Quest for Redemption by David Tindell

Author:David Tindell [Tindell, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Andes, marriage, infidelity, adventure, Machu Picchu, revolution, martial arts, archery, Peru, redemption
Published: 2023-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Soyrococha, two miles to the Pass

Gina wasn’t normally a lunch person, but today she was. Two miles from the lodge, Ernie signaled a stop for their midmorning meal, and she found herself almost salivating at the thought of what she’d brought along, a sure-to-be-tasty chicken sandwich, some granola and a banana, packed after breakfast that morning.

“I’m starving,” she told Jim as they stood next to a chest-high boulder, unlimbering their backpacks. “Normally I can make do with a protein bar for lunch.”

“Must be the altitude,” Jim said. He’d brought along the same menu items but added two cookies. He offered one to her; after a brief moment, she snatched it from him before he could pull it back. “Our muscles are a little starved for oxygen.”

“At least I haven’t had leg cramps.” Lois had pulled up lame coming out of their first rest stop, in a narrow valley Ernie called Salkantay Pampa. They’d gained over nine hundred feet of altitude since the lodge at that point. Don spent a good fifteen minutes massaging her right leg, and Lois gamely made it the next mile to this boulder-strewn valley, Soyrococha. “Willa told me she had a headache when we got above Humantay yesterday, but it went away when we got back to the lodge. I wonder how she’s doing now?”

Jim gestured with the remains of his sandwich. “They’re a couple rocks over. I was going to check in with Brad, I’ll ask how she’s doing.”

“Okay. I need to sit down for a few minutes.”

He took his last bite, chewed, chased it with some water and said, “Keep your legs stretched out. You don’t want to tuck them in close and then get cramped up.” He reached over and gently tipped her chin up. “Don’t leave without me,” he said, and kissed her.

Gina contemplated the valley before settling down beside the boulder. Not as narrow as the one before, it still seemed a little claustrophobic. It was the boulders, it had to be. The one she was leaning against was huge, and it was only one of many here, all of them as big as autos. Yet another amazing sight on a trek with more than a few of them, and they were only on the third day. The trail, if it could be called that, was getting rougher every half-mile or so. Nothing they’d hiked back in Wisconsin had prepared them for this, for the rocks jutting up through the soil, for the enormous peaks around them, the brilliantly blue sky, and of course the altitude.

A part of her was dreading the next two miles to the Pass, wondering if she could make it, but another part—the part that was gaining sway, thankfully—was more and more exhilarated as they climbed. Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves. Even Lois was feeling better now, apparently. At the next rock she was talking with Wendy, laughing at something and then sticking her once-painful leg out as if to show how it was now back to a hundred percent.

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