He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun.
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He climbed a plateau between 3000 and 4000 meters. Can you believe it? As if the world could be turned upside down without falling anything. The train blew smoke and us life. From our window we watched the Andes and rain steppe grasses and leathery people by the cold sun. We didn't stop looking, that emptiness in which peaks with summer snow protruded did not allow us. Time passed quickly on that slow train. In the distance trotted llamas and alpacas. A child would greet with his hands swollen from working and the women and men would allow a breather behind their backs when they heard the creaking of the wagons.. Peru fell short for us in that iron rope that connects Cusco and Lake Titicaca. We were about to arrive without fully understanding if we had already left.
On the slopes of the mountains of the Incas everything has a mixture of sad joy, as if despair were the remedy for altitude sickness
we leave early, with the light of the first things, the icy wind of the dew on the heights and the streets preparing for a new onslaught. Cusco and the elevated Sacred Valley at Christmas was like celebrating the holidays at God's table. Constantine, a generous friend, cheerful and smart, He showed us his land of temporary adoption and returned to Lima. Francesca and I deciphered a map of water and mud in which to get lost with the typical nostalgia of the area. On the slopes of the mountains of the Incas everything has a mixture of sad joy, as if despair were the remedy for altitude sickness. We were some tourists perched on a convoy of those of before, centuries ago, of those that to exist have to be very new.
We leave Cusco with Andean punctuality. The train made its way away from the colonial beauty of the city postcards. It was another Cusco, of broken adobe or brick houses where moss grew in the drains. It was like this always, also in Inca times: the common people dwell under the leftovers. Man has that universal faculty of destroying the landscape with his bastard inequality. A few days ago I was also taking the train from the New York airport to Manhattan and the scene was the same. With light and with water there, with cement mountains and neon temples, but the same hives of people who survive their lives far from the opulence of the Big Apple.
It wasn't until we left man that we discovered the stone peaks, the cattle scattered in the tall grass…
It wasn't until we left man that we discovered the stone peaks, the cattle scattered in the tall grass, the villages without fences, the furtive glances, the aimless rivers, the smell of the wind, the tremor of the cold, the violent silence, a road in the distance with hardly any cars, a train that invented curves, the beauty of nothing. and everything was there, full of hidden life, running from us and them, with the stubborn idea of staying like this until consuming the days. Time passed so quickly between those kilometers of barren valleys that you did not know where to look so as not to miss anything.
And so it was for hours and miles, I don't know how to measure that trip because the first thing happened fast and the second happened slow, until man and his vices returned. in juliaca, a city near the lake, the train went through dead bazaars, gray faces, some drunk who spoke to the train with insolence and stalls where useless leftovers from other worlds were sold. There were thousands of people there who reluctantly left the convoy so as not to disturb their lives with our distant lives.. Some vendors left their fruit or books, exposed on a rag, on the same tracks on which the train passed. They didn't bother to remove them., it was enough for them to act as if they did not see us until they made us doubt if we were true. It was a fucking poverty in which the only thing that was left was us.
the train went through dead bazaars, gray faces, some drunk who spoke to the train with insolence and stalls where useless leftovers from other worlds were sold
Everything was left behind, in the distance of two disparate realities that necessarily meet twice a day. And in the last stretch calm returned, the steppe and the water of Titicaca in the background. The train whistle blew and we knew that we had arrived after almost twelve hours at our destination.. it was a bit cold. The mountains of Puno were made of brick and surrounded a mirror bay. We look at the train, stopped on the tracks, and we smile. Do you know those deep smiles of happiness?
Thanks for the great article.. In fact it is one of the best trains that cross the Andes mountain range, traveling by train is fascinating, you have to live and feel this experience, as Javier did. https://incredibletravelperu.com/
Comments (1)
Marco Antonio
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Thanks for the great article.. In fact it is one of the best trains that cross the Andes mountain range, traveling by train is fascinating, you have to live and feel this experience, as Javier did. https://incredibletravelperu.com/
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