Wednesday I went for a long hike up the mountain to the old Inca quarry, where the stones for the local ruin came from. Its about a 2 hr hike on a steadily climbing trail along the mountainside. I stop in one of the few shady spots for a lunch break. Then its an hour up a steep switchbacking trail to another quarry. This is on a grassy bench high on the mountainside with stunning views of the valley below and the snow capped Andes, capped by the glacier covered Mt Veronica. The whole area is terraced and there are little stairways and other signs of Inca occupation. This area is a high desert with few trees. I have climbed out of the desert zone into a weird montane ecosystem There are lots of strange succulent type plants and 2 really weird tree type plants with large floral blooms. My guidebook says to look for the boulder with painting on it.Check. Then look for a rocky trail ascending just to the left. Check. Head up this trail and look for the skeleton under a large boulder. WTF? The whole place is covered in large boulders, that´s why they quarried stone here. I figure I´m already here , might as well check it out. Following the rocky trail for about 50 yard I crested a small rise and there he was, not 20 feet from me. An intact skeleton, sitting upright with his knees up by his chest. He is sitting in the entrance to a small cave formed under the boulder. Peering inside I see a large pile of bones with a couple more skulls on top. Creapy! The skeleton is arranged so he is facing Mt Veronica across the valley. The Incas worshiped mountain Gods called apu and this is obviously a religious burial. Has to have been there at least 600 years. If there was ever a spot for joint break this is it. Nothing makes you contemplate your own mortality like staring into the face of a skeleton. He had a message: "Como tu eres,Yo fui"-As you are, I was.Heavy. I hung out here a little longer and by then it was 3 PM, 2 1/2 hours of daylight left to descend. Hasher that I am I don´t want to retrace my steps. I spotted a faint trail leading down. There was some horse shit there, and wherever a horse can go a man can go.
Dropping down into a high steep basin I soon intersect another, larger trail and follow it to a jumble of ruins perched on a rocky ridge. This must be where the workers lived. The trail comes to a rocky promentory. I look over the edge and its a vertigo inducing 2000 ft drop to the river below. From here I can see my trail down, a series of short steep swithbacks. The trail then becomes a long steep sidehill across a near vertical slope. Its all quite awesome. After about 2 hours I am near the bottom. I pass a few primitive houses into a small village,then to a road to a slightly more modern village. A bridge crosses the Urubamba river and the way back is along a railroad track. Its like a hash, 8-9 mile trail ending in a deathmarch on a RR. As I return to town it dawns on me that in my descent I haved walked through a millenia of history. Seeing that skeleton has blown my mind! The woman from the bar Monday nite was all psyched about "walking in the footsteps of the ancients" Hell, I looked him in the face! I don´t need no stinking San Pedro ceremony to expand my mind. The trail led me right into the train station, where the workers wondered where the hell I had come from. I stopped ina nearby restaurant for a cold beer and bottle of water. It feels nice to sit down and is painful to start the last 200 yards back to my hotel. This has to be one of my top 3 day hikes of all time.
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