On Christmas Day of 1999 Anton Seimon, now a geographer at Columbia University, lured me to Peru to perform a scientific investigation of Peru’s Transoceanic Highway. The Transoceanic is a project with an astonishingly murky political history: halted numerous times, officially denied for a decade, and secretly fitted together like a sinuous jigsaw puzzle, this improbable road, by daring to cross the imposing Andes, has begun to open up the Amazon basin’s precious natural resources to ravenous Pacific markets. The following story describes a side trip taken to investigate how road building will affect previously isolated Andean communities, rare wildlife, and the bizarre and wonderful mountain landscape that both call home.

One week into the new millennium we depart Cusco aboard a bus of no Third World distinction other than the extremely narcoleptic nine-year-old boy who instantly sprawls asleep over any and all bags left in the aisle. We soon arrive in the town of Urcos, where a bicycle rickshaw collects our luggage and transports us from one side of the little town square to the other; there a small truck idles, already jammed full of people and their baggage. The driver looks us over with one jaundiced eye and apparently pronounces in Quechua that there will be no problem, we will fit. Five minutes of rope magic ensues, and our seven large packs/boxes/live traps/skis are somehow lashed onto the truck’s front rack, and we squeeze in among the twenty-one other folks on their way up.

And up we go, on a series of long, sharp switchbacks that take us a full three miles from town after one and a half hours -- three miles almost straight up, that is. If one of us were to fall from the truck, we would bounce merrily downslope until arriving in a somewhat sorry state right back in the town square of Urcos, the Tinkertoy village still visible far below. Eventually we begin to move horizontally as well, and Urcos disappears behind us while enormous, rolling hills appear in front and on all sides, spotted with llamas with red-tasseled ears and Quechuan women dressed in vibrant reds and blues. The women also wear square, tasseled umbrella hats made of bright yellow wool that make them look like squat sunflowers wandering the high plains. Suddenly, after four hours of standing in the back of the truck, far off in the distance, between two of the huge hillocks, like a mirage in the desert, we glimpse the silvery city of Cusco! Astonishing and depressing. Rides like these are really wars of attrition: can the astounding views allow us to ignore the fact that we are slowly being pounded to death in the back of a suspensionless truck lurching along an unpaved track through the mountains? The answer, of course, is no.

This trip includes a special, added delight: despite this being the rainy season, the enormous height of the Andes acts as a rain shield, blocking moisture from the Amazon basin. Translation: these high plains are extremely dry. Arid high plains mean dust. Lots of dust. Soon the truck’s passengers begin to resemble the cast of one of those old comedy films where a giant bag of flour is dropped on the crowd — white faces, white hair, white clothes, and undoubtedly white lungs. We are distracted, however, by the big patties of cattle dung smacked against the outer walls of houses that we pass. It is sort of the reverse of checking to see if pasta is done — when it falls off the wall, it’s ready (to be burned as cooking fuel).

Eventually we arrive at our destination, the end-of-the-line town of Tinki, where we meet Saturnino (I swear we’re not making these names up), a little sunburnt fellow who will become our guide and arriero (horse handler). Saturnino apologizes for not knowing English; Quechua is his native tongue, he is also fluent in Spanish, and his Hebrew is coming along nicely. Hmm. We grab a room in the only open hostel in town. There we are told that, quite mysteriously, the hot water stopped functioning earlier today and will continue to be out for "about two more days," a bit longer than our planned stay. The place also has signs everywhere in Hebrew. An Andean diaspora, perhaps? We order up a dinner of vegetable soup, lamb steak, rice, egg, and tea for two dollars each.

