Playa del Carmen--August 2016

Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico
August 10, 2016

The first time I visited Playa del Carmen, about forty miles south of Cancún, in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula was in February 1985. I have no memory of this, but according to Steve we stopped there on a day- trip out of Cancún where we were spending the week.

In 1985 Cancún wasn’t much more than a blip on the travel radar.

It had been a cold, snowy winter, and on the Friday before the last week of school before February break, I’d almost wrecked my car in a white-out on the interstate driving home from work.

I called my travel agent in Montreal who’d always got me great deals, and said, “Get us out of here. Anywhere that’s warm.”

In those days there were lots of charters flying south. A few days later he called me a school.

“I can get you to Cancun Friday night.”

“Where’s Cancún?” I said?

“Mexico.”

“Is it warm?”

“Yes.”

That was all I needed to hear.

In 1985, 50,000 people lived in what would ultimately be called the Maya Riviera. Today, more than 1.5 million people live in the Cancún corridor.

We flew out that Friday evening, arrived in the middle of the night and woke the following morning to summer in February. I was hooked.

Midweek we rented a car for the day. I remember almost everything about that day—a few ruins, visiting a water park, sharing the car with a couple of women we’d met on the flight. But I have no memory of our short visit to Playa.

Back then it wasn’t much more than a large fishing village. What put it on the tourist map was its ferry to Cozumel, which Jacques Cousteau had put on the map 20 years earlier.

There would be repeat visit to Cancún with friends during February or April break, but it would be another ten years before we’d return to Playa del Carmen.

It was Christmas week, 1995. Neither of us wanted to spend Christmas at home that year, Dad had died the Christmas before and the memory of his shutting down Christmas Eve morning and spending that evening with Hospice, and Christmas Day with priests was still raw and fresh.

We decided to imprint a new image on Christmas. We bought a package to Cozumel where our most vivid memory of Christmas is sitting on the roof of a restaurant, a guitarist playing Silent Night in Spanish. Dad was very much with us. It is, of course, impossible to run away, but we did observe the holiday in a much different way.

The day after Christmas, the anniversary of his death, we decided to take a day trip to Playa. It was sunny and warm and we spent the day on the town’s gorgeous white sandy beaches. In December of 1995, La Quinta, Playa’s Fifth Avenue, was still a dirt track. (Today, on the far north of it, condos sell for close to a million dollars and more.)

I think we spent every other day of our week in Playa that week. I returned two months later, and again for April break. It was then that I tracked down a Spanish language school and set up program for the summer.

It was in Playa that I met Alba, my first Spanish teacher. In August of 1996 I’d walk to the far edge of town, meet her in a rundown old school, and for four intensive hours a day she laid the foundation for my Spanish. Thanks Alba! You were the best! (Today, that school is gone and a new three story school has been built. Across the street is a Wal-Mart Super Store that takes up a whole city block. Across the street from that is Mega, another super store that takes up another city block.)

That was just the beginning of my ongoing relationship with Playa. In summers when I wanted to go somewhere but didn’t really want to travel, I’d head to Playa.

Sometimes I’d fly into Mexico City, draw a travel line and spend two weeks travelling to get there. A few later, rested from the school year, I’d fly home.

There would be times when I’d commute between Montreal and Playa four or five times a year.

There’d be times I’d walk off the beach on the Sunday afternoon of April break, shower, fly home on a red eye, and drive back to school from the airport in time for Monday morning class.

There’d be summers I’d live in Playa for weeks on end in the searing wet humidity of the Yucatán, in a hotel without air conditioning. A stiff breeze off the Caribbean always made it tolerable.

There’d be times I’d make friends with a group of people who’d all be gone the next time I’d visit. Such was the life in this very transient town.

In those days there was no other place in the world other than Plattsburgh that had my mark on it more than Playa del Carmen. I’d watched it grow from a village to a city of more than a quarter of a million people.

Until Mexico City, I’d spent more time there than any other place in the world, other than Plattsburgh and Northern New York.  In many ways it was home, and given the right combination of factors, it could have been.

It made sense then to come here to finally immerse myself in Spanish. I’d just retired and in January of 2007 I’d come here to study. Playa was as good a place as any. It would be warm and I’d be away from the north until May.

I found an apartment far from the tourist ghetto, started class, and settled into a comfortable routine.

