One evening explorer Scott Gorsuch, my son Benjamin, and I climbed to the top of Cerro Victoria, the peak where the ancient Peruvian city of Qoriwayrachina is located. Soon after we arrived, the light started doing magical things. One moment it illuminated our base camp and the adjacent archaeological site far below, spotlighting it against a darkened chasm beyond. Then it began lighting up the mountains in beautiful ways. At sunset the clouds seemed to turn into fire. I must have shot 20 rolls of film up there.
When I peeked out the next morning, the wonderful light had been replaced by a dull, gray fog. I was dismayed that I was going to miss a precious sunrise image for which we had all climbed the peak. Then I looked out again five minutes later, and the clouds had transformed into a magnificent pink. It had just been a fog bank, so for the next two hours I was constantly shooting. The cloud bank kept rising and falling, dark and eerie one minute and colorful the next. As a photographer, that was probably the most exciting day.
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We were searching for an ancient aqueduct, and the only way to get to it was to go straight up through a nearly vertical jungle. It was so precarious that we had to hang on to tree roots and branches. The expedition members in front were hacking a trail, and they were cutting the bamboo into these razor-sharp points, like the ones used to kill Americans in Vietnam. The worst were these trees that looked like bamboo but with pincushions of incredibly dense thorns. We couldn't see the thorns through thick moss, so we'd grab the trees because they were among the few strong holds out there. It took months to get all the thorns out of my hands.
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I had a very unusual horse. I was riding on this narrow trail cut into a cliff. It was so steep that if I fell off, I wouldn't stop tumbling until I landed in the river bottom thousands of feet below, and only then after rolling over hundreds of cacti and yucca plants and other spiny bushes. I'd be in horrendous pain the entire way down, and then I'd die.
This didn't seem to bother my my horse, however, which decided to walk on the very edge of the trail. The path was about three feet (one meter) wide, but the horse trod only on the outer three inches (eight centimeters). I don't know what he was thinking. I just remember looking over the side, and as I listened to stones tumbling down, all I could see was this plummet below. Perhaps the horse was just hoping to scare me so that I would dismount and lead him, unburdened.
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