Carlos, the person that was sent to drive me to the yoga retreat, arrived on time in a brand new station wagon. I welcomed the sight as I figured the car's shock absorbers would be good and soften the blow of driving on the pot marked roads. (Seriously, chiropractors could make a fortune in this part of the world.) As we headed out of town, Carlos told me that he would be taking me to the orphanage instead and that Ted and the rest of the group would meet me there - which was fine with me. When I set off on this trip, I told myself not to attach myself to any schedule and leave myself open to changes. Just go with the flow. In any case, I was eager to feel how happy my lungs would be at a slightly kinder, eight thousand foot altitude.
The country side was spectacular as we climbed out of Cusco and driving by Saqsaywaman, the Incan ruins. I whipped out my camera and happily took pictures, trying to balance taking it all in in the moment versus grabbing shots and then reviewing them at a later time.
It took a certain amount of nerves of steel to ride shotgun in a car as my driver speedily navigated the windy canyon roads, snaking his way across the Andes, skirting cliffs and cattle and so many stray dogs, I stopped counting after ten minutes. Sometimes, the two lane highway would be eroded down to one lane. He would honk, barely slowing down to see if another vehicle was coming round the corner in the opposite direction. Nor would he slow down through the smoke from the burning fields that would waft over us, so thick, we would lose all visibility for a few seconds.
I finally stopped taking pictures and threw on my sunglasses just as I noticed a cow grazing in the opposite embankment. As we were about fifty feet from it, the animal decided to cross the highway in our direction. It all happened too fast for me to even panic. All I remember is the cow lowering it's head just before we were to collide with it and then jutting its horns out at us as if we were in a corrida. Carlos swerved slightly just before the impact and all I felt was a shower of shards blasting across my face. I looked down at my lap and my hands and for an instant, I assumed that I was looking at pulverized bovine horn. But it wasn't. It was shards of mirror and window.
The car pulled over, avoiding four kids and a dog lounging on the side of the road, a tour bus passed us and Carlos, white knuckled and nauseated, clutched the wheel, hyperventilating. I looked back and saw the cow bucking off into a field and the kids and a dog looking back at us, shocked.
As I carefully extricated myself from my glass covered seat and wiped the little cuts on my face, I kept thinking, "Wow, how lucky are we?" I really meant it in the coolest way. I felt lucky that thirty seconds before the collision, I had put on my sunglasses. I felt lucky that a week before I set off on this adventure, that I had purchased travel insurance. I felt lucky that the tour bus hadn't flattened us like a pancake. I felt lucky that we didn't take the kids and their pet out, and I felt grateful that I didn't have 500 pounds of steak on my conscience.
Carlos looked at me shocked and muttered in spanish, "Porque eres tan serena?" (Why are you so serene?) I just told him that I didn't feel like wasting energy freaking out. Today, wasn't our day to die, so I was grateful and happy. Then I told him that I could drive us the rest of the way, if he wanted... He thought that was funny.
Is lucky
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