Armed with nothing except the pithy beam of a dying headlamp, ill-fitting cheap plastic flip-flops and the will to NOT pay for a taxi cab, Matt and I tromp unwittingly into danger in the complete darkness on the road leading out of Santa Teresa in hopes of finding Shangri-La. We heard that the hot springs on the edge of town were amazing . . . and open late . . . and sparsely populated after the 8 o´clock hour.

Rudely awakened from my pre-hot springs nap by the cry of, ¨Ultimo combi para los aguas calientes!¨ or Last combi to the hot springs, I  wipe the drool off my face, grab a sarong and get out the door, but the combi is long gone. A cab offers to drive us there, wait for a couple of hours and drive us back, but the charge is steep and I don´t want to be locked into a finite amount of time at the hot springs.

So, we decide to walk it. As soon as we leave the sparse light of the boomtown of Santa Teresa, the sharp rocks in the dark road begin to poke through our flip-flops. ¨Have I mentioned how much I fucking HATE flip-flops??!¨ Matt says over and over, laughing. Turns out that we were like babes in the woods. We had no clue how dangerous that boulder filled road was. Sure, I had an inkling . . .  after all, we were walking down a steep grade.

I ponder for a moment how we are going to get back up the mountain after a few hours of relaxing in the hot springs, but then dismiss it. I find that these types of details usually just take care of themselves. I also have no bathing suit with me, but I don´t care about that either . . . We have no cares in the world . . . well, except the rocks that are tattering our lilly white  toes . . . but we are laughing about that too.

We stumble down the dark road for nearly forty minutes. We know we are getting close because we see the lights to the hot springs looming in the distance. I see a car above us, twisting and turning slowly on the road, and can hear the crunch of rock beneath the tires. ¨Hey,¨ I say to Matt. ¨Watch out, there´s a car coming . . . it´s far away, though.¨ And on we walk.

Suddenly, the car comes around a tight curve and is very close. ¨Here it comes!¨ I said as I point my weak head lamp light toward the edge of the road so we can find a spot to wait as the car passes. Unfortunately, we are walking on the right-hand edge of the road, the side facing the wide open canyon. Obviously, we weren´t thinking . . . otherwise we would have been walking on the left-hand side of the road, the safe side of the road, the side built up against the mountain.

It all happened so fast. The car swings around the curve. We are in the head lights and a split second later as the headlights speed past . . . Matt disappears. I hear him grunt and in the last second of the car´s light, I see his head disappear right off the edge of the road. I have no idea how far he fell . . .

I scream as the car passes us in a flurry of dust and red tail lights. ¨Matt!¨ I yell. I am shaking. I am scared. The car grinds to a halt. The doors fly open and silhouettes of people run toward me. By the time the people get to me, Matt is up, on the road and has only one flip-flop on his foot.

¨Todo bien?¨ the people ask over and over again. Someone retrieves the lost flip-flop. Matt wasn´t even aware that he was standing in the road with only one shoe. Someone points to a cut on his toe, but he´s not aware of that either. Other than a bit groggy, thankfully, he seems OK.

But then he says, ¨Shine the light here,¨ and lifts up his shirt to reveal an already dark purple mass on his ribcage about 6¨ wide.

He escaped with no broken ribs, only a deep tissue bruise. Good thing we were on our way to the hot springs . . . he thinks that´s what saved him from what should have been really painful. It all turned out OK. The family who stopped to help us gave us a lift to the hot springs and took us home later too. I am conviced they are the nicest people in Santa Teresa – and the mom runs a kickin´ juice stand during the day.

¨What were you thinking?¨I ask Matt later. ¨Why did you run ahead, out of the beam of the flashlight?¨

¨Well,¨ he replied. ¨I was just trying to get out of the way, so I stepped into the darkest spot on the side of the road.¨

We went back to the springs the next day while it was still daylight. Let´s just say it´s a good thing that he didn´t fall when we were high up on the mountain road, because there was nothing but sheer cliff edge for most of the way to the springs. He fell off the lowest part of the road, the part nearly level with the valley floor. The hole he fell in was the only hole in the entire stretch of  road – a 6´ square man-made hole of layered rock probably used for water drainage.

