l: andes mountains
c: peru
s: end of rainy season | april

My one wish for this trip was to make plenty of time for the mountains. So I climbed up high to meet them. 5000m high.
Way up in the peaks of Peru, I discovered pachamama. I cried at her beauty. I took many, many deep breaths in that thin, fresh air and soaked up as much of it as I could, so as to carry a little bit of that beauty back with me - back down to my day to day earth. The foggy mountain peaks, the cracking thunderous sounds of the glaciers and the momentary spotlights of sun that lit the snow right up.
As I headed down the other side, through relentless rain, with quinoa and potato soup in my belly and coca leaves in my pockets, through rainforest so thick and rivers fast and brown, I thanked my feet and legs and body and mind for taking me. Five days of walking. Of thinking, or not. Of breathing. Five days of being exactly where I was and needed to be.

On the final day, I reached Machu Picchu.
Arriving at sunrise and with sober expectations, it only took one breath and I was high. I’ve never been to a place so ethereal. Or to a place that generated, purely, so much peace.
I sat quietly here, reflecting on an ancient civilization to whom natural light was studied and sacred. On a culture that respected, cultivated and nurtured Mother Earth. In a place where clouds, sun-rays, rain and rainbows arrive and flow in and out and around these mountains and this mystical city.

“No hay mal que por bien no venga”.
Translation: There's nothing bad through which good doesn't come.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
No matter the altitude.