The Lost City of Pisco Sours

Tessa and I have been climbing Mount Machu Picchu for more than an hour. The view below us is obscured by clouds. The view above us is obscured by clouds. You get the idea. Essentially we’re just climbing in clouds.

I am in the Andes, hiking some 8,000 feet above sea level. Machu Picchu – the famed “Lost City of the Incas” – sits somewhere a thousand feet below us.  It feels like I’ve landed in the opening scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Although I have to say, I’m currently much less worried about rolling boulders and poison darts than I am about dropping dead of a heart attack.

“The top has to be around this next corner,” Tessa says, as I huff my way up the ridiculously steep stone steps a few yards behind her. I said the same thing twenty minutes ago. When one of us repeats it again in a half hour we’ll still be wrong.

I nod and wipe away a small river of sweat running down my forehead. Tessa has a concerned look on her face, as if trying to envision how she’s going to manage to carry my corpse down the mountain.

Tessa is a 20-year-old student from Denver, currently studying in Buenos Aires. She had some free time so she decided to fly to Bolivia and take a bus through the Andes to see Machu Picchu. I won’t tell you exactly what I was doing with my free time when I was 20, but it usually involved a couch, a remote control, and a carton of Marlboro Lights.

“Maybe we should stop and rest a bit,” Tessa says. She’s barely out of breath, so I know she is just being considerate of her somewhat older hiking companion. She is also polite enough not to say, “Maybe we should stop and rest a bit, Grandpa.”

“I’m fine,” I say gamely. But there’s that look on her face again. “Okay,” I say, leaning against the side of a rock. “Maybe just a few minutes.” 

*          *          *

Peru in general, and the area around Machu Picchu in particular - is amazingly beautiful. Yes, I’ve seen mountains before. I’ve seen high mountains before.  But the lush, jungle covered peaks towering over the Urubamba River take stunning to an entirely new level. It’s pretty easy to see why the Incas named this the Sacred Valley, and decided it would be good place to set up an empire.

I know none of this going in. Even though Machu Picchu is world famous, like most Americans I am woefully ignorant about the country and the culture. I vaguely recall something about llamas, pan flutes, and runways built for ancient astronauts. And oh yeah, the Pisco Sour. Big fan of the Pisco Sour.

*          *          *

You are forgiven if you didn’t know that Pisco is a brandy made in Peru and parts of Chile. You might be able to order a Pisco Sour in certain American bars uppity enough to stock the main ingredient (i.e., Pisco), but I doubt you’ll find it on the laminated menu at TGI Friday’s.

In addition to Pisco, the Pisco Sour includes lemon juice, sugar, and a little raw egg white. If you like your beverages without egg froth, or if you are just a salmonella-phobe in general, this is may not be your drink. My advice, however, is to get over it. You risk a lot more gastro-intestinal distress for a lot less reward at the Taco Bell drive-thru.

I first encounter the authentic Peruvian version of the Pisco Sour on the drink-special placards lining the main pedestrian gauntlet of Aguas Calientes, a small town at the base of Machu Picchu. The battle for the tourist dollar is fierce here, with hawkers jumping into the street and trying every English word they know to suck you in to their restaurant. Every hour must be happy, because the “Happy Hour Specials” go on all day.

I see the restaurant directly outside my hotel offers two Pisco Sours for the price of one. Not bad, but I think I can do better. Farther down the hill I spot a place where the offer is three for the price of one. When I eventually reach a restaurant where the going rate is four for one, I decide it’s time to stop for dinner.

*          *          *

I came to Peru with only a vague idea of how to even get to Machu Picchu. After landing in Lima and sleeping a few hours I hop a small plane to the city of Cusco, which, on the map at least, seems to be in Machu Picchu’s general neighborhood. It’s still 70 miles away. I’m told that normally you can take a train from Cusco to the base of Machu Picchu. Except during the rainy season. And yes of course, it is currently the rainy season.

However, if you can make it to the little town of Ollantaytambo about 35 miles up the road, you can take the train the rest of the way up the valley to Aguas Calientes. Getting to Ollantaytambo? The travel options to Ollantaytambo are: a) a very expensive taxi ride, or b) a very cheap ride on a collectivo.

