Paulo and his girlfriend had set off together for Machu Picchu on the Death Train, a mode of transportation much different from the train car that he found himself in at that moment.
“Why do they call it the Death Train?” his girlfriend had asked the man responsible for checking tickets. “It’s not as if we’re traveling along any steep cliffs.”
Paulo didn’t have the least interest in the response, but he got one all the same.
“In the old days, these cars were used to transport lepers, the ill, and the bodies of the victims of a yellow fever epidemic that struck the region of Santa Cruz.”
“I assume they’ve done an excellent job sanitizing the cars.”
“We’ve had no casualties since, except for a miner or two forced to pull the pin and end it all.”
The “miners” he referred to weren’t those born in the mineral-rich region of Minas Gerais in Paulo’s native Brazil but those who worked day and night in the tin mines of Bolivia. Well, it was a civilized world they were living in; he hoped no one would decide to pull any pins that day. To the relief of both, the majority of the travelers were women with their bowler hats and colorful dress.
They arrived in La Paz, the country’s capital, 12,000 feet above sea level, but, having made the ascent by train, they barely felt the effects of the thin air. Even so, when they stepped off the train, they saw a young man wearing clothes that identified his tribe sitting on the ground, a bit disoriented. They asked him what was wrong (“I can’t breathe”). A man who was passing by advised that he try chewing coca leaves, which could be easily found at any of the nearby street markets. This was a tribal custom that helped those who lived there to face the high altitudes. The young man soon felt better and asked them to leave him where they had found him—he was to go to Machu Picchu that very day.
The receptionist at the hotel they’d chosen called Paulo’s girlfriend to the side, said a few words, and then completed their registration. They went up to their room and immediately fell asleep, but not before Paulo asked what the receptionist had said.
“No sex for the first two days.”
It was easy to understand why. He was in no condition to do anything.
They spent two days in the Bolivian capital without sex, without suffering any collateral effects of the soroche, as the lack of oxygen was called. Both he and his girlfriend attributed this to the therapeutic effects of the coca leaves, which in reality had nothing to do with it; soroche occurs only in those who depart from sea level and quickly climb to great heights—in other words, by plane—without allowing their bodies the time to adjust. The couple had spent seven long days on the Death Train. Much more ideal for adjusting to their environs and much safer than air travel—in the airport at Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Paulo had seen a monument honoring the “heroic pilots who laid down their lives in the line of duty.”
In La Paz, they came across their first hippies—who, as a global tribe conscious of the responsibility and solidarity they owed one another, always wore the famous symbol of the inverted Viking rune. In Bolivia, a country where everyone sported colorful ponchos, jackets, shirts, and suits, it was practically impossible to know who was who without the help of the rune sewn onto jackets or pant legs.
These first hippies they came across were two Germans and a Canadian woman. Paulo’s girlfriend, who spoke German, was soon invited for a walk through the city, while he and the Canadian woman looked at each other, unsure exactly what to say. When, half an hour later, the three others returned from their walk, they all decided they ought to depart immediately rather than spend their money there: they would continue on to the highest freshwater lake in the world, navigate its waters by boat, get off at the other end—which would already put them in Peruvian territory—and head straight for Machu Picchu.
5
Everything would have gone according to plan if, when they arrived at the shores of Titicaca (the highest navigable freshwater lake in the world), the group hadn’t found themselves before an ancient monument known as the Gate of the Sun. Gathered around the monument were still more hippies, holding hands in a ritual that they were afraid to interrupt but, at the same time, would also have liked to be a part of.
A young woman caught sight of them, silently beckoned them with a nod, and all five of them were able to sit with the others.
It wasn’t necessary to explain why they were there; the gate spoke for itself. There was a crack straight down the middle of the upper part of the stone, possibly caused by a lightning strike, but the rest was a true wonder of low reliefs, a guardian of stories from a time already forgotten and yet still present, wishing to be remembered and discovered anew. It was sculpted from a single stone, and across the upper part were angels, the gods, lost symbols of a culture that, according to the locals, would show the way to recover the world in the event it was destroyed by human greed. Paulo, who could see through the opening in the gate onto Lake Titicaca in the distance, began to cry, as though he were in contact with those who had built that structure—people who had abandoned the area in a hurry, before they’d even had a chance to finish their work, fearful that something or someone would appear, demanding that they stop. The young woman who had called them to the circle smiled, she too with tears in her eyes. The rest stood with eyes closed, speaking to the ancestors, seeking to discover what had brought them all there, respecting this great mystery.
Those who wish to learn magic ought to begin by looking around them. All that God wished to reveal to man He placed right in front of him, the so-called Tradition of the Sun.
The Tradition of the Sun belongs to all—it wasn’t made for the erudite or the pure but for everyday people. Energy is to be found in the tiniest things man encounters in his path; the world is the true classroom, the Love Supreme knows you are alive and will teach you all you need to know.
Everyone was silent, paying close attention to something they could not quite understand but which they knew to be true. One of the young women there sang a song in a language Paulo could not understand. A young man—perhaps the oldest among them—stood up, opened his arms, and said a prayer:
At this exact moment, a horn sounded from a boat, which was in fact a ship built in England, disassembled, and transported to a city in Chile, then carried piece by piece on the backs of mules to an altitude of 12,000 feet, where the lake was to be found.
Everyone climbed on board, off toward the ancient lost city of the Incas.
The days they spent there were unforgettable—rarely did someone actually manage to reach that place, only those who were God’s children, the free of spirit ready to face the unknown without fear.
They slept in abandoned houses without roofs, gazing at the stars; they made love; they ate the food they’d brought. Each day they bathed completely nude in the river that ran below the mountain, and discussed the possibility that the gods had actually been astronauts and landed on Earth in that region of the world. They had all read the same book by a Swiss author who often interpreted the Incan drawings as trying to depict celestial travelers; just as they’d read Lobsang Rampa, the Tibetan monk who spoke of opening one’s third eye—until one day an Englishman told everyone sitting there on the central square in Machu Picchu that the so-called monk was named Cyril Henry Hoskin and was a plumber from the English countryside whose identity had recently been discovered and whose credentials had already been refuted by the Dalai Lama.