Inca Ambling

“That night, we watched the moon rise behind the mountains and the stars flick on, then we laid in our tents as Pachamama’s exhalations shook the world outside”

A precise-cut block – neat corners, straight edges – sat in the middle of the shallow stream. It had, I imagined, spent centuries slow-tumbling from the ruins further up the canyon, inching past sheer, tight cliffs and hand-hewn terraces, past the lupins and wild potato plants. And it had come to rest, for now, on the water-bed: the perfect stepping stone.

I hopped on it, then across, this historic bit of rubble helping me follow the original Inca trail through Leon