A collectivo is essentially an unmarked white van that drives around a particular neighborhood of Cusco with a driver yelling “Ollantaytambo! Diez soles!” I find the neighborhood, waive down the white van and pay my ten soles (about $3.00), because I am that very special combination of both “trusting” and “cheap.” After a couple of trips around the block several locals and a few other backpacking foreigners hop on the collectivo, my only assurance that a kidnapping is not taking place.

After winding through the city, the collectivo begins to climb a steep hill. We are on a road that looks like it cannot possibly be the road to anywhere, other than to a good spot to dump the bodies. The van weaves through a canyon of half-completed houses, swerving around potholes, stray dogs, and several free-range chickens.

Finally we crest the hill and turn onto “the main road.” It looks pretty much like the previous road, except that now there are four lanes instead of two. What do you want for $3.00? I hold on to the door handle as the collectivo turns right, and drives me into the Andes.

*          *          *

I finally reach Aguas Calientes by train the next day. I am so lazy and indifferent to planning or research that I don’t learn until I arrive that you have to buy a Machu Picchu ticket at an office in town before going to the ruins. In the high season, they can actually sell out weeks in advance. There is no such thing as a walk-up sale.

The tickets for Machu Picchu are multi-tiered and expensive, ranging from around $75 just to visit the ruins, to $85 or more if you want to visit the ruins and climb one of the two mountains at the site.

Do you want to climb Machu Picchu Mountain? the woman at the ticket office asks me. 

For an extra ten bucks? Sure, why not. It’s just a mountain, 9,000 feet up in the Andes.

How hard can it be?

*          *          *

Mount Machu Picchu is the highest of two peaks towering over the Machu Picchu ruins, with a summit of 3,082 meters (9,276 feet). It is the only mountain I’ve ever heard of that has actual hours of operation, roughly equating to that of a bank lobby on Saturday. The mountain is only “open” – in the sense that you can only start climbing it - from seven to eleven in the morning. The logic is not initially clear to me, but I later suspect this is done to give the authorities time to clear the bodies off the trail before dinnertime.

In addition to the admission ticket, yet another ticket is needed for a bus from Aguas Calientes up to the gates of Machu Picchu. A round-trip bus ticket cost $24, which deeply offends my cheapskate sensibility. I decide to get a one-way ticket for $12, and walk back down into town when I’m finished. You can’t walk downhill? What, are your legs broken?

I meet my de facto hiking buddy Tessa for the first time on the 7 a.m. bus from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu. At the entrance to the trail up Mount Machu Picchu Mountain, we are required to sign a ledger that lists our name, address, passport number, and age.

I see Tessa’s age when she signs in. The shoes I’m wearing may in fact be older than Tessa.

I actually have completed a few marathons in my day (none in this particular decade, no), and I like to think of myself as reasonably fit, with reasonableness being a relative concept. But climbing Mount Machu Picchu makes me feel like a two-pack-a-day smoker at the Empire State Building who decided to take the stairs. 

Maybe the Incas were exceptionally tall, because the stone steps of the trail seem twice as high as steps used by normal humans. We are nearly alone on the trail. Even at one of the most visited tourist sites in the world, there are very few others bold or stupid enough to be climbing this particular mountain at eight in the morning.

It takes an hour and forty-five minutes to reach the summit. We’re now above the clouds, but nearly everything below remains obscured. No sign of Machu Picchu. When we arrive about a dozen other hikers are at the summit, sitting and waiting. I am the oldest in attendance by a good 25 years.  A group of young Argentines we passed on the trail arrive after us. They immediately plop on the ground and fire up a doobie.

An hour later the clouds are still there, and Tessa and I are about to conclude that we climbed the mountain for nothing. But then it happens. The clouds part - as if in a dream sequence accompanied by harp music - and the ruins of Machu Picchu appear, a few thousand feet below. 

Not many people in the world will ever have this view. Totally worth the threat of cardiac arrest.