After the first week, there came a shape and character to my days.  I got up, ate breakfast, and went to school until 2:00 pm. I’d spend an hour at the gym each day, then stop at a grocery store and buy something for dinner. I’d take a bus home or, if it were nice, which it almost always was, I’d skip the gym and walk the five miles back to Mission del Carmen. I’d do my homework, study, watch TV and go to bed.

I had a good life. The school wasn’t great and I found fault with a ton of things, but I soon realized it was the first time in I didn’t know how long that no one wanted a piece of me. Thirty five years in the classroom and years of caring for my parents had worn me down.

For the first time in my adult life I stopped. It was a totally selfish, and totally unapologetic, four months.

I never intended to stay that long. Never. But one week led to another. I took each class I could until I exhausted every possible level. It was really an academic overload, but life was too comfortable to stop. So I stayed.

I’d go to school for three weeks then take a week off. This was school, but it wasn’t real school. I’d travel on those weeks off. In February I met Steve on the west coast of Mexico for the annual roundup of friends in Zihuatanejo; in March I went to Mexico City and in April I travelled south into less travelled parts of the Yucatán.

The weather changed. Winter turned to spring. The days grew warmer and longer. By early May it had become steamy and it was clearly time to leave. Without school, I had no social life, and it really was time to return home.

I came home and, as always happened when I’d come back to the North Country, I’d go through was became known as “Playa Withdrawal.” A part of me always stayed in the Yucatán.

And so each I year I’d return, until Mexico City took over.

But it’s been years since I’ve really been to Playa del Carmen, and any memory of it was wiped clean on this current visit in August 2016.  I’m not 100% sure why I came.  It’s where I came ten years ago when I retired.  Maybe I was celebrating that.  I was also scheduled for knee surgery later in the month and I knew that a vacation before the operation was a good thing.

But I was sad from almost the beginning.  What was I running towards?  Physically, I was not the man I was in 2007.  I had one artificial knee and was getting another one.  I was in pain every time I walked.  The city was like South Beach, full of lean too-good-looking people.  I felt like an old man, not something I felt like in 2007 or even in 2010, the last time I’d been here.  Now I was breathing down 70 and that was just plain depressing!  I think I came because Playa has always been a place I’ve traveled to when I just want to get away but don’t want to travel too far.  Plus, it was year ending in 0.  It had been ten years since I’d come here the summer after I retired, twenty since I came here to study the first time.  It just seemed to make sense to do so again.  And even with all the changes, there was something static about Playa—the heat, the constant change, good food, amazing beaches, almost guaranteed sun.

But I still had to do the pilgrimage, so on one my last full days in Playa I left the beach I used to go to all the time—wild then but now full of condos--early and made my way to “The Mission--La Mission del Carmen” where I lived for 3 ½ months in the winter of 2007. I had a hard time finding the place; the Mission had virtually exploded.  There was traffic and big buildings and a Home Depot and huge grocery store at the entrance.  I had a hard time finding the house because of all the growth.

As I did every day that winter when I’d come home from school, I’d get off the bus, cross the street and stop at Oxxo, the neighborhood grocery store. I bought a Diet Coke and a cup of homemade arroz con leche—rice pudding. I walked down the street, stopped in front of “my apartment,” leaned against an iron fence across the street, enjoying my snacks and thinking back:

I thought of rainy, early winter evenings when the sudden staccato rain would splash against the skylight in the living room. I’d always stop what I was doing and just listen to that sweet, soothing sound.

I thought of soft, warm winter nights when I’d sit in my front yard studying the night sky. Venus glittered in the Eastern horizon; Orion rode the heavens directly above me, and not to my south as he would if I were watching him from home.

I thought of the man who, in the twilight of early evening, would ride his bicycle down the streets of La Mission chanting:

Tamales. Coladas.
Tamales. Coladas.

Often, his voice would trail in then trail out. Sometimes I’d grab some pesos, step outside and buy a few tamales—rice, vegetables and meat steamed in a banana leaf. An elegant dinner.

I thought back to my ongoing battles with ants who marched across the living room floor from the front window to the back door. Each Saturday I’d wash the floor with a water and Clorox mixture and for a few days I’d be ant free. By -midweek I’d have to do it all over again. I never did figure out where those ants came from, but the Clorox worked for several days.

I thought of hot, early spring days when I’d slog home from class, begrimed with sweat and dust, and open the door to an oven. I’d open all the windows and doors and within a few minutes the small apartment would cool right down.

