I'm not a stone fortress, but I play one on TV...

I was packing up shop and leaving the H4TCI where I worked tonight, when I suddenly saw something on television that made me sit down and watch for a while.

A show on the History Channel called "Digging for the Truth" was featuring "one of the world's greatest mysteries" and the largest stone edifice in the Americas. I needed only one look at the diamond pattern carved into the round stone wall to know the place.

Kuelap.

Even today, two years after I reached that amazing mountain-top citadel, I still get a little shiver of excitement in my stomach when I see or hear the name of the place. Located in, as this archeologist put it, one of the "most inaccessible regions of Peru," to get there XGF and I endured 22 hours of driving on a boulder-strewn dirt road which, for a great portion of the journey, was cut rather shallowly into the face of the most precipitous mountains I've ever seen. The Northern Andes are not short on drama, that's for sure.

To see this mysterious place, built around 500 A.D. (1,000 years before Machu Picchu), on television brought a flood of wonderment and other emotions to me. Same goes for when the archeologist-host of the show did a little narration while walking through the town square -- the Plaza de Armas, which *every* Peruvian town has so named their main square -- in the town of Chachapoyas.

Oh, the chicken and french fries! I thought to myself, the tone of my thought more in line with "Oh, the humanity!" of the Hindenberg narration. I think I had a stomach ailment for at least two weeks of the trip, and in Chachapoyas, I was subjected to the umpteenth plate of pollo y papas, which did nothing to improve my flagging appetite or quell my nausea.

Having not eaten much at all for the past few days, I was desperate for nourishment. Just not THAT nourishment. I will never forget the sense of ecstasy I felt when, several days later, XGF and I ate Middle Eastern food for lunch in Lima, nor the night we ate at what is said to be Peru's best restaurant, which was a gourmet feast. In both establishments, my stomach was healthy and my tastebuds were positively SINGING, so happy were they to NOT be tasting chicken or french fries.

But I digress.

Kuelap, Kuelap.

What a marvelous and peculiar place, an obscure outpost well off the tourist track, and wrapped not just in mystery but in vines and bromeliads. I remember thinking it was crude and lovely all at once.

And for the duration of our visit, I felt like vomiting. The altitude -- about 10,000 feet -- made my asthma inhaler a little more potent than I could bear, and I was disturbingly dizzy as I walked around the place. This was no more dramatic than when I attempted to pose for a photo near "The Abyssmal," as our no-English-spoken-here guide called it. It was an outer wall of the fortress that, without even an inch of railing or masonry above "ground level," dropped into sheer nothingness thousands of feet above the Utcubamba valley below. Even if I hadn't been doped on Albuterol, I would have felt dizzy there. As it was, I almost fainted.

The entire experience of going to Kuelap, including the death-defying journey itself, is the most sublime thing I've ever done. Seeing the fortress on TV this evening was a real thrill for me.

It also helped put into perspective just how tedious and weird the last month of my life has been -- like another unwanted plate of pollo y papas..

I have embraced (or at least survived) many unusual situations in my life, and my spirit remains adverturous and strong. Once, after a long, rough and dirty journey, I stood on the edge of The Abyssmal -- a Jumping Off Place if there ever was one -- and smiled for the camera.

The world is full of secret places and amazing peoples. Our frame of reference is never more narrow than when we tell others how things ought to be and expect them to be like us. It's sad, really, how much time and energy we can spend trying to conform or trying to get others to conform to us.

Had XGF and I chosen to "conform," we would have never found ourselves alone -- the only visitors -- in the largest stone ruins in the Western Hemisphere. Instead, we would have been with the hoards at Machu Picchu, taking the same photos you always see of the place. Or worse, we would have never gone to Peru at all, and would have simply waited for the opening to Machu Picchu Las Vegas.

I realize these issues may seem only tangentially related to some of my readers: Kuelap and the weird month I've recently had. But they are linked in my mind by mental fortitude and a willingness to endure unpleasant things to get where I want to go.

In the upper reaches of Kuelap, sickened by my own medicine and rendered weak by a harsh journey, I still had the strength and desire to take in a completely new experience, to be moved by mystery and to be glad I had chosen the more difficult destination.

I will also never forget the moment the tires on our SUV hit smoothly paved road after two days of driving on dirt. It was dark, so the change came without warning. The endless and noisy crunch of rocks beneath the wheels suddenly gave way to a pleasing hum. The violent, jarring ride quieted immediately to a dreamy vibration.

That, my friends, is transformation.

And it's just one piece of the story of Kuelap.