*          *          *

After taking a few thousand pictures Tessa and I head down the mountain toward the ruins. As we start off, “down” seems like a magical word, the good ying to the evil yang of “up.” But the steep stone steps begin to inflict a pounding on my legs, first in the quads and then to my knees. Why do I have the sense that I’m going to feel this later?

I also get another sense as we make our way down the mountain. I’ve been drinking a lot of water, and I haven’t peed since, oh, I don’t know, six thirty in the morning. It’s now close to noon. Granted, almost all liquid left my body in the form of sweat during the assent a few hours ago, but my bladder is letting me know that its patience is nearing an end.

“The first thing I probably need to do once we get down,” I tell Tessa, “is find a bathroom.”

She nods, but imagine she is ticking off one more box on the checklist in her head entitled “Reasons Not to Hike With the Elderly.”

*          *          *

Here is one of the Mysteries of Machu Picchu that you probably did not read about in your ninth-grade history book: There are no bathrooms on the grounds of Machu Picchu. They do have llamas. Llamas, but no bathrooms.

I go another two hours exploring the ancient ruins with Tessa and the other tourists, instructing my bladder to stop bothering me because there’s not a damn thing I can do about it at the moment. I’m not leaving, and no, bladder, I’m not taking a leak behind a thousand-year-old Inca sun temple as you have suggested. Just hang on.

Tessa and I eventually part ways and I head for the entrance/exit, where bathrooms are mercifully located. It’s now well after 2:00 p.m. I make a mental note to check later and see if I just set some kind of urine-retention endurance record.

*          *          *

The ruins of Machu Picchu truly are amazing, but my walk back down to Aguas Calientes becomes my own personal Highway to Hell.  The feeling in my knees goes from discomfort to stabbing pain. Every downward step feels like arthroscopic surgery without anesthesia.

I start on the trail to Aguas Calientes with another hiking buddy, a young Bolivian woman now living in Atlanta, but she abandons me halfway down for two much-less-hobbled Colombian girls.  I send them off with an exhausted “Go on, save yourselves” waive.

I’ve never had any problems with my knees, but I’m now afraid that a single day at Machu Picchu has crippled me for life, the victim of some long-standing Inca curse. Even as I reach level ground it’s still another half hour walk into town. Yes, I do realize my error in judgment: a $12 return bus ticket probably is less expensive than the wheelchair I’m likely to need for the next six months.

Still, I drag myself into Agua Calientes a proud man. I climbed a mountain at Machu Friggin’ Picchu, damn it. On a full bladder!

At least I’ll have that story to entertain my rehab nurses.

*          *          *

You know what really relieves the aches and pains of a day of climbing up and down Mount Machu Picchu? A four-for-one Pisco Sour drink special!

Maybe a couple of drink specials.

*          *          *

It’s warm and steamy back in Lima, especially compared to the mountain climate I’ve been living in for the past week. It took a few days, but I am now walking again without whimpering or using a cane.

I have one day left in Peru before I take a ridiculously early (or is it ridiculously late?) flight home at 1:45 the next morning.  In two weeks I have seen stunning mountains and mind-boggling ruins and dazzling postcard sunsets over the ocean.

I vow to spend my last day doing something equally auspicious. I step out into the tropical humidity to locate the source of what I have deemed to be Peru’s greatest contribution to modern society. I set out for Old Lima, to find the birthplace of the Pisco Sour.

The story goes that the Pisco Sour was invented in the early 20^th Century by an American named Victor Morris, who came to Peru to work on the railroad but ended up behind a bar instead. He took a Whiskey Sour recipe, replaced the Whiskey with Pisco, and a hundred years later I’m buying four of Victor’s drinks for the price of one at the foot of Machu Picchu.

I for one am thankful that the railroad gig didn’t work out.

I have it on the authority of two Lima taxi drivers (and that’s pretty much all the authority that I need) that Morris invented his drink in the bar of the Hotel Maury, located on the edge of the Old City. I envision a grand, ornate, turn-of-the-century luxury hotel, with a bronze plaque discreetly posted in an opulent, red-carpeted lobby marking the historical significance of the site.

At least I got the plaque part right.