The next morning, after a breakfast of over-easy eggs and tea, we depart our hostel, load the three horses whom we name Scruffy, Skittish, and Old Farter (the latter of which lives up to his moniker with almost every stride — why don’t I remember this from National Velvet?), and off we go through what passes for Tinki Township and up a gentle grade along a country lane with lovely little thatch-roof houses and plenty of menacing and possibly rabid dogs. Another beautiful day for travel. Up and around we stride, to the merry tune of our third horse, and eventually into a huge boulder field. This turns out to be viscacha country — everywhere we look, rabbit-shaped rodents of unusual size run, hop, and skip about us. We stop at the edge of the boulder field to bathe ourselves in the hot spring we find there. We agree that if viscachas must be studied, this might be the absolutely perfect place, especially when the Quechuan woman comes over to sell us some soda and beer. It’s a bit like going to a New York Mets game, without the fights in the stands (but with viscachas doing the "wave" in the background). Later we reach Lake Comercocha, about the same size as Shea Stadium, but with twenty-one thousand-foot peaks all around -- and located at fifteen thousand feet itself. We have hiked only twelve miles or so, but in doing so we have climbed about three thousand feet. To put that into perspective, we essentially scaled Mount Marcy (the highest mountain in New York State) -- but started ten thousand feet higher. After a dinner of pasta we sack out. A blizzard at 10:00 p.m. barely wakes us.

Pancakes with maple syrup make the morning snowfall quite a bit more pleasant than it otherwise would be. An hour after dawn the sun breaks through, the snow mostly melts away, and we break camp and begin a steep climb. One of the strangest things about the Andes is how they can remind one of so many other places and yet remain unique. One moment we are walking along a Scottish tarn, then across the marshy Yukon tundra, then through rolling Irish countryside, then around the corner into the savage, towering Karakoram peaks of northern Pakistan. And then an impossibly enormous valley opens up with tarns, marshes, rolling hillsides thousands of feet high, and giant spiked mountains rearing their snowy heads in the background, all at the same time. And, of course, hundreds of multi-colored alpacas graze around us, while black-and-white-and-red mountain caracaras (huge aberrant falcons, the ravens of the Andes) fly past. Eventually we clamber onto a glacial moraine, above a glacier that is showing the effects of global warming; its gravel "tree rings" show each year’s dramatic reduction in the glacier’s size. We look down to see an Andean goose fly by below us and then stumble into a goblin garden of rock cairns. We are at our first major pass, 16,800 feet.

Styrofoam sleet begins to ping off us, and we descend quickly into the next valley, crossing river torrents by hopping from rock to rock and landing among a giant herd of alpacas, just in time for lunch. It is birthing season, and snow-white alpaca babies are everywhere, tottering on their bowed, hours-old legs as they try to remain upright, while their mothers stand guard, staring at us with peculiar expressions of soft concern from under absurdly long lashes. It’s fluff heaven, Babes in Toyland, FAO Schwarz at 15,500 feet. On we hike, up and down, until we arrive at Quilleta, where we hurriedly slap the tent together in a lacerating sleet storm.

A dinner of macaroni with a Roquefort-and-garlic white sauce makes it all okay, and the next day dawns beautifully white and misty. As the snows melt we slowly break camp and set off up a huge green valley. Eventually this leads into what seems to be a gigantic dead end of towering vertical cliffs with no outlet -- the apparent end of the line without rope and piton, which we do not have. After a brief rest, however, we follow Saturnino and the horses from a safe distance up a path that leads quite nicely along the sides of the cliffs, back and forth and up and up until we can look almost straight down at the very place where, far below, we had stood staring up in discouragement. At one point we spot tracks off to the side and above us, and after a difficult forty-degree snowfield scramble we encounter one of our minor objectives: the tracks of the endangered Andean mountain cat, at 16,900 feet. After many photos and much panting we climb down to the trail and set off again, a few steps at a time, and not soon enough we are at the pass, standing proud if woozy at 17,100 feet. We climb up a small hump for a better view, and then, as the wind and sleet tear at us, descend into a small valley for lunch.

Following cheese and crackers (and the capture of a lovely emerald green lizard, obviously banished from lizard heaven far below due to some especially heinous herpetological crime), we move back up onto a second pass at seventeen thousand feet and into a truly spectacular valley. The first thing we note is that hundreds of tall, wooden fence posts have been stuck in the ground near the top of the pass and trail off for what appear to be miles: a vicuña trap, waiting for the right season to be strung with netting to capture the loveliest, most delicate, and softest-furred of camelids for shearing. Below us small groups of wild vicuñas graze; far above us, balanced impossibly on the edges of glacial scree, vicuñas gaze down at us with obvious amusement. This is their country, and we are obviously trespassing. Down this valley we hobble, wandering past huge flocks of grazing Andean geese, dodging the screaming and diving Andean lapwings, and circling around rock fields of bounding viscachas. Eventually the sloping valley drops away and we reach one of the largest and yet least-known high-altitude lakes in the world: Lake Sibinacocha. Thus begins a week spent above sixteen thousand feet investigating the surrounding area of this jewel in the crown of the Andes.