I thought about a lot of things while leaning against that fence. By the time I was ready to leave, the sky had turned lead gray and a warm summer rain threatened. I’d been rehashing happy, for the most part, memories. A late afternoon dusk was settling over the neighborhood and people were beginning to return home from work.

I gathered up my things and left, but not before sending good thoughts to whomever lived in the house now.

But I felt a bit sad., and not just for the changed man I’d become. The neighborhood had deteriorated and “my” house was dumpy. Changes. That is what Playa del Carmen has always been about. It’s not a town that’s stood still since it started being developed.

But, through it all, there were constants—the constants that brought be back time and again and will bring me back in the future:

The Caribbean—water soft and warm in indescribable shades of blues and greens.

Giant stratocumulus clouds that hug the sky like giant white mountains.

Sand, mica rich, that even on the hottest summer days, is cool to the touch.
I know it’s not good to live in the past, and that it’s far more healthy to embrace where we are at this minute.  Even though I was perceiving Playa in the past, I realized 2007 was nothing more than moments made up in the present moment—just as they were at the moment I was eating the rice pudding.

On the way back to the apartment I’d rented, I stopped at Nativo, then my favorite restaurant, and ate enchiladas verdes—the best I’d ever eaten. 

They were horrible and that was just a plain violation!

I’d come full circle. It was time to leave Playa and away from this downward spiral I’d set up for myself. It’s a great place for a week or two, but I’d worn out my time there. It was nice—sort of—to reminisce, but it was also time to move on.

I had an air ticket to Mexico City the next day.  DF was my new Mexican home and I was happy thinking about returning there.

People Remembered: Rita Ladue: My Mom's Centennial--Born 100 Years Ago Today

July 27, 2016

Plattsburgh, New York

Ten years ago today, when I was toasting my mother for her 90^th birthday, I said with all sincerity that I was certain the entire group present would be gathered once again ten years hence, on her 100^th

That would be today.  July 27, 2016.  Had she lived, and at 90 it seemed quite likely, she’d be 100 years old.

My mother’s birth name was Anna Rita Boyer, but my mother told me just before she died that because there were so many “Anna’s” going around in 1916, her parents decided to use her middle name.  She was born in Saranac Lake, New York on July 27, 1916 to Homer Boyer, born Boyea in the Malone, NY area, and Alice Hamel Boyer from Redford.  There was an older brother, Larry, and a younger sister would come nine years later.  She was loved and nurtured and grew into a Saranac Lake that was culturally rich and more than a small town should have been in the 1930’s, largely due to the influence of TB patients who flooded into the village’s “cure cottages” for almost fifty years.

She finished high school in 1936, a year later than she should have.  In fifth grade she’d’ been diagnosed with a hearing impairment that would dominate her life until the day she died.  All of us who grew up with her lived in a world of a handicapped person—a skill that paid off over the years in our patience with other handicapped persons.

Rita went to Plattsburgh, NY to study business and worked for several years at Montgomery Wards as a bookkeeper.  She didn’t make much money and would often put things on lay away and pay for them over a period of time.  Each Christmas the Nativity set she bought that way adorns our Christmas world.

It was at Montgomery Wards that she met a young delivery man, Howard Ladue, and in time they got engaged.  This was all prior to December 7, 1941.  My father enlisted in the Army and my mother, upon the advice of her mother, broke off the engagement.  Fortunately, Howard came home and they were married on September 15, 1945.

Four years later I was born and three years after that my brother, Richard, was born.  By then we were living on Grace Avenue in Plattsburgh, but my father, who’d been comfortably stationed in Honolulu during the War, wanted nothing to do with winter and moved the family to Lakeland, Florida, and move that would affect my mother, and the rest of us, for the remainder of her life.  It was not a good move, and they returned to Plattsburgh less than three years later.

In one of my earliest memories, my mother, still in her 30’s, is making a picnic lunch for my brother and me.  It was the late 1950’s and Grace Avenue was still not fully developed.  There were still large swaths of undeveloped land that was once a quarry.  Small streams and rivulets ran through large flat plates of granite.  She’d make egg salad sandwiches and lemonade that she’d pour into old vinegar bottles.  She’d pack a blanket, we’d walk north, find a place on one of the flat rocks, and my brother and I would explore the polliwogs and wonders found in the small pools that seemed to be everywhere.

