Those Little Trusty Boots from Peru

by Annette Partida (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Peru

I was standing somewhere between Cusco’s ever famous San Pedro Market and La Plaza de San Francisco when the hail started to pelt down out of the blue. It was so sunny and hot when I left the apartment that overlooked the leopard shape the town is, ice falling from the sky was the one thing I would have early bet against, and later I would have been wrong. I took cover under the Spanish brick lain doorway of Cusco Cathedral. I stood under the rocks watching chunks of ice collect like cubes in a beverage in the gutters. Within moments there were little rivers of hail running in a current down the rocky terracotta slopes of this old Inkan city. I was wearing my hand-stitched Tai Chi shoes I picked up in China. My delicate pink stitching was washed brown with the mud the earth coughed up when she got wet. I stared down at my shoes, which were now a different color, and began to shiver like a wet dog. What are you going to do? I asked myself. As a traveler, it wasn’t the first time I found myself backed up against a wall. Move, I ordered. Quickly I put my bag over my head and ran into the storm down unknown wet paved stones until I found the one open shoe store. I must have looked like a drowned rat walking in from the sewers because the eyes of the sales girls had pity written all over them. I told them I had just arrived out of breath, gasping for air. The thinness of the Andes is no joke. After I could breathe, I told them my feet were numb, they laughed nervously and brought me out every boot they had. I didn’t know a woman’s size 40 is enormous in Peru, so my selection was filtered down to a nice pair of chocolate brown boots with a camel tan strip that wrapped around the roof of the foot. They were beautiful. I paid for them without bargaining, chose a pair of thick socks, and walked out feeling invincible. Those boots carried me over the frozen water that crunched beneath my feet, and it was the most glorious grey day I have ever lived. I spent the rest of my trip living in those boots. I wore them in stirrups while horseback riding the little valley behind El Templo de La Luna. They covered my feet the seven miles I had to walk from Hydroelectrica to Machu Picchu along train tracks next to a raging river. The pair carried me up the steep mountains on New Year’s Day to see the ruins of a time and place that came to an end because of Spanish occupation. They were with me while I sipped on coffee in a thermos and took in my first new view of the decade. My boots kept me company on my 4-wheeling route through the mud through the green-carpeted plains of Sacred Valley and kept my feet warm when the ice began to fall and clump up to my long dark hair on top of the summit of Aganzate at more than 20,000 ft. above sea level. I looked over at the neighboring glaciers and down at La Montania de Siete Colores, gulped down that frigid air, and thanked my little brown boots for getting me out there. I even wore them on a date with a Canadian veterinarian that had asked me out for a cup of hot chocolate and a slice of maracuya cake. The date didn’t pan out and me and my trusty boots walked, in the dark of a South American night, to Real Plaza and watched Ben Solo kiss Rey on the big screen in Star Wars. The time I spent learning Peru's curves and temperament would have been a different experience had I not had those boots with me from the get-go. They provided me stability and familiarity in an unknown place. Sometimes travelers take photos of families or a favorite t-shirt with them to keep the world we come from. For me, I found a pair of boots to keep me tethered to that magical place I found.