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| Reuben, our guide, shares his infinite knowledge at a ruin along the Inca Trail. |
On our last morning on the Inca trail, the porters woke us earlier than usual with their standard wake-up call, "¡Coca té, señoritas, coca té!" Let me tell you, there is nothing like an Incan trail porter shaking your tent and offering you coca tea to make you want to climb out of your sleeping bag.
We had come to a true appreciation of these small men who carried our backpacks and beat us to our camp site by running the trail (sometimes barefoot!) so that we could be as comfortable as possible in the Andes wilderness. We still got a sense of what this trek must have been like hundreds of years before, but the amenities we were provided did not go unappreciated one bit! In the middle of the mountains, with nothing but a cold river near-by, these men produced Jell-o at our meals! If I could go back and thank every one of them in person by serving them a feast worthy of their efforts, I would.
That morning was a little different than the previous two on the trail. In order to be at the Sun Gate, overlooking Machu Picchu by sunrise as was the goal, we had to get up at 4:30 a.m. and be ready to start walking the instant the trail officially opened. We had everything packed, had eaten breakfast, and were at the gate on time, flashlights in hand since it was still dark.
While we waited for the trail to open, HubbyBubby and I studied the constellations yet again. We were fascinated by the fact that the sky looked the same as in the northern hemisphere, and yet utterly unfamiliar at the same time. We saw a grouping of stars that looked almost like my favorite northern constellation, Orion, including the three stars that make up Orion's belt!
We started to talk about how Orion must have been an explorer and one day he trekked down to Perú to see what he could see, and maybe get a pet llama, since there are apparently plenty of llamas roaming the skies of Perú. While he was in the country, Orion visited a local market, finding the colorful woven textiles beautiful. Naturally, he purchased a multicolored belt to hold the arrows for his bow.
I think that´s about where we were in our imaginings when Reuben once again approached us, asking what we were looking at this time. Well, since Reuben knows everything there is to know about Perú (seriously, he does), we pointed to our new constellation and asked him if it was of any significance. Without hesitation, he said, "That? Oh yes, it is very famous. That is Oh-ree-ohn." Megan and I processed this for a moment, letting the phonetic Spanish spell itself out in our brains: Oh = O; Ree = Ri; Ohn = On
O-ri-on. Orion.
We burst out laughing, much to Reuben's surprise, and then went on to explain our whimsy before he had approached us. The entire time we had observed the constellation, which bore an evident resemblance to the stars we knew back home, we had never even considered they might be one and the same. We were in the southern hemisphere where the stars are different! And this constellation looked different!
Of course it did. It was upside down.
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