Life settled into normal routine.  We went to school, my father work on the railroad until layoffs forced him to find other work. In 1961 my parents bought a business they would own until 1976—Plattsburgh Telephone Answering Service.  At first the switchboard was in our kitchen, then moved within a short period of time to a new addition in the back of the house. 

The Service was a 24/7 operation and it’s what my brother and I knew as reality for much of our growing up years.

Once my brother and I were in school, my mother found part time work as a Welcome Wagon Hostess, welcoming many new young Air Force families into the community.  In time, after we were both out of the home, she worked for Catholic Charities for a number of years.

My mother was energetic and blessed with good health, a health that stayed with her well into her 90’s.  She liked people and entertaining.  She liked nice pieces of antique glass and very old and very expensive tea cups.  She loved to go berrying and some of my fondest memories of my mother are the days we’d pile into the car, drive to Onchiota or Blueberry Hill in Keeseville.  There, she’d get lost in the act of berrying, an act that could consume hours of her time.  Many times, especially if I knew she was going to Keeseville, I go along for the ride and sit on rock ledges overlooking Lake Champlain and spend hours reading a book.

She was a great gardener and her flowerbeds on Grace Avenue and then in her condo were always lovely.  Her skill in gardening was surpassed only by her skill arranging flowers.

She had a passion for “sailing,”—mapping out a rummage sale route on a Saturday morning and spending hours scouring Plattsburgh and Sarasota, Florida, neighborhoods in search of bargains.

She loved all things Catholic and was Catholic to a fault, often putting the church before anything else.  One of her greatest passions was the Retreat League that she’d joined in the early 1960’s and was an active member of until it disbanded in the early 2000’s.  For years, she and her friend Louise would coordinate the annual Retreat League bazaar held in mid-November.

She loved all holidays.  I can still see multiple boxes in one of the storage closets in the back den, each box labeled with a different holiday: Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving.  She embraced each person’s birthday and the night before the big day she’d set the table with one serving of her best china, best silver and best glassware.  Balloons hung from the chandelier and gifts surrounded your plate.  For your birthday you could have anything you wanted to eat.

But it was Christmas that was the centerpiece of the holiday year.  She loved Christmas and all

things Christmas.  Sometimes, I think she thought of it in one form or another all through the year.  Certainly, there was no last minute shopping in my mother’s Christmas world.  Gifts would be purchased and stored all year long.

In November she’d scour the countryside and gather up her Christmas greens that would be woven into wreathes for the front windows and ropes to grace the mantle on the fireplace.

In early December I’d come home from school to the rich, spicy smells of her applesauce cake that she’d give to all relatives and neighbors. 

Christmas dinner she’d pull out corn cut off the cob in August and fiddle heads picked in early May.  We’d have summer treats to celebrate her favorite day of the year.

Her love of Christmas was infectious and I know it was one of the things she mourned most as she aged.  Decorating, gift wrapping, and entertaining were all scaled back and I know that made her sad.

She was widowed at 78 and lived sixteen years after my dad died.  She did a fine job creating a new life for herself.  She was an open and friendly person and wanted to meet new people.  Many of those people never knew my dad.

Twelve years after my father passed on, and five months after she turned 90, my mother made another major life transition, leaving the condo she’d lived in for nineteen years and moving into Lake Forest, Plattsburgh’s only independent living facility.  For me, it was a great relief and I was grateful for the “event” that motivated her to move.

It was a good move for her.  While it wasn’t perfect, it was much better than living alone without real neighbors.  He social side needed the company Lake Forest provided. 

Three years later, almost to the date, we had to move her out.  It was horrible for all of us.  Her fierce independence had to be sacrificed.  “I want to move into a nursing home,” she’d tell me.  In the end that’s what happened.  In hindsight, we think she’d been having a series of mini-strokes that had finally make her legally blind. 

Less than four months later, on a lovely early spring day in April, she died.  It somehow seemed fitting for her to leave the world in a season she loved so much.  She was just in time to tend the spring plantings in Heaven.

We mourned, of course, but knew that is what she wanted.  What she didn’t want was to live the way she’d been living—she’d made that very clear to me for a very long time.  There was never any need to second guess decisions that would ultimately end her life.  Her blindness, on top of her profound deafness, was too much for her to handle.  I was never sorry to see her go, knowing she would have hated living in this condition.