The next day as we slurped freshly blended juice, the kind juice lady asked, ¨What are you all doing today . . . he´s probably hurting bad.¨

¨Going on a hike, ¨I said. ¨I can´t believe it either, but he wants to go climb a mountain.¨

¨Ooooh,¨ the juice lady smiled, ¨A macho man.¨

Peru will NOT protect you from yourself . . . it´s kind of refreshing actually.

For instance – walking down the street can be hazardous. That is, if you don´t pay attention. On just about every city block there are great big gaping holes in the sidewalk from where someone has stolen a manhole cover or a utility panel. Sometimes these holes are a few inches deep and full of trash. Sometimes they are a few feet deep. Never are they cordoned off.

And hiking is still fun and adventurous in this country. Several times we´ve scooted across flimsy little bridges made of rotting bamboo poles that groan and creek when we step on them. Hand holds are a luxury. A couple of times we´ve encountered wooden ladders nailed into the sides of mountains that stretch up more than the equivalent of six stories. You can´t see the end of them, you just keep climbing and never look down . . . the wood is green with mold and kind of slick to the touch and every once in awhile a rung has rotted away.

Sometimes there are exposed electric wires coming out of the shower head . . . Matt got a shock the other day. Eh, it happens. Building permits are unheard of, so anything goes. A friend of ours has a staircase made out of wood slats about the thickness of veneer . . . good thing he´s not too fat.

Nope, no one in Peru is going to hold you by the hand and alert you to the dangers in the streets, houses or on the mountaintops. You have to take care of yourself, use your brains, keep your eyes open and alert . . . and not do dumb shit.

Maybe it was because the night we arrived, I had a terrible dream involving an ex-boyfriend following me to the Nazca Lines. Maybe it was because I didn´t feel safe in the hostel. Or maybe it was because the place was sad and depressing. Eh, the Tiger Milk (ceviche) was good. Someone told us it was tourist week (yippee!) and made promises of dancing horses in the streets. I saw NO dancing horses . . . but there were lots of old men working on souping up old 1970´s muscle cars . . . maybe that´s what they meant by dancing horses . . . anyway . . .  

In my opinion, Nazca blows and should be skipped entirely.

If you decide to ride a bus from Lima to Cusco, the bus will blast through the desert town of Nazca. Everybody is hot for Nazca because of the famous Nazca Lines. I´ve heard that if you take the airplane ride – for minimum US $50.00 – that the Nazca Lines are awesome. But I didn´t want to spend the dough . . . my fault, I realize . . .

The entire Nazca area is a tourist trap that is 100% set-up to promote the Nazca Lines, which are impressive, but in my opinion, a bad idea for building a successful economy around. And everything in town is carved with reproductions of the Lines . . . the monkey and the spider especially. Everything from the sidewalks in the town square to the endless trinkets like rocks, wallets, postcards, clothing . . . anything, you name it . . . will have that damn stylized monkey line drawing painted or stitched or etched into it.

And that´s it. There is nothing else going on in that town.

We arrived at 5AM just as dawn was breaking over the city. The bus dropped us off in a cloud of dust and sped very quickly away. Some guy approached us with a big smile and spoke great English. He offered us a reasonable hostel room and drove us there, too, whereupon we immediately crashed out. (Night bus rides are intense because you don´t get much rest. The tour guides know this and that´s when they strike – in the early morn about two seconds after you´ve stepped off the bus – when you are tired and at your weakest. More on this later.)

When we woke up, I realized that the glass piece above our hostel door was missing. It would have been easy for anyone to get into our room. It´s not uncommon for theft to happen in hostels. When I asked for another room, the management acted like I was asking for the moon and the stars. Then we refused to go on a tour and the clerk got very visibly upset with us. Not a good combo.

I carried my valubles with me all day long.

I had a naive idea that we could maybe hike out to the desert and walk the length of one of the formations . . . like maybe the spider. I thought that would be pretty cool. But we found out, luckily before we executed my plan, that a hike out to the lines will automatically land you in a Peruvian jail for a few years. I was dissappointed, but I understand the need for conservation. So, we decided to go to the ´viewing platform´ where supposedly, you can climb up 60´ above the desert floor and see a couple of the line formations. It was a JOKE.