Heavenly? Sort of. Both of us develop nice suppurating pustules on our lips from tremendous sunburns. This makes eating, talking, and even breathing kind of interesting, and extremely painful, and means that sleep is even more unlikely than usual. So we decide that it might behoove us to return to the security and beer of the lowlands. Once again we decamp, pack up the horses, get a good lead on them, and head off down the eastern shore. A soft snowstorm follows us, bathing the hills and lake in a writhing mist, and we edge along cliffside alpaca trails and plod through what seem like endless tundra marshlands, leaping from one enormous lump of cushion plant to another as if it were all just a game of hopscotch, until we realize that we have finally reached the southern end of the lake. We turn right, find an actual dirt road (the first we’ve seen in a week) and wander on, heading toward the huge glacial ice shelf of the Quelccaya Ice Cap, which at this distance looks like a giant frozen wave poised to crush us the instant the sun hits and warms it. An hour or two later we encounter the tiny and utterly absurd town of Phinaya.

At 15,500 feet in elevation, Phinaya is already a notable aberration as one of the highest incorporated towns in the world. But the town doesn’t just sit on its laurels and preen: it is actively weird. First of all, Phinaya apparently means "mountain of potatoes," which does not refer to the town’s favorite food item but to the enormous, craggy pink-rock formation which bursts up from the long green valley and looms over the town like, well, a giant pink mountain of potatoes. Andean flickers and mountain viscachas bound and bounce about the ledges as if there is no town full of bored shepherds with slingshots surrounding them. And Phinaya itself is one of the most traffic-conscious towns in all of South America. Each of the ten or so streets is not only named and carefully labeled, but half of them are specified as one-way. What makes this especially interesting is that the streets are all dirt, and there is not a single motorized vehicle to be found in the entire town. Admittedly, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, a pair of giant turbocharged Volvo trucks roars into town, circling the properly laid out streets honking and revving until what seems like seventy-five percent of the local population has climbed aboard. We suppose that two trucks arriving nearly simultaneously mean a high risk of accident on these ten streets that stretch perhaps an acre in extent, thereby necessitating a one-way system of traffic control. A four-room hotel of sorts has also been built during the past year, the local Trump apparently having bet on an influx of tourists willing to risk brain edemas and other altitude-sickness symptoms once the Transoceanic Highway is completed. We agree that the Phinaya Donald might well consider investing in at least one toilet before the tourists begin to pour in.

We check into Hotel Potato Mountain, arrange for a tremendous trout and rice dinner that is probably three thousand calories of fish each, and have our first and second beers in over a week — an interesting experience at 15,500 feet. We soon stagger back to our room and collapse into our beds, the mattresses of which are comprised of either newspaper or Silly Putty, as they maintain the shape that they are pushed into for hours after the offending object has been removed.

The next morning we awaken, wander into town in search of breakfast, and witness the miracle of two huge Volvo trucks trumpeting their way into the main square like rogue Andean elephants on a rampage. We grab our luggage and jump into the back of the larger truck, assuming space will be at a premium and we can stand and watch the scenery pass in relative comfort for the duration of the four-hour drive. The first sign that all will not be as we hope on this little journey is that the wooden slats of the truck sides open at a height exactly right for a five-foot Andean highlander to peer out but utterly block tall gringo vision unless a painful stooping position is assumed. Twenty-five townspeople quickly join us, along with five sheep, two steaming alpaca carcasses, a baby fox in a bag, and a recently garroted sheep that is draped unceremoniously over the front luggage rack, bloody head and one little leg dangling and bouncing in front of our faces. Given that my boots were soaked during the previous day’s game of swamp hopscotch, I have opted for socks and sandals, but cleverly placed my boots in my day pack for easy removal should the weather get bad. This turns out to be not the best decision made during the trip, as both our day packs are almost immediately co-opted by a family of alpaca herders who quickly place all their luggage atop ours and then sprawl upon the pile and promptly fall asleep -- tiny babies, exhausted mother, and all.