All of this was happening while I was away.  Just after Christmas, with her settled into a new assisted living facility, I left for Chile and was more than surprised when I called her to find out that she was in the hospital.  I lingered in South America for a bit, but was drawn home.  She was waiting for me and once knew I was home to stay she stopped eating.  I fully realized she wanted to die and I fully realized she was waiting for me to start the process.  I had no problem accepting this. 

She left this world on April 9, 2010.  The last words she heard were “I love you” spoken to her by Vicki and myself.

She had what Spaniards used to call “The Good Death.”  We should all be so fortunate.

I am both my mother and father, as all children are an amalgam of both parents.  Like my mother, I’m happiest when I’m busy, when I create and when I’m doing things for other people. Like my mother, I’m easily burned and like my mother have stopped doing some things for some people because they have simply come to expect it.

We are, it’s true, a bit of this and a bit of that.  My mother’s this and that are who I am and I can no more get rid of them then change the color of my eyes.

I spent a career working with children and knew far too many dysfunctional families.  My parents were classic parents from mid-century and far from dysfunctional and I am who I am because of who they were.

I am grateful for my mother’s moral compass, for the beautiful things she taught me, for the encouragement she gave at so many levels.

If she were here today I’d take her for a ride, drive to Rolf’s and help her pick blueberries.  At day’s end we’d stop at Stewarts and indulge in ice cream—chocolate for Mom—then head to wherever home would be.

I can imagine her doing that today in God’s kingdom where I know she is.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Dan Ladue

July 27, 2016

Finding the Southern Cross: Day Hiking on Bolivia's Island of the Sun

Finding the Southern Cross:
Day Hiking on Bolivia's Island on the Sun

Austral autumn: April in the Southern Hemisphere. I'm sitting on the deck of my small guesthouse on Bolivia´s Isla del Sol--the Island of the Sun--wrapped in layers of wool and down, waiting for sunrise over the country´s Cordillera Real--its great Royal Range. Their snowcapped, 20,000 foot peaks dominate vistas from all points on the island. It´s been necessary to remind myself that I´m in the Southern Hemisphere, in the fall, and Lake Titicaca is actually 12,500 feet above sea level. The lake lies between massive ranges in the vast basin that comprises most of the altiplano of the northern Andes.

I’ve been on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca for over a week, day hiking on the lake's largest island. For the Inca, the lake and its islands were deeply spiritual. According to their mythology, both the sun and moon were born on this island. This was the sacred center of their world.

It´s been easy to slip into a circadian rhythm--wake at first light, follow the   sun´s diurnal path, then slip off to sleep when the sky has become a pallet of black and silver.

I start my day sitting on the deck of my simple guest house and watch the eastern horizon shade from black to grey to soft orange. The day is cloudless, the emerging sunlight white and dry, the sky a rich, deep altiplano blue that appears only at very high altitudes. The island comes to life.

There are no roads on this island--only ancient and extensive networks of paths built generations before. Two paths intersect below the balcony of my guesthouse. One heads northwest, to the other side of the island; the other climbs 200 steps to the island´s ridge, or drops 300 steps to water´s edge.

By 7:30 a.m. traffic is heavy: adolescents are hiking west to the island´s only high school and younger children are walking uphill to the small elementary school. Women carry hefty loads of handicrafts—colorful handmade woolen vests, scarves and ponchos made from alpaca wool, brightly designed place mats, and intricate silver jewelry with Incan designs—down to the lake where they´ll sell their goods to incoming visitors, most of whom just come for the day from the mainland. Men herd goats, sheep, llamas and donkeys in every direction. Within an hour the early morning flurry of activity settles down.

A sense of magic exhilarates me as I watch this morning´s ritual. I´ve not budged off the balcony since dawn and although this has been my routine for the past week, I still sit in wonder at what I see--an almost surreal feeling that I´m watching a film, set on a Greek island decades ago. Indeed, there is a deep sense of the Aegean here. The island exudes a strong Mediterranean feel. The sky is a cold, rich, brilliant blue and the lake reflects it back. But, a quick glance at the Cordillera confirms that I´m elsewhere--on the altiplano, in South America—the ¨Tibet of the Southern Hemisphere.¨

It's hard to budge off the deck, but I've been perched there for almost two hours; it´s time to eat and determine the course of today´s hike. All meals on the island are simple and breakfast is no more than fresh eggs, homemade bread and coca tea, drunk at every meal to assist in acclimatization. During breakfast I plan the day. Earlier meanderings have taken me to the island´s two highest peaks--well above 13,000 feet--and down to its shoreline. Today, I will satisfy my wandering by attempting a relatively straight forward path across the island from Yumani, my home base in the southeast corner of the island, to centermost Challa, then on to Cha´llampa, in its northwest corner--a distance of about six miles. From past experiences, though, the island´s beautiful walking routes have had their own way of luring me off trail. I

don´t imagine today will be any different. I´m told it´s a three hour walk, but I know it will take much longer. Today´s trek, like all the others, will not be so much a destination, as a journey.