The viewing platform is in the middle of a no-man´s land that resembles a moonscape. It´s desolate and fairly ugly, the PanAmerican Highway is three feet away with busses and oil tankers blasting past every few seconds. You climb to the top of this viewing platform . . . and . . . and . . . you see a stylized hand glyph and a tree glyph (I think). Both of these glyphs are so much less than impressive, not to mention about five feet square in size.

So, expect good ceviche (served with lot´s of attitude), old men fixing up rusting muscle cars (that was cool – they were putting Nissan engines into old Chevy´s), but don´t expect to see many awesome glyphs, unless you take a flight.

And of course, don´t go to Nazca expecting to see dancing horses.

Up until about a year ago, although close to Machu Picchu, the town of Santa Teresa had no viable access to the most famous ruins the country of Peru has to offer. The only point to cross the raging, rock-filled and wild Urubamba River was a rickety wire basket and steel line contraption that few would dare to try.

About a year ago, the bridge was completed and as a result, Santa Teresa has become a modern-day backpacker boomtown. It’s certain to change quickly within the next few years as tourism brings in a fresh infusion of capital and cosmopolitan influences, so experience this still-rugged adventurer outpost now. The crowd is fairly young – I saw a few spirited (non-local) folks who were probably 50+, but most are the 20’s-30’s range. The music thumps at all hours of the day and night, so bring earplugs if you’re sensitive.

The main street in town is the only one that’s finished. Both the streets in the village and roads leading into town are still bumpy rock and dirt. The town is compact, most buildings are one-story, and all the roofs in town are corrugated metal weighted down with big chunks of river rock. There are bars aplenty to offer cheap drinks and all-day happy hour. The juice bars are cheap and the produce fresh. The hostels are reasonably backpacker budget priced and comfortable. The people in the town are laid back – something not always easy to find in Peru.

The town plaza is brand new. The statues in the plaza are supposed depict Andean people in traditional dress, but I swear the facial features on those bronze statues looked white to me. The town has a real dichotomy in that one can find artsy BBQ joints, vegan eco-camps and the outdoor village butcher block (where if you are lucky, you might see a bloody cow head swinging in the open breeze) all on the same street.

And of course, there are the hot springs. Going only for the hot springs would be perfectly reasonable. Add the fact that Machu Picchu is only two mountains and an 8-kilometer walk on the train tracks away and you’ve got a town that is a true backpacker destination.

The routes in and around Cusco have been well-worn with tourism within the past few decades, taming some of the wildness of the area, but Santa Teresa is still a rough little gem. If you don’t care to take the European-owned (and stupidly expensive) Orient Express Train, the Inca Trail or another long hike in, this is the spot you’re looking for. The main town around Machu Picchu, Aguas Calientes, where the stupidly expensive train runs is much more touristy and busy. And the hot springs are nowhere near as nice as those in Santa Teresa.

Keep in mind that it would be difficult to wake up in Santa Teresa, hike on the tracks to Machu Picchu, hike up the mountain and fully enjoy the ruins and hike back all in one day. Aguas Calientes is my least favorite town in Peru, but the day you go to Machu Picchu, you might as well plan on spending the night there. The kind hostel owners in Santa Teresa will gladly hold your packs the day you’re gone if you want to check out of your room and save a few soles.

I wanted Lomo Saltado for breakfast.

We went into a restaurant near the square in Arequipa with a sign that said it was their house breakfast special. We ordered. She said she didn´t have it. Robbed, I say! Robbed of my Lomo . . . we settled on the grilled chicken. It just wasn´t the same.

We wandered into an antique shop because it looked cool . . . Matt sat his backpack down and then walked around in the store.

¨Aren´t you afraid that your pack will get stolen?¨ I asked.

¨No,¨ he said, ¨not even a little bit.¨

So, I didn´t say anything more. But it was a prophetic moment. We bought a couple of postcards, collected his unattended bag and walked on.

After a lovely evening stroll in Arequipa, we needed food. We wandered back into the edge of downtown. I spied a local sole menu restaurant with Lomo written on the sign. We walked in. Again, no Lomo. Damn! Robbed again . . . of my Lomo!

