Under the Peruvian Sun

By the time my team woke on our final day of hiking the Inca Trail I had spent many an hour imagining the moment we would descend the stairs to the Sun Gate to watch the sun rise and slowly illuminate the stone city of Machu Picchu below.
The hard part was over. We had all made it past the highest point of the trail (aptly named Dead Woman’s Pass) on the second day. Everything had been leading up to this moment. We would be on the trail by 5:30 AM to race against the sun to meet it at just the right moment at the gate.
We had made an agreement to arrive at the gate together, which meant that we were bound to the slowest hiker’s pace. It wasn’t long before the rumblings started. We weren’t going fast enough. My mind began to race. What if we didn’t make it on time? The sun rising at the Sun Gate. That was it. The reward. The bucket-list moment. What if we missed it? I began to pester our guide about our pace, how much further we had to go. I felt panicked. Worst of all, I felt angry. Angry that the others were ruining this for me. I had fallen victim to the same desperate need to win the race against the sun that had already claimed two lives that year–the hikers died trying to pass slow-moving groups.
I will forever be grateful to Sue, my surrogate mother on the trail and a woman I deeply admire. She sensed my rapidly spiralling mood and asked me what I was going to remember most about this trip.
I knew the answer. Those last 100m to Dead Woman’s Pass. The heaviness in my legs, the way my breaths seemed to stop just shy of my lungs. The moment I took the last step and had “done it.” Had climbed higher than I ever had in my life (13, 800 ft. to be exact). How watching the other members of my team take that last step was even more rewarding. How blue the sky was. How crisp the air was. How close to heaven we were. How damn delicious the overpriced Reese’s chocolate bar I had bought at the start of the trek was in that moment.
Suddenly I got it. This had never been about watching the sun rise from the Sun Gate.
We didn’t make it. We were the last of that day’s trekkers to arrive at the gate and Machu Picchu was already glowing. In the end it didn’t matter. Nothing could take away from that view of the city from above. It was a geometrical, mathematical, architectural wonder, framed perfectly by the surrounding mountains and the sacred Urubamba River. It looked like every postcard and travel brochure I’d ever seen, but it felt like victory. Lesson learned.