Apex of the Vertex

I finally found it. South American single track. I knew it was here. I have read about it, heard about it, seen it on youtube and pink bike videos, talked about it with countless bike shop nuts and mechanics, but hadn't really ripped it until Cusco. Now I was walking up the steep rocky trail with my new friend Juan Carlos, trying to reach the radio antennas before dark. The light left a glow of orange over the city in the valley below. We were finishing our last ride of the day in what had turned out to be one of the most complete and satisfying days of riding downhill in Latin America.

It took me seven months, but I found it. I found it in the navel of the universe, as the Incas wisely named it, in Cusco. Cusco's grandeur reminds me of Rome not just because of the tourists clogging the streets, but because of the layers of history and story beneath its stones.

The Incas had their capital here, and they were renowned architects. When the Spanish came, they had never seen anything like the walls of the Incas: stones perfectly fit together without mortar of any type. The Incas worshiped the sun and moon, they worshiped the earth, and it is easy to see why. Energy radiates from the earth here. The mountains cradle the city. And the trails were good.