A Matter of Balance

One of the many things I appreciated on the Inca Trail was that none of my co-trekkers was using an I-pod. As while riding a motorcycle, hiking can be a time to let your mind run around in its home of your head opening doors and drawers, looking for lost items and examining things in silence.

In both hiking and biking there are physical balances which must continually be struck. How much can I carry versus what do I need (or what can I do without)? Where do I pack it - high or low, left or right? I need to be careful on these steps going down; I need to lean in here and add some throttle there. Like that. Physical, concrete weights and balances.

Then there are also ideological balances that must be attained. How fast do I want to get from here to my 'destination'? Do I travel far away to see something and skip all the sights in between or do I not go so far (or to so many destinations) and spend more time in the intermediate stops. Do I spend more time in the future (long range destination) or in the present (the trail it's self)?

This battle can translate itself into things like trip planning (18 cities in 8 days) and trip packing (do I take the Nikon D1000 SLR digital camera with 2 extra lenses weighing 10lbs or the pocket point-n-shoot weighing 18oz), but it can also be a step by step conflict (how many photographs do I take, and how technical do I want them to be? Do I stop and read the entire site description at each ruin (or in each room)?).

Then there's the money thing - Comfort and Ease versus Admission and Airline Tickets, Local foods (questionable) versus MacDonald's (safe but homogeneous), Souvenirs versus Guidebooks.

This has become an idiom of psychology: when a person has all the weights in accord he is 'balanced'. Tip to one side and you become 'unbalanced'. But I find the typical scale or see-saw/teeter-totter is an insufficient analogy for this war, better is the mobile with it's many associated and interconnected balanced bars. Take a heavy expensive camera and you have the weight, the used-up money, the necessity for use, the need for security against damage or theft, etc, etc. Plan a trip to a tremendous location in a finite period of time (and we all have but a finite period of time, don't we?) and you may have to by-pass or skip on intermediate sites. On one end is the traveler who must stop in every shop and store along the road and misses the tour bus, and on the other the traveler who flies non-stop to the nearest airport, takes a coach directly to the site and sees little else but the destination.

It's a fine balance, and in part what makes chatting with other travelers such a joy and education. Each person has to find their own balance in each situation and must accept that fact that the scale will never be perfectly level. I know of no traveler/adventurer who returns saying: "Now that went absolutely perfectly!"

That's why a real traveler is always planning their next trip..........

Finally......

Kickin' around Cusco

Aguas Calientes

Stonework, or, Death of a Battery

Sun God? Where art Thou?

Nearly There

Winayauwana

Inca Steps

Footwork

Someone say 'mountain'?

After the "Inacessible House" we taveled another mile and set up camp. It was nearly dark and we were all fatigued from the downhill effort. While the supermen Franz and Daniel and our guide Casiano played cards in the dinner tent with some of the Porters, the rest of us retired to our tents to salve our wounds.

The following morning, however, we were all stunned to find that we had camped in one of the most beautiful places imaginable. Again, the temps were moderate and well managed with good pads and bags, but the view of snow capped peaks was breathtaking! I felt as though I was in base-camp on Everest with the clouds passing silently and majesticly beneath me like the fabled Lost Dutchman.

Still more Flowers!