I was the same with ‘Juanita’, the mummified Inca princess hidden for centuries above 6,000 metres of volcanic ice and snow until her skin rolled into sunlight again only 6 years ago. What a story she tells, this fourteen year old, sacrificed after a week of fasting and several more of walking over high mountain passes wearing only sandals!
On Monday and Tuesday we went to the Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Ten of us crammed in a rusty old mini-van, bouncing our way up over the pass and down past Inca terracing to the village of Chivay. Stocky llamas, fuzzy alpacas and delicate vicunas moved about the high plains nibbling ichu grass and other plants that only grow at altitude.
We drank coca leaf tea, a local remedy for altitude sickness that, despite the aura of illicit coca, was completely safe and totally ineffective. We are both a little dizzy and nauseated. I had a pounding headache and hoped the descent into Chivay would abate the effects, but it didn’t, our lungs used to sucking up thick sea level air.
On Monday and Tuesday we went to the Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Ten of us crammed in a rusty old mini-van, bouncing our way up over the pass and down past Inca terracing to the village of Chivay. Stocky llamas, fuzzy alpacas and delicate vicunas moved about the high plains nibbling ichu grass and other plants that only grow at altitude.
We drank coca leaf tea, a local remedy for altitude sickness that, despite the aura of illicit coca, was completely safe and totally ineffective. We are both a little dizzy and nauseated. I had a pounding headache and hoped the descent into Chivay would abate the effects, but it didn’t, our lungs used to sucking up thick sea level air.The altitude made sleep difficult so we sat up and talked or played cards, then I read when Hamish dozed off. He is a born napper, able to go off at a moment’s notice even here. Here in this thin air his breathing was interrupted and tangled, which I knew to be common in such a place. He’d be snoring his usual rhythmic drone, then I would suddenly be aware of silence, realizing his breathing had actually stopped altogether. I told myself not to worry, then despite myself would start a boxing referree’s count. As I counted past 10 or so, just when I'd start to get totally freaked out, he would gasp and gulp in a huge scoop of air, waking himself groggily. Once, to take my mind off it, I wrapped a blanket around me and stepped outside to see the clearest stars above the line of valley stretching out before me, shadowed black below celestial lights. I was not prepared for the thin air to be so bitingly cold. Behind me I heard Hamish gasp himself awake again, after which he must have woken enough to see me at the door for he rose and came to stand with me awhile, wrapping both of us in his blanket, silent. I did not turn around, but leaned back against him, feeling his warmth, thankful to be together.
The next morning we rumbled along graavel roads to the end, where we waited at the deepest part of the canyon to be rewarded two hours later with the sight of Andean condors. They are enormous, 30 feet wide, their long feather ‘fingers’ coaxing air to slide under black and white wings in spirals of flight. They can soar for hours in this deep narrow place.
I wanted to join them, flying over myself in circles, spiraling until the centre, like Yeats’, did not hold, bursting out of the canyon and the bounds of earth to fly higher and higher beyond the reach of physical frailty and human limitations. 
My headache finally disappeared as soon as we descended back into Arequipa. 
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