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.

We decided to head to a high mountain town called Paucartambo for no other reason than that we heard the sunrise near there in June and July is amazing. We figured, eh, why not go check it out? It’s the end of April, so that’s close to around June, right?

We sort of knew what we were getting ourselves in for. The amazing sunrise near Paucartambo, in a place called Tres Cruces, is nearly always obscured by clouds. But during the months of June and July, the high clouds disappear, revealing a strange atmospheric phenomenon that makes the horizon appear as though three golden suns are rising above a sea of lower clouds that cover the jungle in the basin below. We held out hope that maybe, just maybe, we’d be lucky and there wouldn’t be any clouds when we visited.

We made several critically wrong assumptions on this leg of our journey. It never occurred to me that the road and bus would be sketchy. With all of the crazy bus rides I’ve had lately, I should have known better. And honestly, there isn’t much going on in that part of Peru, unless of course, it’s June and July, the season for the amazing sunrises. We decided we were in it for the adventure, no matter what did (or didn’t) happen. In the end, we at least had some good laughs.

We caught the last bus of the day to Paucartambo. I was in seat number 49, all the way in the back. I got a glance of the bus before boarding and I immediately had my doubts. The huge front tire was worn down, with gash covering what little tread was still there. The front half of the bus was divided from the back half by a jagged rusty line of corroded metal. The windows seemed loose in their casings and the luggage rack above everyone’s heads was rigged with a combination of plastic strips, wood pieces and extra screws.

Once the bus went into motion, I jiggled around so much that a few times I actually caught some air, getting tossed upward in my seat. The windows rattled, the entire bus creaked with every shimmy and the luggage rack shuddered like it would fall down any second. This bus was like an amusement park ride, made to feel scary with jumps and jolts and sharp turns that pull your stomach in the wrong direction. Except this was not an amusement park ride, safe and comfortable with a false specter of danger.

This bus ride was tense. And it wasn’t just Matt and I who felt that way. Nearly every man on the bus broke a sweat and kept an eye on the road with a worried glance. The guy next to us ate crackers obsessively, nervously finishing one package and immediately opening the next. We left the paved road at the base of the mountain and headed up a dusty, rocky trail barely wide enough for a fifty-passenger bus. Essentially, we were off-roading in a tin can, creeping up the side of a 14,000’ mountain, taking blind curves and oncoming semi-trucks with the honk of a horn and the prayer of everyone on board.

There were several times when Matt and I began talking about those last second scenarios, like in slapstick movies, where the plane has malfunctioned and everyone on board acts crazy during their final moments. Most of the time, we were shaking around so much that truly, it was difficult to even talk to one another. We made the trip with sweaty hands and stiffened muscles. Coca leaves helped with the altitude. The spectacular and often stomach churning views of mountain peaks kept our attention focused on the wide open spaces just beyond the bus windows, instead of focusing our attention on the fact that the road was so small that we couldn’t even see it moving below us . . .