It´s easy to pack: walking shorts, sturdy boots, a long sleeved shirt, a hat and plenty of sunscreen. At 15º latitude south the sun is powerful.

By 9:00 a.m. the sun has climbed high in the autumn sky and the island has settled into a routine—young people are in school, adults are where they are supposed to be. Animals have been herded to pasture, farm or market, and I´m on my way. I soon leave behind the mud and adobe structures of Yumani. Dropping away from me and rising well above me are the ancient pampas, or garden terraces. Today they are harvest-ready and richly abundant.

I stop often--not so much to rest, but to absorb what surrounds me, to listen to the silence, to observe this marvelous space and to listen to the low, distant sounds of waves lapping the shore and peoples' voices hundreds of meters away. The trail I´m on is mid-point between the lake and the highest peak. To my east, snuggled in a great, white blanket of clouds, is the Cordillera. I marvel at the spectacular view of Illampu at 20,897 feet. The day is very still and the sun is mid-autumn warm. I bank my back against a rock, watch and quietly listen.

Donkeys graze above me. I hear their brays and the quiet clucks of chickens. Two people tend their garden, digging potatoes by hand. The quiet conversation between two gardeners soothes me. A woman strolls by on the stone and dirt trail with her flock of sheep. Voices: a child crying, two girls talking in the distance.

The only other sounds are gentle breeze, the bleat of lambs, a steady buzz of bee and insect. This is a deeply sensual start of day. It’s mid morning, and I have a long way to go, so I move on—this time above the track on which I started.

I leave the trail, cut through paths that adjoin garden plots, and explore the landscape. I´m high above the sapphire blue lake--incongruous, really, against the parched Bolivian high plateau. I round a bend and encounter a herd of unattended sheep. By now the sun is hot. The only sounds are wind and chirp of bird. An almost unbroken silence surrounds me. By now I´m far off trail, which is perfectly fine by me. It´s almost impossible to get lost on this island.

Once again the landscape beckons me to sit. Far below, on another track, I observe an old woman, her back stooped, carrying a large bundle of firewood. Other gardeners are within sight, their fields quilted in muted shades of greens and browns, harvests of wheat, quinoa, corn, beans and carrots.

I don't know how long I sit, but the sun tells me it´s past noon. The heavy scent of sweet smelling koa bush and an Andean variety of wild thyme waft in the midday sun. Insects hum. The presence of ¨now¨ is overwhelming. I want this moment to last forever, because it's unlike anything I've ever experienced while hiking. The high, snow-capped mountains, arid landscape contrasted against the brilliant blue of the lake and the almost-perfect silence center me in the moment.

But this reverie can't last forever. I realize I´m far off trail and that I still have a long way to go, so I gather my things, and walk downhill, following one of the many garden paths, through scratchy scrub brushes, past multiple gardens, some barren, others filled with autumn harvest, past stands of high grasses then past fields of ripened wheat. Finally, after passing patches of heady smelling lavender, I reach the main cross-island trail.

I´ve come mid-point on my journey. I´m high above Challa. The village rises from the lake to form a wide, green, V-shaped valley. March is the beginning of the dry season and by now fields and hillsides have begun to lose the luxuriant green of summer. Groves of eucalyptus and cyprus dot the landscape. Homes fan out in all directions. The track I’m on is half way between the lake and the island’s highest peak. I hear the voice of a small group gardeners. Crops are tended at all points of the island and because it’s harvest time, many people labor in their fields.

I orient myself to voices, and the delicious smell of baking, and walk towards them. Two people dig potatoes. Another roasts a batch in a small fire built into the hard soil. Their donkey grazes in a pampas above them. I greet them and ask how far I am from Cha’llampa. “Three hours,” one of them tells me. It has taken me four hours to walk these first few miles.

