TRACING INCA TRAILS

Many years after the fact, writer and amateur adventurer Ancinas recounts an extraordinary seven-day adventure on horseback through the Andes in this travel memoir.

In the summer of 1984, the then-50-year-old author traveled to Peru in the company of her two best friends: Kate, a competent, athletic, and generally unflappable 60-year-old nurse, and Tricia, a former archaeology student and an insatiably curious and optimistic artist and collector. (Some people’s names have been changed in this remembrance, according to the author.) The idea originated six months earlier, when Ancinas’ friend Bill Roberson shared slides of his recent trip to Peru over dinner with her and her husband, Osvaldo, in January, hoping they might join him on his next excursion. Osvaldo wasn’t sold, but for Ancinas, the “vision of that mountain—its serene beauty and its potential violence—held an attraction for me that I could neither explain nor escape.” So she, Katie, and Tricia traveled to Cusco, where they met Bill and a host of other guides and adventurers who accompanied them on their journey. They make their way to the Urubamba Valley (the “Sacred Valley of the Incas”), where they don their gear, mount horses, and begin their trek. Myriad challenges confront the group over the course of their week: local, tourist-targeting terrorists they must avoid; severe injuries; and so many ostensibly well-laid plans gone awry that Eddy concludes, “If you don’t have a plan in the first place, you won’t have to change it.” Ancinas’ prose is sturdy and observant, registering the Peruvian landscape in fine, primarily visual detail: “Sun-scorched red clay mountains form a barrier between us and the green rolling hills that descend to the Pacific coast.” She largely successfully intersperses her travel narrative with moments that feature helpful sociocultural and historical context, as well as black-and-white photographs taken by the author on the trip—although these images seem somewhat unnecessary, as the text ends up being far more powerful than the grainy images. Overall, the memoir succeeds on the sheer strength of its passion and self-reflectiveness.

A vivid and thoughtful adventure narrative that’s sure to appeal to other travelers.