carved into stone on the face of earth

I'm not the kind of girl who gives up just like that

Count on me to post this as the most revealing picture of me ever on a blog, but there you have it. I'm equal parts reclusive and self-humiliating. At any rate, here you have the quintessence of my experience of arriving at Macchu Picchu after four days of trekking. Safe to say, no experience in my life thus far has compared to this.

But I find I am at a loss for words. It's as though the experience was too beyond my understanding, or moreso as though describing it would somehow detract from it. It killed me, it saved me, it was too much and not enough.

What I can outline is the feeling of being back. I'm reminded now of the Neruda lines I had scrawled in my journal before embarking on my trip:

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos arboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

It's the same life I have returned to now, but I am not the same. Something irreversible has inexplicably happened.

And sadly, no, it does not involve Gael Garcia Bernal.