Back In Time

When you're trudging up a mountain at four thousand meters, when you take deep gasping breaths to suck in as much oxygen as you can find at high altitude, when the sun seems to bake the skin on your neck even as the wind chills the sweat running down your back, you need some intense motivation to keep on going.

Especially when you know that after crossing this first mountain pass you will break for lunch and then climb another pass later that same afternoon.

It's hard work. But no one said that hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu would be easy. It's a labour of four days and three nights. At times you wonder why you're putting yourself through this trial. You've trudged up and down mountainsides for tens of kilometers. You've put up with an abundance of mosquitoes and a lack of personal hygiene. You've experienced burning heat and freezing cold and all points in between.

It starts to feel worthwhile when you catch your breath and look around. The Andes rear up proudly in every direction. Up close they are covered in brush and spotted with the occasional llama. Further away they stand tall and black, glorious in their simplicity. And in the distance rise the benevolent snowy heights of La Veronica and Salcantay, looking down from six thousand meters.

And then you encounter remnants of the Inca empire and you realize you are making memories that will last a lifetime. Like the time when you explored a small Inca outpost shaped like a giant ceremonial knife. Or when you gazed in awe at a staircase plunging down for hundreds upon hundreds of meters. The excitement is building up now, and it comes to a crescendo on the final morning, as you crest the path that leads to the Sun Gate.

Then, as you top this final rise you are greeted with a sight that takes your breath away. For a few brief, shining minutes the dawning sun shines full onto a magical city in the near distance. It sits like a proud jewel on top of a smaller mountain below you. Then, with astonishing rapidity, the city is cloaked in a rising mist of clouds.

You're tired, you're exhilarated, you're hungry, you're wide-eyed, you want to stand up and jump, you want to sit down and stare, you look around at fellow hikers and grin your mutual congratulations, you stare straight ahead at the mountaintop jewel and pretend you're the only person on earth.

You take a picture. You eat a chocolate bar. You take a very deep breath.

This is why you came.

Chasing Condors

Just two more days to go! What? Two more days to what, you ask? Why, just two more days to go to my holiday to Peru!

I love vacations (duh!) and I love the anticipation of an upcoming vacation every bit as much as the holiday itself. So right now I am beside myself with excitement.

After an initial hiccup I got myself a visa. And now I am all set for a backpacking, mountain hiking, all-action adventure in the Andes.

Of course I'm looking forward to seeing Machu Picchu. I read about it as a child and ever since then I've dreamed of seeing it for myself. What I did not dream was that I would get there the old-fashioned way, hiking through wilderness to come to a lost city.

And right after Machu Picchu I'll get to go another dream destination, Nazca. I don't care what you think, I would really prefer to believe that the Nazca lines were made to serve as landing strips for alien spacecraft. I know that I need to survive a fourteen-hour overnight bus ride to get to Nazca, but even that cannot dampen my enthusiasm to see the lines.

I know it's odd to blog about a trip before I make it. I'm almost worried I might jinx myself. But only almost, because how can you possibly jinx a trip to a destination as exciting as Peru?

Maine Attractions

I am almost embarassed to admit that last weekend I went to Maine to see lighthouses. I know, that sounds as geeky as going to a Star Trek convention. Except that at a Star Trek convention you won't get to see something as pretty as this.



This gem is a hundred and thirty years old and is named the "Nubble" lighthouse, after the rocky little island it sits on. And it might just become the best-known lighthouse in the universe. In 1977 NASA launched the Voyager 2 sattelite. This satellite is now well on it's way out of solar system. It carries pictures and recorded audio on a gold-plated disc, in case it encounters intelligent aliens who are curious to know who sent it. And on that disc is a picture of the Nubble lighthouse.

Yes, I know, sharing that bit of information actually made me seem more geeky, not less. Well, never mind. I am hoist with my own petard, so I might as well go on.

On to Portland Head Light, for instance. This is another beauty, an hour's drive north of the Nubble. It was built in 1791. And when it was completed a certain Captain Greenleaf was appointed as its first keeper by George Washington, who at that time was himself just 2 years into his term as the first president of the United States. Capt. Greenleaf clearly won the approval of his employers, because 2 years later they decided to start paying him a salary.

His name is engraved at the top of a plaque that honours all the keepers who were in charge of the lighthouse for the first two hundred years of its existence. But when I looked at the plaque myself, the names that caught my eye were those of Joshua E. Strout (keeper from 1869 to 1904) and Joseph W. Strout (keeper from 1904 to 1928). A quick internet search confirmed that they were father and son. But there's more to their family story than that. Joshua's wife was his assistant keeper for a decade, and his mother was a housekeeper for a previous lighthouse keeper. In fact the combined service of the Strout family at various New England lighthouses was 128 years!

Imagine that: one family devoting over a hundred years to bringing sailors safely home. I wonder what it was like growing up in their home. Was working the lights just a trade to them? Or did they, as I would like to think they did, take their job very very seriously? Did they ever get bored? When Joshua had a cold and fever how did he drag himself upstairs to climb to the top of a 100-foot tower to do his job? And when he got to the top did he ever accidentally drop something and have to climb all the way down the stairs to pick it up?

We shall never know, but we can speculate.

Seriously, though, that's what really fascinates me: not the lighthouses that are still standing on the rocky coastline of New England, but the men and women who used to tend them and are now gone. If you squeeze your eyes half shut and stretch your imagination really hard then you can sort of picture them. I imagine them as earnest, weather-beaten men and women who liked the company of others but only in small doses. I wonder where you'd find them today.