But we were hungry, so we just ordered something else. The restaurant was local – kind of grungy and packed with people. Lots of cars bounced by on the brick-covered colonial streets. Activity buzzed around us in all manner and form. Matt grabbed the water bottle we always keep on hand out of his backpack, which he then sat on the floor next to his leg.

I´m not sure at what point I realized that something was amiss.  I was busy people-watching. There was a cute old man wearing a dirty trucker hat who slurped his soup. Another dude looked like the real-life version of Smithers from the Simpsons. There were people getting up to pay just as a girl sat down right next to me at our table . . . unconsciously, I shifted my own backpack under my legs . . . and that´s when I looked over at a now-empty table that had been occupied by two young men . . . and I don´t really know why, but I suddenly shouted at Matt, ¨Where´s your pack? Where´s your bag?¨

He reached down, but it was already gone. In the shuffle, someone had just picked it up nonchalantly and walked out the door.

 . . . and make no mistake, as the people of Quillabamba will tell you repeatedly, this town certainly is not Cusco!

We left the tourist-frequented area of Cusco and the Sacred Valley, only to discover a remote and wonderful area of Peru, where, for three days, we did not see any other gringos. Not one! It was kind of exciting.

They really like ice cream. A lot. The town motto is, “Town of eternal summer.” They’re not kidding. Immediately I began to search the local market for some flip-flops. My feet could no longer tolerate being cooped up – they wanted some sunshine and fresh air. I did get hammered with mosquito bites on my feet and ankles, but eh, that’s the price for letting my feet breathe.

The women, no matter what age, rock some chic fashion. There are a few Andean grandmother’s in Sacred Valley mountain garb, but most of the ladies wear short shorts or bold patterned dresses with high heels. I saw one lady walking through a construction zone on the street who had to be pushing 50 wearing a bright red, one-shoulder dress and stilettos in the blistering mid-afternoon sun. “Rock it, sister!” I thought to myself.

Quillabamba sits in the high jungle and is a export center for jungle fruits, honey and coffee, so it doesn’t depend so much on tourism like other Peruvian towns. Quillabamb-ites are high-tech and saavy and don’t seem to even notice tourists, and I like that. Hordes of children in Catholic school uniforms take over the streets at night – often with a cell phone in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other.

Check out La Esquina, it’s a coffee shop on the corner of the square. The. coffee. is. AMAZING!

As far as things to do – there’s really not much on the tourist circuit, but the vibe of the place coupled with the lack of things to do was exactly the chill getaway I was looking for. The market food is wonderful, plentiful and the fruit is insanely inexpensive and deliciously fresh. I sat at a stall and drank liter after liter of emolliente – a refreshing tea-like drink.

I’m sure if I tried real hard, that I would find that Quillabamba is the gateway to some sort of fabulous, out-of-the-way trek, but I specifically wasn’t looking. I do know that Quillabamba is the dry season launch point to Pongo de Mainique, but we were visiting just a touch too early for that excursion. We did find one little get-away that was amazing . . .

Let me recommend Ampay bus line for all of the above.

We hop onto the afternoon bus bound for Quillabamba and I am impressed. This bus is a Mercedes-Benz with freshly ironed curtains lining the windows. The entire bus has a crisp appearance, every surface has clean edges that don’t seem to be worn down with years, grime and abuse. But the best features are the padded, plastic covered leg rests. Ah, luxury! We recline our seats, kick down the leg rests and breathe deep. I am looking forward to a relaxing, comfortable ride to the jungle town of Quillabamba.

The lady across the aisle from us is the only other rider I have an awareness of. She’s holding a cute little puppy in brightly colored manta. Great! We’re riding in comfort next to a cute little puppy . . . can it get any better? We play with the puppy and his little blanket. The puppy eventually shits on the bus floor. We all laugh and the lady cleans it up and throws the toilet paper out the window.

The journey to Quillabamba is long and arduous. Not many travelers take the trip because it’s an eight or nine hour bus ride and the last few hours are on a bumpy, unpaved road and there aren’t many popular tourist destinations in that direction. Quillabamba sits in the high jungle just on the other side of a range of 14,000’ mountain peaks that overlook the popular tourist town of Ollantaytambo. We want to go to Quillabamba for an experience of the high jungle, locally grown coffee and just to see what it’s like.

