El Camino Inca

About a dozen years ago, my dad and I went to Peru together.  We had been talking about how cool it would be to hike the Inca Trail for months (perhaps years), and then one day, he said "we should go to Peru."  And then poof, it happened.  We went to Peru.

It was an awesome trip.  We started in Cusco, a city that served as the capital of the Inca empire.  Our first day there, we decided to head to the square for dinner.  We took a wrong turn out of our hotel - literally, we turned left instead of right - and ended up in an area that was most definitely not the bustling square, but rather was an other-side-of-the-tracks local neighbourhood, filled with... well, locals... wondering why we were wandering around looking so annoyingly chipper and (I am guessing) pasty.  Resigning ourselves to the fact that we were not destined to find the square at that particular moment, we popped into a local deli for some soup and bread.  I wish I could say that the soup was the most exquisite soup I've ever eaten, but it was really kind of scary.  But then again, so was Dad's, and we were in it together, so I pretty well figured if I was going to die of some weird uncooked-food-poisoning thing, at least I was in good company.

We got more directionally savvy as the trip progressed, and once we found the square, he and I ate some fabulous meals together.  We also saw some really amazing sites: Sacsayhuaman (the puma-head-shaped fortress built by the Incas right outside of Cusco), the Catedral de Santo Domingo (with images of the enslavement of the Inca people carved into the wood pews), the Temple of the Sun (stripped of much of its gold by the Spanish Conquistadores), the ruins along the Inca Trail, Machu Picchu at sunrise, the hordes of (lazy!) travelers taking buses to Machu Picchu... the list goes on.  We also shared the most awesome Snickers bar ever, sold to us by a little kid who materialized out of nowhere on the Inca Trail, just as we hit peak fatigue and were ready to start eating small vermin along the trail from a serious case of trail munchies.

But the coolest thing I saw on the entire trip was my dad.  There he was, completely out of his element in so many ways, but also completely in his element in so many others.  He moved effortlessly from dad ("Let it go... so they like their money straight and untorn... why does that bother you so much today?  You know, if you lived in Peru you might value nice looking currency, too.") to trail mate ("I think we should try cuy... how often do you have the chance to eat one of your childhood pets as a delicacy?"), then back to dad ("We need to get your mom a Mother's Day card or she's going to be really pissed.") then back to soul traveler ("No, really, I'm going to get my hair cut here.  Let's see what they can do!") over and over throughout the trip.  I got a small glimpse of what my dad is like as a person.  Imagine that... a real person!  No, seriously!  It's true!  Parents are actual people, too!  (I know.  I didn't believe it either, until I saw it live and in person.)

I don't know whether he looks back with the same level of fondness as I do for that trip; after all, I did (as he puts it) "bitch my way up the mountain," so it may not have been quite as fun for him to be around me as it was for me to be around him.  But when I think of Peru, I think how cool my dad is, and how lucky I was to have had him all to myself for a couple of weeks in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and how lucky we were to have survived the scariest soup known to man.  But we survived it together (the soup and the mountain), and that's what matters.

Happy Father's Day, Ratty!