystic ciphers and geometric patterns, and pocked with holes from where silver and gold inlays had been pilfered. Nearby was a six-foot monolith with bulging eyes and folded hands. Like La Tortuga, it was held together with baling wire, the only sign of restoration. A mile away over the stubbled hills was an even sadder monument to an enigmatic race. Older than Machu Picchu or Mexico’s Monte Alban, ponderous slabs of stones lay tumbled like a house of cards.
It was less than sixty miles from Tiahuanaco to La Paz, Bolivia’s 12,400-foot de facto capital. With the rate of exchange pathetically spiraling to four thousand bolivianos to the dollar, for the first time we could afford the best. But the Sucre Palace had no vacancies, so we parked La Tortuga in front of the second best, where the doorman assured us that under his watchful eye sh
e would acquire no new inscriptions.
Amazingly enough, there was no fiesta in progress—but they were getting ready for one—October 12, celebrating the discovery of America. Whole families sat like cross-legged tailors in their cluttered little workshops sewing spangles and bits of glass on silver-brocaded jackets or painting horned papier-mâché masks with bizarre colors. Grinning diabolically from the walls were finished masks, mouths sparkling with pointed teeth of mirror.
There wasn’t a single level street in La Paz; even the Prado, statue-studded center of social promenading, was several hundred feet higher at one end. After several hours of puffing through the crevasse-like streets of this stratospheric city I would have felt more comfortable in a space suit. Not only was I giddy, but I was famished as well. Helen, less affected by the altitude than I, was preoccupied with the current trend in ladies’ hats, the derby—black derbies, white derbies, yellow derbies, and even pink derbies. I would have been glad to see the Brown Derby, but settled for a restaurant on the Prado.
“Quiere un bebi biff?” asked the waiter.
I got the first two words, but the last two stumped me. He repeated them while I mentally sifted through my whole Spanish vocabulary. I finally realized that the last two words weren’t Spanish at all, but were his pronunciations of English “baby beef.”
“Yes,” I said, “a steak will do just fine.” In this stratospheric city of astronomical exchange, the waiter appropriately returned with the literal translation of “baby beef”—two monstrous steaks that overhung the plates. What we couldn’t eat Dinah enjoyed for the next two days.
Back at the hotel the doorman had done his job well. Although someone had left a name, it was not in the usual manner. Tucked in the door was a neatly folded note that read:
“I hope you will be coming to Chile. If so, when you reach Santiago you are welcome to stay with me.”
The note was signed Carmen Cuevas Mackenna. We had heard much of Chilean hospitality, but we never knew it came looking for you.
In this land of extremes the Bolivian part of the Pan American Highway was no exception. Zooming skyward through the tin and platinum mining regions, it was a corkscrew trail fit only for mules equipped with oxygen masks. At one place the map read 18,300 feet, no doubt a topographical error—a hurdle even for Pegasus. In any event, we were seldom under twelve thousand feet, and some of the gradients were so steep that even in the lowest of the six gears it was necessary to back down and get a fast run at them. Those six hundred miles across Bolivia to Argentina were a succession of stops for chassis tightening and carburetor cleaning. The constant pounding from the rutted chuckholed road did what even the railway tracks in Costa Rica hadn’t done—popped the heads from the spring shackle bolts.
That week in the rarified air had its effect on the three of us as well as on La Tortuga. Helen and I lost interest in everything except getting to lower altitudes. Only a near emergency could stir any of us to the slightest activity. At night, with the cold knifing through our down sleeping bags and Dinah trying to snuggle in with us, we slept fitfully and awakened logy, entombed in a frost-encrusted jeep. Our lukewarm, high-altitude coffee did little to stimulate or thaw us.
La Tortuga was just as difficult to get started as we were, and one morning the battery went dead. After five minutes of pushing, the jeep was still immobile—so was I. For several hours we sat on the lifeless Altiplano until a truckload of barrel-chested Indians came to our aid. With unbelievable ease they pushed La Tortuga while I could only lean futilely against the stern. Tongue hanging out, searing pain in my lungs, I marveled aloud at their energy. Reaching into his furry goatskin pouch, one of them helpfully offered me a handful of coca leaves to chew.
“This will make you strong too,” he said.
Thanking him, I declined. Although coca, from which cocaine is made, is a mainstay of Altiplano life, I preferred to be a ninety-seven-pound weakling rather than a bleary-eyed Samson with blackened stubby teeth.