But it´s past mid day—time for lunch. Even though I have no appetite—one of the physiological curiosities of life at high altitudes--I pull out crackers and cheese I´ve carried from the mainland and offer them to my companions. They, in turn, offer me small, hot roasted potatoes.

Small, hot roasted potatoes! This is where potatoes originated, and their taste is more intense, more delicious than ones we know in North America. We share this stunning meal, made more stunning by the people with whom I share it.

The trail beckons. I have to get to the other end of the island in less than three hours, and even though I want to stop and take a nap in the warm April sun, I push forward. No more wandering off track for me. It's time to stop this magical zigzag. It's well after mid-day and I decide to stay on track and resist the urge to be lured off—no easy task.

The scenic trail winds through rolling, scrub-covered hamlets, around bays and through sunbaked groves of eucalyptus. All this hiking is done under the white luminescent light of the high Bolivian plateau.

How could time have passed so quickly? It's the end of the school day and children walk home. Teenagers ignore me, but not the younger ones. The girls are dressed in pinafore-like dresses and wear broad-brimmed straw hats with a ribbon running down its back.

“Candy?” they ask me?

“Pencils? Pens?”

“Photo. Photo.”

I take their photos, give them the coins they ask for. These children are beautiful, innocent, isolated in a safe cocoon from the wider world. They are part of the magic. Free, as they are, from outside influences, they live a traditional island life that keeps them isolated from the chaos that pervades life off the island. Out of necessity, many of them will find themselves leaving. There is no hurry here to grow up.

By late afternoon I’ve hiked the entire length of the island’s ridge. I feel as if I’ve been walking in a dreamscape--an Andean version of a glorious European fairy tale. All around are thatched-roofed adobe houses, their gardens fat with corn and beans, larkspur and gladiola. Zinnias and asters provide a dazzle of color. I feel a sense of triumph as I finally reach the dusty, lakeside town of Cha´llampa. It’s taken eight hours to meander from Yumani to here, but at this hour hiking back is not an option. I haggle with a pescador, settle on a price, step aboard his fishing boat and ride the cold, wavy waters back to where I started.

Back in Yumani, at shore’s edge, I begin the slow 300 step walk back up to my guesthouse—no easy task after a long day’s trek. I shower and soon I'm sitting on the terrace looking out at Lake Titicaca, at the last boats ferrying people from one side of the island to the other. It’s early evening, and the Cordillera Real is tinged in pink alpenglow. Day begins to close. On the track next to my hotel women shoo small packs of llama and alpaca up the hill. A team of goats follows seconds later. The aroma of someone's dinner entices me to begin the long, steady climb to the island’s ridge, high above my hotel where I’ll find a smattering of restaurants.

I’m not completely acclimatized to being at 12,500+ feet above sea level and my ascent, up steps the Incas built centuries ago and whose descendants still use, slows, at times, to a step-by-step crawl. I still get light-headed climbing and breathing is labored. When I ascend, everything seems to be done in slow motion.

The isleños are settling in for the night. Three women sit in a sheltered courtyard and separate grain. A girl and her grandmother herd their sheep into a safe enclosure. A flock of chickens cackle into the soft autumnal evening. I am suddenly startled by a herd of goats racing down the path; a drove of ten donkeys follow. All around me I smell good things to eat.

At last I reach the 12,800 foot ridge and sit on the balcony of one of several restaurants. None can be distinguished from each other. All have the same menu, the same terrace, the same fabulous view. A full panoramic vista unfolds. Daylight diminishes. A small armada of fishing boats plies the night waters for trout and kingfish. The sun sets quickly over the western end of the island. Time stands still for a brief moment; day lingers to twilight, then to darkness and cold. The sky overhead has changed from blue to saffron to inky plum.

Dinner choices are few and plainly served—fresh lake trout or an omelet, a light vegetable soup with quinoa and coca tea. Once finished, I put on my jacket, slip on gloves and hat and step into the clear, cold antipodal night. With no ambient light, the sky is alive with color, texture and design. Venus and a rising sliver of moon hang in the east. The Milky Way is a great, white river.

Before I pull out my flashlight to guide me down the Incan steps, I search the sky, find the Southern Cross, locate its two pointers, and draw an imaginary line to its axis. I turn 180 degrees, face true north and whisper into the deep and silvered night, “Home.”

Back in my guest house, I slip between cold sheets, beneath a pile of alpaca blankets, give profound and humble thanks to my Creator God, and drift off to sleep.