It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, 2018. Sean and I were halfway through our trip to Peru and Ecuador, and we’d just arrived in Ollantaytambo to catch the train to Machu Picchu. Since we had a few minutes to kill, our guide encouraged us wander a little to get a taste of small-town Peru.
A tiny group of protesters dressed in traditional garb had gathered in the main square. Sean stepped up on a curb to snap a photo—but when he was done he forgot to step down. His foot rolled under his leg, he staggered into me, and as soon as he stood up he started limping.
As our train chugged through the Sacred Valley, Sean propped his foot on my lap and liberally applied ice and anti-inflammatory cream. But it was no use—by the time we arrived at the entrance to Machu Picchu two hours later, his ankle had swelled to the size of a softball.
While the rest of the travelers in our group were getting their souvenir passport stamps, Sean was getting his ankle wrapped by our (at this point very concerned) guide.
One of our fellow travelers—who was pushing 70 and had two bad knees—offered Sean one of his walking sticks. “You need this more than I do,” he said.
For the next couple of hours, that walking stick was Sean’s lifeline. He hobbled through crumbling temples, shuffled up slick stairs, and lumbered up to llamas on his one good leg. If you look at photos, it seems like the perfect Peruvian day. But underneath the surface, Sean’s foot was turning purple.
We were scheduled to return to Machu Picchu the next day—Thanksgiving—to climb to the Sun Gate (one of the most difficult hikes at the site). Sean was determined to go, so he spent the evening soaking his foot in a cold water bath. But as the night wore on, it became very apparent that the Sun Gate was out of the question—and the rest of our trip might be in jeopardy.
I woke up at 5:00 the next morning to prepare for the hike. Sean stayed behind, a meager collection of snacks at his bedside, a remote control in his hand, his foot propped up on a pile of pillows.
I returned late in the afternoon to find the patient right where I left him, a black bruise pooling at his heel. We’d been trying to blame the swelling on anything we could think of—the altitude, a previous injury to the same ankle. But it looked very serious, and we were convinced we’d be on the next flight back to the U.S. We hugged and we cried, and then I was dispatched to find our Thanksgiving dinner.
Using my very rusty Spanish skills, I managed to procure two beers from a nearby bodega and a pizza from the restaurant across from the hotel. While I was waiting for our food, I dejectedly ordered a Pisco Sour. I must have looked miserable (and still sweaty from the hike, too) because the waitress came back with a drink that smiled at me.
When I got back to the hotel room, Sean had found You’ve Got Mail on T.V. I climbed into bed next to him, unboxed our limp, greasy pizza, cracked open our urine-flavored beers, and we spent Thanksgiving watching Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox duke it out under Spanish subtitles.
At the time, it was one of the lowest points in our relationship. But every few months, one of us will bring it up out of the blue. We’ll both laugh out loud and say “Yeah, that sucked.” And we’ll never look at You’ve Got Mail the same way again.
Oh, and in case you were wondering: We did not have to cut our vacation short (thanks to two very lenient guides)! In fact, we had the greatest adventure of all: Sean wound up going to not one but two Peruvian hospitals (including one straight of the 1950s, where he shared a room with a lady who dropped trou in front of him to get a shot in the butt).
He ended up in a cast, with a pair of crutches that were too short for him. (“I don’t have American-sized crutches,” the doctor in Cusco joked.) And by golly, he crutched around hilly Cusco and Quito and the rugged trails of the Galápagos Islands like a hunchbacked hero!
We came home with two worn out metal stumps full of lava rocks, anti-inflammatory pills that were not FDA-approved, a shockingly reasonable medical bill, and a souvenir x-ray that we really ought to hang on our wall.
What’s the first thing you think of when I say Colombia? Cocaine? Pablo Escobar? Narcos? FARC? Terrorism? That’s fair. But what if I told you everything you thought you knew about the country is wrong?