The White Rock by Hugh Thomson

The White Rock by Hugh Thomson

Author:Hugh Thomson [THOMSON, HUGH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC020000, SOC020010, SOC003000, HIS033000, HIS002000, TRV024050, TRV024000, TRV000000
ISBN: e9781468302301
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2012-03-16T16:00:00+00:00


OLLANTAYTAMBO

COMING BACK INTO CUZCO BUS STATION first thing in the morning after a night on the coach had a nightmarish quality. I’d come thousands of miles and was dirty, tired and lugging a heavy pack past a notorious training ground for pickpockets. I had no money left to buy myself a moment of luxury, yet wasn’t sure where I was going to stay. And half my insides felt like they were hanging out.

‘Hey mister, why you got holes in your trousers? Your cojones will start to show,’ said one of the local guys leaning up against a wall. His friends leant forward. The market ladies laughed raucously. Like coyotes sensing weakness, I was quickly surrounded by what seemed to be every con-artist in Cuzco. ‘Hey mister, want a hotel?’ ‘Wanna good cambio for your dollars?’ ‘Taxi, taxi!’ One of the registered deaf and dumb beggars chose this inopportune moment to press a card stating his case on me. I was supposed to read it and then he would return and accept a donation. Some blond Mormon missionaries were standing by impassively, watching in pale suits and ties. They looked like they were part of a completely different movie.

Then out of the mêlée of voices I heard someone calling for passengers to ‘El Valle Sagrado’, the Sacred Valley. I had one of those moments that travellers sometimes need where you instinctively just let go. There was no need to spend more time in Cuzco, so why not head straight out again? The Sacred Valley bus would take me to the great site of Ollantaytambo, which I had never seen and which played a key role in the last days of the Incas. I heaved my pack up onto the roof to be strapped down and was away, with some relief.

By contrast to Cuzco, the arrival at Ollantaytambo was one of the best welcomes to a town I’ve ever had. The local bus I’d taken turned out to be full of weekenders and we’d stopped in the little town of Urubamba to eat at a small quinta called Los Geranios. Urubamba had a reputation for being a bit of a tourist town with some large government resort hotels, but this quinta was the real thing, a sun-filled courtyard with criolla music drifting around and huge plates of beans and chicharrones, deep-fried chunks of pork rib. There was a wedding party in full swing off to one side and the band were pumping it out. After a couple of Cristal beers I was well away, dancing with the bridesmaids and a pretty college girl from Lima who was visiting her relatives. The cares of the road fell from me.

By night-time, the band were playing one of my all-time favourites, the lament of ‘Mi Guajirita’, in which the singer implores his love to ‘Quiereme, quiereme, más’ (‘Love me, love me even more’), with a mournful tone that seemed uncertain where it was all going to end. My bus had long gone without me and two truck-drivers offered me a lift to Ollantaytambo in their large pick-up.



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