18.
The narrow road winds and bends its way around the base of Machu Picchu, the fast-moving, white-capped Urubamba River running parallel to the road almost the entire way. Two hours later the driver turns onto an even narrower dirt road that zigzags its way up a steep mountainside. The dirt road is wet from a recent rain, super slick, and boasts no roadside barriers, wooden or otherwise, to prevent us from dropping off the sheer cliff face that rises rapidly with every foot of ground covered.
Although I say nothing about it, my heart lodges itself in my throat with every tight one-hundred-eighty-degree turn the truck makes up the corkscrew road. The few times I’ve looked over the side of the flatbed, I haven’t witnessed any kind of road at all, but instead, open air. It’s no wonder fif
