Blind Love
“Does your dog have a problem?” A hiker asked Ignacia as she made her way down another stone staircase built hundreds of years ago under the Inca.
“Yes, he’s blind.”
“Is that your family down below?” he then asked.
“Yes, my husband and my two girls.”
“So you’re doing this with two little girls and a blind dog? You must be brave.”
“Yes… or insane. It’s not just this hike, we’re travelling across South America in a van.”
“Well, he’s a lucky dog.”
“No one is left behind,” Ignacia finally said, tugging on Mino’s leash and sharing some words of encouragement.
Incan steps are amazing, but far from perfect. Each one is chiseled to the contour of the mountain, such that a blind dog must negotiate steep plunges as well as short, shallow drops, seemingly out of nowhere. The Inca didn’t build handrails along any of their famous stone paths, which fall and rise in concert with the steep Andes, but they did leave us walkways with some pretty awesome views. Mino, our 13 year old dog, probably didn’t see much of the Sacred Valley below, but he did master one key movement to getting down the rock stairs: dipping his snout over the stair’s edge, pawing for purchase below, and following through with his stocky body and kangaroo-like tail.
Thirteen is pretty old for a dog, but Igna and I did not hesitate to put him on the leash and take him on one of his most memorable hikes to date: through the ruins of Pisaq. After all, how many dogs get the chance to wander through a mountain fortress and fallen temple built over 700 years ago? It’s not that the hike is that strenuous, but there are a lot of stairs, like ten thousand of them, and most of these are going down, a much harder task for the blind.
The Pisaq ruins start 1,000 meters above the valley floor, and those who are not on a stressful bus tour, can walk all the way to the bottom, passing from ruin to ruin, reliving a vivid snapshot of pre-Columbian life. At the top is the fortress, a citadel towering over an ancient city, which is splayed down the spine of a mountain. Dozens of perfectly constructed terraces cascade into the valleys, each one an architectural wonder trapped in time. In the middle is Intihuatana, or the temple of the sun, where man, woman, and child went to sacrifice animals to their deities. Off to the side, an aqueduct still runs with glacial waters that flow through rock channels around the base of the temple before disappearing just as fast as they appear. Below that is what is left of the Incan village Pisaqa, foundations of small, square homes, food storage buildings, and the ancestral hospital, hanging on the side of a cliff. Here, patients got plenty of sunshine and a room with a view.
The trek takes hikers 2–3 hours but took our crew around 4 hours. Mino walked right into history, or as he is wont to do, crashed into it. While I negotiated the whims of our three-year-old and gasped every time my five-year-old tripped over a stair above a steep drop off, Ignacia led Mino down the rambling staircase. She tapped every step with her walking stick, allowing a sightless Mino to follow the clink clink of the trail. When Mino drank from the temple’s fountain, I felt something in my gut, that this adventure was predestined, one of the last, great moments for this 14kg quiltro born in the mountains of Chile.
Gradually losing his sight over the last four years, Mino doesn’t get out on adventures the way he used to. No more diamonds in the jungle, no backcountry skiing, and no Ethiopian climbing expeditions. To be sure, Mino has already seen a lot in his short, happy life, but I also wonder how much he wants to keep exploring. He seems just as content in his bed, riding the Rainbow through South America, for thousands of kilometers to the rhythm of the motor.
We could have sent Mino back to grandma and grandpa while we drove from Colombia to Chile. That way, avoid the many border crossings, vet certificates, and the obstacles a blind mutt brings to a family already complicated by toddlers and potty training. Life is easier with fewer people. You realize this as you grow older, growing from phase to phase, from anguished teen to independent twenty-something to confident spouse to anxious parent. At each phase, more complexities arise, whether it is the basic event of feeding and educating your offspring, or organizing logistical maneuvers to move the herd from one place to another. Families are hard work.
Just the two of us, we could have done a lot more on a journey like this. We could enjoy the city night life, we could go dancing, go to more museums, we could go on multi-day backpacking trips, climb more, read more books, skip meals, essentially move more efficiently and cover more ground. But we chose not to, instead we chose to have a crew. Kids are a choice; Mino, the blind dog, is the result of a decade-long friendship, born the day I chose to take him home. I made that choice.
I guess the single or married life allows you the time and space to do more, but the experiences we have with our children-especially those while living in the Rainbow will come back to fill our souls with joy and daydreams. Once we have children, we see the world through new eyes. As a parent, people are no longer just people, they too are fathers and mothers; like us, they love their kids. And in a strange way, their children become our children, through empathy and love. Perhaps that’s the purpose of having children, to encourage us to love one another more.
