Of Pisco and Peru: Machu Picchu Pt. 6
Stopped again. Our bus is waiting to cross the narrow bridge over the Vilcanota River from Aguas Calientes.
On the street below us, kids with thin faces ham it up for us turistas. I can’t help but wonder if this is play or work for them. It’s tough to imagine having to rely on the compassion of some foreigner on vacation to eke out an extra Peruvian sol.
Auntie M’s hitting it off with a young, good-looking Brazilian. He lays it on thick. Feeding orphans in Paraguay. Providing clean water in Bolivia. Now he says he wants to move to Uruguay and study architecture so he can house the poor.
What an asshole.
Our driver shifts the engine back into gear and we slowly move forward. One of the smaller waifs breaks free from the pack and gives chase. He climbs astride the flattened guardrail, balancing himself while waving and teetering alongside us, ignoring the huge, skull-cracking rocks jutting from the river below. The oblivious confidence of extreme youth.
A frumpy woman with a Kiwi accent giggles and waves at him. His little legs pump like pistons before he hops down, diminishing in the distance before our bus bends around a sharp left turn.
We bounce around like seated lemmings in a twenty-minute uphill jaunt with vertiginous jungle views. The bus grinds to a halt in a dusty parking lot crammed to the gills with people milling around a set of gates under a green corrugated roof.
It is here, before even experiencing the grandeur of Machu Picchu itself, that the biological imperative of the modern-day vacationist takes over. A primordial urge so powerful it has birthed an invention of almost incomprehensible importance for casual sightseeing.
The wheel. Language. Mathematics. Agriculture. Writing. The internal combustion engine. None of these inventions compares to U.S. patent #4530580A in 1985 (1983 in Japan). The creators, Hiroshi Ueda and Yujiro Mima, called it the “telescopic extender for supporting the compact camera.” Yes ladies and gentlemen, the selfie stick.
Word is the clerk charged with the selfie stick patent sat in awed silence for hours at his desk, uttering a variant of the Bhagavad-Gita, chapter 11 verse 32: “Now, I have become Selfie Stick, the destroyer of vacations,” unable to comprehend true nature of the pandemic he had wrought. Three days later, he selfied himself leaping to his death from the fifth floor of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. His name was Samuel L. Bronkowitz, JR.
Lots of strained faces and raised voices waiting while queuing up towards the promised land of Machu Picchu. Despite the blizzard of selfie-ing, most of the touristas are tense with anticipation.
And I’m feeling it, too. Despite the civilized veneer, there’s always a potential energy lurking like a latent madness, in the chaos of crowds. Who are these people? How far would they go to get to the front of the line a few seconds sooner? Would they curtsy in front of me, ignoring my protests? Probably. Place a well-timed elbow at my floating rib when I’m not looking to get ahead. Quite possibly.
For some silly tourist sots, it’s whatever it takes. Just get through that goddamned gate for that money shot: the one with the selfied, plastic smile composed in front of a backdrop ubiquitous in every Peruvian Travel guide. The one that screams, I’ve made it to all your friends. I’ve been to Machu Picchu. One of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
The jostling grows frantic. Ouch! The peopleofwalmart.com couple behind me push their stroller ahead like a battering ram, baby howling at the top of his lungs. A short Scandinavian woman crashes into me as she’s pushed forward by a behemoth rocking a braided rat tail mullet. The top of her bottle pops off, fizzing sickly sweet seltzer water all over my smiling Alpaca ‘Como Te Llama?’ t-shirt. She immediately apologizes, then looks down at my cherry-red bottle of Frutti Flex, and scowls.
That all started innocently enough. I tried one bottle after Empanadagate in Cuzco. Then it became my go-to thing to stay hydrated in the altitude of the Sacred Valley. But that was just a tease. Pretty soon, one bottle became two, and pretty soon Auntie M’s chiding “Really?” as I’d duck into yet another pharmacy. I rationalized it as a sort of undiagnosed electrolyte addiction. Some people like prescription opioids, but my hopeless habit is cherry-flavored and way kinkier.
“Es you okay?” Auntie M startles me, gaping at me pouring sweat, and cradling my Frutti Flex bottle like a wino with the shakes.
“Fine. Why?” My stomach makes noises like a constipated lion.
“Es just that you es paler than normal.”
I fidget on the balls of my feet, my tummy’s gurgling pyloric eruptions drowned out by the baby’s screams.
“No, think this is my usual pale. Boy, nothing wrong with that baby’s lungs.” “Sí. Es chiquito.” “I feel for him.” I wipe my brow and look her in the eye. “I’m great with children.” She smiles. Taking a casual inventory around me. “Uh, so, where’d São Paulo’s answer to Father Teresa head off to? What? No orphans to save on Machu Picchu, today?”
Auntie M scrunches her nose. “Huh?”
“Oh, nothing.”
We both exchange a couple of klutzy glances while shuffling forward.
Finally, I rub the perspiration off my neck. “You know, maybe I’m not feeling so hot after all.”
Then I hear it. A frustrated female voice answers an out-of-context conversation that pierces through the rabble. “Where are we? Jumpin’ Jesus, did we come all this way for nothing?”
More screams from the baby. Where are we? What is that? Why do you think we’ve gathered here, forced together like gutted sardines as we smell each others’ body odor? After all the effort it took to get here? Trains. Buses. Scaling Incan trails. Now we don’t know where we are. It’s too much.
I wanna stop myself, but I can’t. Looking around, I flash a toothy grin. “I’m here to see the dogfighting!”
Their confused faces defy description. Good. I’ve got their attention. Locked and loaded, I’m all in. “Basic economics. The Peruvian Tourism Industry wasn’t generating enough income so they killed two early birds and got them stoned. It’s deceptively simple. Why not use all the stray curs around town and start a dogfighting league at the top of Machu Picchu?”
Blank stares. Too late to stop now. “They ship the dogs up from Aguas Calientes first thing each morning. It’s all sanctioned with an octagon cage and everything. A little something extra to spice up that once-in-a-lifetime Sacred Valley experience. If you have a big Red ‘X’ on your ticket, congratulations, you go to the front row seats.”
I smile at the people instinctively glancing at the lucky tickets in their hands. “They’re probably washing the blood off the fighting ring right now. I heard it’s up by the Sun Gate.”
Nothing but puzzled and disappointed faces staring at me, but I take a deep breath and keep going. “Personally, I got 250 Peruvian soles on Snotz. He’s the brindled, moose-sized bastard with the disposition of a wolverine whose had its nuts stung off by fire ants. You can’t miss him. He likes to romance his bitch while throwing up on Hotel El Colibri’s front porch every morning. That’s what I’m talking about. There’s no dog in all of Aguas Calientes who can take that big fucker.”
Silence, then somewhere in the back, a faceless and misinformed voice cries out. “You’re damn right!”
For the benefit of the lingering stares, I take a deep plug off the Frutti Flex like it’s a J & B Whiskey. “All hail Snotz. Long live the king!”
With confused glances and concerned murmurs firing off all around me, I now have quite a bit more extra personal space.
It’s amazing what batshit crazy can do.
Anyways, the voices in my head really wanted me to say all that. . . but I didn’t. Too damn tame in the madness of crowds.
Auntie M’s nudges my floating rib, breaking my dogfighting reverie. “What es you smirking at?”
I gaze at her and smile. “Oh, just thinking of something funny.”
“Dougito.” She rolls her eyes and sighs.
Taking another swig of Frutti Flex, I sheepishly move in lockstep with my fellow travelers. A hermit crab in an ocean of itinerant faces.
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