The truck charges out of town and shortly pulls up in the middle of nowhere. Actually, in the middle of a llama herd, where ten large, panicky llamas are shoved and yanked ear-first into the truck, to stampede back and forth, heaving and spitting. My socks and sandals suddenly seem like a really bad idea as the two hundred-plus pound creatures lurch among us stamping with their bizarre two-taloned hooves. Some of the herders join their flock, the truck again roars off down the dirt road, and the gray and threatening sky proceeds to open up and hail. Sandals are appearing to be truly inappropriate footwear at this point, while the hail bounces off the sore suppurations on our lips, causing us to howl and laugh in pain, which of course causes our lips to split even more. I’m happy to think that we are providing great amusement to the locals as we contort our bodies in an attempt to keep our faces from being exposed, all the while unable to move our feet even a little bit, and of course having to use both hands to hold the wooden roll beam above our heads. It turns out that llama fur, being incredibly fine, can soak up enormous amounts of water, which can then be squeezed out onto nearby gringos when the llamas lurch against them. The truck soon grinds to a halt again, and we are treated to the horrible sight of the back gate swinging open and another five llamas are hauled aboard, despite the fact that there is no room. No, make that eight llamas. No, ten. And three alpacas. Thirteen very large and hysterical animals are crushed into the back of the truck, along with various shepherds and three more alpaca carcasses. (The previous two have been immediately appropriated as seats by those passengers inured to sitting upon bloody rib cages.) The hail has turned to rain.

At this point the total count in the back of the truck is forty-five humans, twenty live llamas, three live alpacas, five dead alpacas, five live if by now extremely loose-boweled sheep, a baby fox in a bag, and our dangling ex-sheep, whose hoof is now being held by someone as a balancing aid. I manage to wedge my freezing feet under a sleeping lady’s astonishingly warm buttocks, Anton discovers that llama ears can themselves act as buttock-warmers, and we hang onto the splinter-filled wooden rollbar above our heads and occasionally hip-check a stumbling llama away from us as the truck roars off into the rain, swinging from side to side as potholes, stream crossings, mudslides, and other local road obstacles are surmounted at increasingly terrifying speeds. The llamas quickly learn that lying down is infinitely safer than standing, and soon the middle of the truck looks like a giant woolly basket with fifteen or so long, sinuous, furry, lop-eared cobra heads lifted and swaying to the rhythm of the lurching drive, occasionally winding up and spitting, cobra-fashion, at their less lucky brethren who are unable to find a spot in which to lie down and instead stumble over the prostrate bodies of their mates with each bump.

Three hours later we stop and begin the off-loading of animals, a process that results in much camelid screaming and snorting and spraying of an enormous amount of urine and fecal matter around the truck. Sandals. Great idea. Periodic stops and more off-loading eventually make it possible for us to move our feet for the first time in two hours. We bid a fond good-bye to our favorite dangling sheep carcass, and soon the truck roars into the good-sized town of Sicuani, where we stagger down from our five-foot-high platform of fun, grab two bicycle rickshaws, are pedaled through town to the bus station, stop a bus already heading out of town, and are driven in relative splendor to the utterly lovely city of Cusco.

And so ends our initial investigation. About what one would expect in a land where an entire empire was created by building enormous structures with automobile-sized boulders that were somehow moved great distances and fitted absolutely perfectly together and placed on the tip-tops of the most inaccessible crags at elevations that most organisms would shun, each one inexplicably if perfectly aligned with the sun and the moon and the reflections in nearby lakes, and all performed with a written language that appears to have consisted of a few knots in a rope. In the centuries that have followed, a highway across the Andes was considered an impossibility — but I suspect that the Incas would have simply built the thing if they’d thought of it, and done it well. At the start of this new millennium, I can only hope that we can fit such a structure into this wildly bizarre and beautiful place as seamlessly as they might have.

A follow-up investigation of the rain forest segment of the Transoceanic Highway project can be heard on NPR at http://www.npr.org/programs/re/archivesdate/2000/nov/001127.peruhwy.html.