CHAPTER NINE
ARGENTINA was celebrating too—of course. We concluded that either every day’s a holiday or that we had an unconscious affinity for festivity. But this was a new twist—the celebration of the elimination of a holiday. Until three weeks before we arrived, for ten years October 17 had been glorified as the day of General Juan Domingo Perón, ex-President of Argentina. But with the ousting of Old John Sunday, as the English-speaking residents unaffectionately called him, the day was stricken from the list of national holidays as completely as his name was being obliterated from the rocks and buildings along the road. There was, however, a Jekyll and Hyde atmosphere—with the gaiety was an air of tension. The new government feared a counter-revolution by the followers of Perón, and on October 17 took appropriate measures to prevent it.
A nearly bang-up assault on us was one result of these measures. With machine guns leveled, a cordon of soldiers halted us on the road. With visions of wanted posters—that picture in the Lima paper labeled PERONISTAS IN ACTION—I started in alarm.
“I’m a Yank!”
“Not a tank?” quipped an amused young officer. “Then do us—and yourselves—a favor and get off the road.”
We gladly complied and spent the rest of the day in nearby Río Cuarto eating meat tarts and drinking good Argentine beer.
With October 17 behind us we relished the freshness of spring below the equator. Well-fed cattle and horses grazed placidly on the broad pampa. Fruit trees were blossoming, rows of grape vines corrugated the fields, and buckboards and surries rumbled along the dirt paths beside the fine paved highway.
In Argentina the age of the horse was far from past. Government restriction on the importation of automobiles had kept the carriage builders in business, and there were few late-model cars on the road. Anything newer than 1946 was almost certain to bear an official license plate, the comparatively new 1938 models were driven with pride by their well-to-do owners, and Model T’s were rolling briskly along. Enjoying the bounce-free ride, fourteen-year-old La Tortuga rolled briskly along too, no doubt spurred to a youthful vigor by the cars she passed so many years her senior.
All through the trip keeping pace with the seasons had been a vital factor in our being able to get through the roadless areas: southern Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and Ecuador. It came as a surprise to learn that even where there were roads the weather would continue to affect our travels. From the equator our southerly course was taking us to colder climes, where snow, not rain, would be our problem.
Revived after almost a week of breathing the rich low-altitude air, we headed westward from Mendoza into the highlands again to reach Chile. Near the foot of the first range of the cordillera the paved highway changed to a gravel road. At Uspallata, an Argentine Army garrison about sixty miles from the Chilean border, we were told that a late snowfall might still block the pass. It seemed that for the first time we were out of step with the seasons. However, previous experience had shown that the only way to be sure was to see for ourselves. If we couldn’t get through we would return to Mendoza and continue south through Argentina to Ushuaia, seeing Chile on the way back.
As we climbed higher and higher the road narrowed, and closer to the snow line the damage from the spring thaw had not been repaired. But at Puente del Inca, only fifteen miles from the border, we were encouraged to learn that a truck had passed just a few days before.
Higher yet we went, to eight thousand, then nine thousand feet, where drifts and slides covered the road and dingy snow sagged menacingly from the slate-gray sides of the canyon. Following the tracks of the truck, we detoured down embankments, across shallow streams, and past places where the driver had shoveled away snow. We followed the tracks to Las Cuevas, the Argentine border post, where they stopped. No car had crossed into Chile since the previous fall.
The rustic log and stone buildings of the frontier settlement were quiet. While we warmed ourselves in front of a blazing fire, friendly officials told us that the road through the Christ of t
he Andes pass, twenty-seven hundred feet higher, was definitely blocked with snow. There was, however, an alternate route through the International Tunnel, which, although principally for trains, was also used by automobiles. But there was one hitch. It wouldn’t be open officially for another month, and planks had not yet been placed on the ties.
The officials didn’t know the condition of the road on the Chilean side, but they thought we had passed the worst. Once through the two-mile tunnel, it would all be downhill. However, after Costa Rica the thought of tackling even two miles of railroad tracks seemed out of the question. But after we inspected the first half mile it looked as though it would be a smoother ride than anything we had encountered in Bolivia. The ties were flush with the ground; I could see no necessity for planks—except possibly to raise low passenger cars enough to clear the rails. Since no train was scheduled that day, we decided to go on.
20,000 Miles South Page 21
