Tracing Inca Trails: An Adventure in the Andes

by Eddy Ancinas

Overview

Eddy Ancinas and her friends set out on on a seven-day horseback trip that takes them over Peru’s rugged terrain to 20,574-foot-high Mt. Salcantay, along an ancient Inca route, and then down into the jungle. During this journey, these fifty-something travelers are challenged by events they never imagined possible: a fall from a horse that results in serious injuries, a train strike that leaves them stranded in a remote village, an eight-hour trek on railroad tracks along the Urubamba River, and a moonlight ride in the back of a truck with questionable brakes on a dirt road over a 14,000-foot pass, among others.

It is a journey full of mishaps—and yet Eddy is enchanted by the culture and places she experiences along the way. As she and her fellow travelers explore Lima, Cusco, and the markets, villages, and ruins of the Urubamba Valley, they are deeply touched by the people they meet, fascinated by the clues to an ancient civilization they learn to respect and admire, and enthralled by the spectacular setting where it all takes place: Andean Peru.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647422776
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Eddy Ancinas grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and on a nearby cattle ranch. A non-fiction writer specializing in Latin American travel, she has published articles on Argentina, Chile, and Peru in the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe and LA Times, plus six editions of Fodor’s Argentina Guide. Her story of a cattle roundup in Elko, Nevada, won the 2010 Nevada Magazine Writers’ Contest. Her award-winning book on the history of two ski areas (now one: Alpine Meadows and Palisades-Tahoe), Tales from Two Valleys: Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows, was first published in 2013; a 2nd edition came out in 2019. Eddy has an Argentine husband and is fluent in Spanish. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Editorial Reviews

2022 Best Book Awards Finalist in Travel: Guides & Essays

From the Publisher

2023-09-13
Many years after the fact, writer and amateur adventurer Ancinas recounts an extraordinary seven-day adventure on horseback through the Andes in this travel memoir.

In the summer of 1984, the then-50-year-old author traveled to Peru in the company of her two best friends: Kate, a competent, athletic, and generally unflappable 60-year-old nurse, and Tricia, a former archaeology student and an insatiably curious and optimistic artist and collector. (Some people’s names have been changed in this remembrance, according to the author.) The idea originated six months earlier, when Ancinas’ friend Bill Roberson shared slides of his recent trip to Peru over dinner with her and her husband, Osvaldo, in January, hoping they might join him on his next excursion. Osvaldo wasn’t sold, but for Ancinas, the “vision of that mountain—its serene beauty and its potential violence—held an attraction for me that I could neither explain nor escape.” So she, Katie, and Tricia traveled to Cusco, where they met Bill and a host of other guides and adventurers who accompanied them on their journey. They make their way to the Urubamba Valley (the “Sacred Valley of the Incas”), where they don their gear, mount horses, and begin their trek. Myriad challenges confront the group over the course of their week: local, tourist-targeting terrorists they must avoid; severe injuries; and so many ostensibly well-laid plans gone awry that Eddy concludes, “If you don’t have a plan in the first place, you won’t have to change it.” Ancinas’ prose is sturdy and observant, registering the Peruvian landscape in fine, primarily visual detail: “Sun-scorched red clay mountains form a barrier between us and the green rolling hills that descend to the Pacific coast.” She largely successfully intersperses her travel narrative with moments that feature helpful sociocultural and historical context, as well as black-and-white photographs taken by the author on the trip—although these images seem somewhat unnecessary, as the text ends up being far more powerful than the grainy images. Overall, the memoir succeeds on the sheer strength of its passion and self-reflectiveness.

A vivid and thoughtful adventure narrative that’s sure to appeal to other travelers.

Kirkus Reviews