The bus twists up and up and up for a couple of hours, on a really nice smooth paved road. Then we hit the clouds and we glide through mist. Every once in awhile, the bus is flagged down by little Peruvian kids wearing traditional Quechua clothing. We stop for just a second, the driver hands the kid some bread and we are off again. I’m so comfortable and I’m thinking about how I need to have an Anna-tude adjustment about riding the busses and just learn to relax and trust that everything will be all right. The clouds are so beautiful, we’re crossing the apex of the mountain peak, the cute little puppy is running around . . .

. . . and all of a sudden, there’s a bit of a commotion. No less than four Peruvian matriarchs, including the one sitting next to us with the puppy, run toward the middle of the bus. “Que paso?” I ask the guy sitting next to us. He makes a rounded-belly motion with his hand. “Nacimiento?” I ask. A birth? He shakes his head an emphatic yes. The bus still twists and turns through the clouds, not slowing down at all. I look up. Sure enough, there are four matronly ladies with concerned looks, swaying and staggering in the ailse as the bus rounds the curves, looking down at a passenger who is reclined in one of the comfy bus seats. All I can see from my seat in the back is that they are pushing on a woman’s belly. I’d like to get a picture, but feel it just wouldn’t be right . . .

They ask me if I want to see. I stand up and make my way, swaying with the bus, toward the woman. She’s reclined and her fists are clenched into the blanket that covers her waist. She’s made not one sound, hasn’t cried out in pain at all. “Has she had the baby?” I ask, thinking that the woman is still in labor. Then I notice the man sitting next to her. He’s holding the cloth that the puppy had been wrapped up in earlier. He pulls the cloth back to reveal a tiny baby so new that it’s still covered in goo.

“Close the windows!” one of the matrons calls out. Another passenger offers a sprig of some kind of plant. The woman holds the sprig over the baby and murmurs a prayer in Quechua. The Andean people revere the surrounding mountains as gods. The fact that this baby was born on the very top of this apu is not lost on these mountain women. This baby is special. That apu wanted it to be born right at that moment.

Sometimes the apus claim lives in horrific bus crashes. It’s a daily fact of life that Peruvians just live with. But this time, a new life is born, innocent and new at 14,000’, in the clouds and mist at the top of the mountain.

It is 9:30 AM, and we just finished buying bus tickets. We want to get a cab to downtown Cusco, get some lunch, go to the bank and then return to this bus station on the outskirts of town just in time to hop on the afternoon bus bound for Quillabamba. That’s when we see him . . . well, to be more correct, we hear the thumping . . .

Across the street sits a tiny little cab decked out with flashy rims, waiting for us. The young driver is jamming in his seat along with the rhythmic “umph, umph, umph” of the dance music blaring from the speakers loaded in the hatchback. The hood of the cab sports a graphic of the Tasmanian Devil with flames. The interior of the cab is covered with a glitzy cloth in honor of Senor De Huanca, of course, but that’s the only similarity to the average Cusquenian cab.

I have a lot of respect for this kid’s cab. In a town where just about every taxi is exactly alike, Dante and his disco-mobile really stand out. We tell him that all he needs are disco balls and a van and he could start his own new kind of specialized tour company that caters to the party crowd. We jam through the streets of Cusco. Dante is such a personable guy that we get his phone number so he can be our regular cab driver. We ask him to pick us up later in the day at the same spot.

He returns promptly at 1PM and rocks us right back to the bus station, where we begin our adventure to Quillabamba . . .

By the time we arrive in Paucartambo it is nearing midnight. We just want to find a hostel and get the skinny on how to get to Tres Cruces, the place with the amazing sunrises.

We find a hostel/hair cutting place. There are actually still wet hair cuttings on the floor of the entryway. We explain to the clerk/hairstylist that we want to go to Tres Cruces to see the sunrise. She looks at us sort of funny, shrugs her shoulders and begins her schpiel. The taxi leaves around 3:30 in the morning and the cost is 100 soles for the cab to transport us there, wait for two hours and then drive us back. Taxi? I explain that we don’t need the extravagance of a cab and are really just looking for a bus to take us there. We could hang out in Tres Cruces for the day if we needed to. She looks at us funny again.