It’s 92 in the shade as I wind my way through the noonday crowds toward the Hotel Maury. I see from my map that the hotel is a few blocks up ahead on the corner of Jirón Ucuyali and Jirón Carabaya, just on the edge of the Lima’s historic center. I put away the map, as I’m sure such a venerable, historic attraction will be easy to spot.

Instead, what I spot in the street ahead are metal barricades, blocking the way in to the historic center. About a half dozen helmeted police with stun guns and Plexiglas shields are standing at the barricade, as if the shit is expected to go down before lunchtime.

What the hell?

I take a right, a left and another left, looking for a non-barricaded way into the Plaza de Armas. It’s the same set up on the street leading in from the east: barricade, police, riot shields, stun guns. The next street I try is exactly the same.

I look over my shoulder for a hoard of protestors or terrorists or disgruntled pensioners ready to storm the Bastille. With the exception of a couple of street kids banging on drums for change, the anarchy is non-existent.

And despite the disproportionate show of force, I see the police are letting some people through the barricades into the plaza. I shrug and decide to give it a shot. If I can get through they’ll let anybody in.

I’m expecting a question, or a request for an ID, or something, but I’m waived through the barricaded gate without incident. Apparently I don’t look sufficiently disgruntled to alarm anyone.

*          *          *

After eating lunch and kicking around the Plaza de Armas a while, I resume my interrupted search for the Hotel Maury. I find Jirón Carabaya and walk toward the first police barricade I encountered, this time from the inside.  The barricade is still there, but no longer guarded. The police appear to literally be Out to Lunch, Plexiglas shields left leaning against a building unattended.

Apparently the riot has been canceled due to lack of outrage.

I look at the street signs. I am at the corner of Jirón Ucuyali and Jirón Carabaya, exactly where the Hotel Maury is supposed to be. But there is no grand, ornate, turn-of-the-century luxury hotel anywhere in sight. What I see instead is a dusty, nearly abandoned looking building with an ugly 1970s façade. A dirty glass door and two darkened windows are shaded by black awnings covered with bird shit and what looks like a good forty years of accumulated urban grime.

The windows are blocked with cardboard placards making it is impossible to see inside. One placard proclaims “Pisco Es Peru!” The other appears to say “Pisco Sour El Tro,” although the last word is essentially unreadable. I now see the bronze placard next to the doorway. This is indeed the side (and currently locked) entrance of the famed Bar Maury, birthplace of the Pisco Sour.

The Hotel Maury’s main entrance around the corner is every bit as sad, with about a dozen tattered international flags hanging limply over the awning, as if the hotel is prepared to surrender in twelve different languages.

Of course I’m going in. Although I admit that part of me wonders if during Happy Hour at the Hotel Maury every Pisco Sour comes with a complimentary prostitute.

The lobby inside is dark and apparently “under construction,” for how long would be anyone’s guess. It’s hard for me to believe that anything in the hotel is actually open for business, but sure enough, through the darkness I see a doorway leading into what looks suspiciously like a bar.

I head for the lighted entrance, halfway expecting the sound of gunplay.

*          *          *

Remember in The Wizard of Oz when everything is in black and white, until Dorothy crashes the house and opens the door to a fantastic Technicolor world of singing flowers and dancing Munchkins? It’s a little like that walking from the lobby into the bar of the Hotel Maury. Except in place of the Lollipop Guild is a bartender named Alejandro.

Incredibly, the interior of the Hotel Maury bar looks as if it has been transported straight out of a Hemingway novel, with a polished bar top, brass foot rails, a carved wooden ceiling and a wall of large, turn-of-the-century oil paintings. If Hollywood were to build a stage set of the Birthplace of the Pisco Sour, it would look exactly like this.

How something this amazing can possibly exist inside a building that from the outside looks like a place you rent by the hour to shoot up heroin is a greater mystery than the absence of bathrooms at Machu Picchu.

Thirsty and still in a bit of a daze, I ask Alejandro if he can make me a Pisco Sour.

Of course, he tells me in Spanish. They were invented here, you know.

Yes, I’ve heard that.

Just one more story they’ll never believe when I tell it thirty years from now, again and again, down at the old folks home.