"The engineers came to build the lodge," Isabel Pancorvo told me. "The first time, I cooked for them, gave them beer and chichi [homemade Peruvian corn beer] and they paid. The second time, the same thing and they paid. The third time, they put in plumbing, ate my food, drank my chicha, locked the doors, and ran away. They didn't pay."

I found Isabel in a dark shack across from the deserted buildings at Playa Rosalina, waiting for the occasional hiker to walk by and buy a soft drink or chicha. In her broad-brimmed straw hat, she came about halfway up my chest. I bought three passion fruits and invited her to join us for a cup of mate de coca. She sat with us on a low wall outside the abandoned buildings. I asked where she lived. She pointed up the mountain.

"Behind the tree house?" I asked.

"I think in the tree house," Rebecca whispered to me.

"Alone?" I whispered back.

Rebecca quickly translated Isabel's rapid Spanish. She was sixty-two years old. There was a husband who was superfluous, and a few sons who had either died or run off to Lima—Rebecca was unsure. The deserted lodge was part of a Peruvian-French initiative, brokered in part by Eliane Karp, the French-born wife of former president Alejandro Toledo. The flight of the engineers presumably coincided with the end of Toledo's term.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"Something about debt forgiveness," Rebecca answered. "Is that a word?"

"Didn't she say something about Russia?"

"Sí, sí," Isabel answered. "Last year, four beautiful Russian ballerinas came with three musicians. They played and danced—right here." She pointed to the concrete terrace of the abandoned lodge as visions of sugarplum fairies danced in my head. Petrushka by the Apurímac, Swan Lake with condors, all to a balalaika accompaniment. "I taught them a huayño dance," she said, putting down her teacup and demonstrating the shuffle step. "I'll teach you."

"I bet Hiram Bingham never did that," I boasted to Rebecca fifteen minutes later as we crossed the bridge and waved good-bye to Isabel.

"You mean kick a small old Quechua woman?" It was true. I had had trouble with the shuffle step.

And then we began the uphill. The sun had started to shine, and although the switchbacks afforded the occasional shade, our conversation consisted of panting and pointing. A waterfall here, a hawk there.

"Chestnut-fronted parrots," Ana said as our arrival sent them into squawking flight. "And these," Ana said, stopping by a powder of yellow petals on the trail, "are lady's slippers, ayaq zapatillas. The locals put them in coffins to walk the dead to the afterlife."

Six hours after leaving the camp of Chi­quis­ca, we arrived at Marampata Hill. The twelve members of the Covarrubias family who owned that side of the valley had tapped into the glacial feed from above and carved out a small farm. Once again, we had a campsite to ourselves. From our private plateau, the Apurímac Valley opened up farther to the west and turned north, toward the jungle. We lunched on fresh cheese and guacamole from Covarrubias avocados and gazed hypnotized by fatigue and the view.