After I ask the same question four times, I finally realize that Tres Cruces is not a town or a village. It is a lookout point only. There is nothing there. No town, no village and no busses to get there. The clerk assures us that there will be lots of clouds and most likely no amazing sunrise. She does, however, show us a wall calendar with a golden picture of the three-sunrise optical illusion that only occurs in June and July. Yeah, most of the time I skip using a guidebook, or else I might know these things – but the trip would also be a lot more boring. I crave the ups and downs of self-exploration.

But we decided that dammit, we came all this way in a rusted tin can of a bus, bouncing around on dangerous, rocky roads for eight hours to do one thing – go to Tres Cruces – and nothing, not even clouds obscuring that magical rising sun was going to stop us. We hired the cab. After a couple hours of sleep and we get into the cab at 3:30 in the morning and head off, Matt with the hostel’s pillow and blanket in hand.

We are pretty much delirious from bad planning and lack of sleep. We just laugh at the ridiculousness of our journey and decide to have a blast anyway. The cab drives at approximately 25 MPH for over an hour, slogging through thick mud and big rocks. The driver and his partner in passenger seat both comment on how ugly the road is and how a month ago a bus driver they used to know lost control of his bus and slid off a cliff. Now the dry season was starting up again, so there was less to worry about.

It is still the dead of night when we finally get to the Tres Cruces area, where our drivers stop at an abandoned security shed so we can pay the ten sole park fee. They bang on the darkened door, but no one answers. We drive onward, to another park ranger building. The driver’s partner gets out of the car and pounds on the door for a few minutes, until a sleepy-eyed ranger opens the door. He explains that some people want to go to Tres Cruces. The ranger shakes his head and demands a 50 sole fee to walk to the gate and open it so the cab could drive through.

“So, I guess no one comes here during this time of the year?” I ask the driver.

And just like an American with attitude would shrug his shoulders as if to imply that my question was ridiculous, the driver says in an incredulous tone, “No, nadie!” No, you crazy gringa, no one comes here in April!

The driver himself gets out of the car and talks the ranger into walking down to open the gate so we can get through. We drive down a neglected path for about another half hour. When we finally get to the coveted overlook spot, Matt and I laugh together as we stand on the simple concrete slab while freezing in the pre-morning light. We watch the clouds lighten and cackled to one another, “No, nadie!” every once in awhile.

But just knowing that we were standing on the lip of a mountain that plunges down over 10,000’ into a cloud covered jungle, whether we could see it or not, was enough. We watched the sun rise and it didn’t matter to us if the three suns were rising behind grey clouds or not. We were acutely aware of everything, appreciating even the smallest details of the obscured morning – first the infinite quiet, then the sounds of the earth waking up. Every dew-drop, every frog croak and every scrap of light that made it through the layers and layers of fast-moving clouds that engulfed us were sheer wonderment and excitement for us. That was the real magic of the morning.

Matt is a big sweaty guy. When he rides in a cramped bus, he likes to feel the air from an open window. The only problem is that Peruvians often insist that people close the windows while riding through the high cliffs of the countryside.

We found out that this is because of local superstition regarding the mountains, or apus. Each mountain has it’s own apu, or mountain spirit, each one sacred and each one considered to be a god. According to the locals, some mountains, or apus, are good and some are not. Regardless of their personality, no one wants to attract the spirit of the apu toward them. They are afraid that the spirit of the apu might take an interest in them and ‘want them.’

So, if riding in a hot, cramped bus and an old Quechua mamacita asks you to please close the window, just do it, out of respect for the mountains. It’ll get hot and stuffy on board, but it will keep the apus from wreaking havoc with the humans. And with the roads and bus conditions in this country, everybody needs every little bit of help that’s available.

So when we get on a bus, Matt usually tries to get on first, open as many windows as possible to let the bus air out before the journey begins. Then the windows slide closed one by one as the bus careens through the mountains. We sweat, smile and watch the gorgeous apus as we glide by, undercover and with respect for the gods who watch over this sacred land.