I was only fifteen minutes from the summit of Huayna Picchu, the mountain overlooking the legendary Machu Picchu, but I had no desire to rush. After all, this was the final climb of my four-day adventure, and I wanted to enjoy every last step. I sat down on a rock, took a long drink of water, and watched Machu Picchu play hide-and-seek beneath a blanket of drifting mist. The clouds gave the ancient city an almost magical quality, while the jungle stretched endlessly beyond it—a green ocean woven from treetops as far as the eye could see. It was one of those moments when your body rests, your mind wanders, and the rest of the world quietly disappears.
“Excuse us… just passing through.”
The voice abruptly interrupted my inner peace. I looked up to see an overweight discount Indiana Jones speaking English with a strong Spanish accent. He introduced himself as a guide, so I stepped aside to let him pass along the narrow trail. A few minutes later, his client crawled into view. There really is no better word for it. The man looked like he’d just gone twelve rounds with life itself. His shirt was completely unbuttoned, his eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell at an alarming pace as he struggled for every breath. His face had turned ghostly pale, and I honestly don’t think he even noticed me as he shuffled past.
“We’re only fifteen minutes from the summit,” the guide said encouragingly.
The poor man didn’t even react.
José had told us about people like this. They arrive in Peru with no respect for either the mountain or the altitude. Many are physically unprepared, and some spend their first nights sampling South America’s famous powdered “delicacies,” leaving them sleep-deprived before they even begin the hike. By the time they tackle Huayna Picchu, exhaustion, altitude, and poor decisions combine into a recipe for disaster.
They disappeared around the corner while I stayed where I was for another few minutes, taking photographs, finishing my water, and enjoying the view. Eventually, I continued toward the summit. The stone steps were steep and polished smooth by thousands of hikers before me. In several places, the ropes fixed to the mountainside were the only thing keeping me balanced.
I hadn’t been climbing for even ten minutes when I rounded a bend and saw something nobody ever wants to see.
The man with the unbuttoned shirt lay face down on the steps about twenty metres ahead of me.
Completely motionless.
His guide stood another twenty metres above him. The moment he spotted me, he started shouting for help. Although it was already my fourth consecutive day of hiking, I don’t think I’ve ever covered twenty metres that quickly. Adrenaline took over completely. Within seconds I was kneeling beside the man, rolling him onto his back.
“What happened?” I shouted.
“I was walking ahead,” the guide replied. “I looked back and he was fine. Then I looked again and he’d fainted. He’s okay. He just needs a minute.”
The man’s forehead had already turned blue where it had struck the stone steps. He wasn’t breathing normally. He was gasping.
“Call someone!” I shouted back. “Call the rangers. Use your radio. Do something. This man needs help.”
The guide barely reacted. He just kept repeating the same sentence.
“He’s fine.”
“He only fainted.”
“He’ll wake up.”
I still don’t know whether he was in shock or simply refusing to accept what was happening, but every repetition chipped away at the little patience I had left. More than anyone, a guide should have recognised that his client was in no condition to continue climbing long before he collapsed.
About a minute later another hiker arrived—a French-speaking Black man. He immediately knelt beside us while the guide continued insisting everything was under control. I explained what had happened.
“His fingers are blue,” the Frenchman said after taking one look. “We need to move him somewhere flat and start first aid.”
“He’s fine,” the guide insisted again. “He just fainted.”
The Frenchman stared at him in disbelief before shaking his head.
“No. He isn’t breathing.”
“We need to start CPR immediately.”
He actually laughed, not because anything was funny, but because he simply couldn’t believe the guide still failed to grasp how serious the situation had become. At that moment I realised we couldn’t rely on him.
“Forget him,” I said. “Let’s move him ourselves.”
Without thinking twice, we lifted the unconscious man beneath his shoulders and carefully carried him down the slippery steps to the nearest patch of flat ground. Looking back, I can’t even remember whether he was heavy or how we managed not to slip ourselves. Adrenaline erased everything except the need to act.
We laid him down gently, folded his shirt beneath his head, and within moments several more hikers had arrived. An Argentinian stepped forward and immediately introduced himself.
“I know CPR.”
Without hesitation he began chest compressions while the Frenchman delivered rescue breaths. Every now and then the man let out a horrible gasp, but he showed no real signs of life.
Meanwhile the trail had become completely blocked. Nobody could continue either up or down the mountain. Then, unbelievably, a young woman started complaining that she was going to miss her train. Despite watching a man fight for his life in the middle of the only path, she kept insisting people move aside. The trail was so narrow that the only way past would have been to step over him.
Literally.
“My train leaves at 2:40!” she kept saying.
That was enough.
“To hell with you and your train,” I snapped. “Can’t you see this man is dying?”
The rest of the hikers silently agreed. Her boyfriend looked utterly embarrassed and even apologised on her behalf, but she continued shifting impatiently from foot to foot like someone waiting in line at the post office rather than beside a dying man.
Watching someone die is a strange experience. Your mind immediately begins asking questions. Where is his mother? Does he have a wife? Children? Can they somehow feel that, thousands of kilometres away, their husband, father, or son is taking his final breaths on a mountain surrounded by strangers? Will they ever see him again?
I thought about my own family. What if it had been me lying there? The phone call they would receive. The grief. The silence that would follow.
If they ever read these words, I hope they know that I died doing exactly what I loved. I would rather die while truly living than spend my life slowly dying beneath routines, expectations, fear, and other people’s definitions of success. Too many people spend decades breathing without ever really feeling alive.
Something suddenly vibrated in my pocket.
For a brief moment I thought it was my own phone before remembering I’d put the unconscious man’s phone there nearly an hour earlier. Someone was calling. A woman’s photograph appeared on the screen.
I couldn’t answer.
What could I possibly have said?
By then a police officer had finally reached us, drenched in sweat after climbing the mountain. A helicopter couldn’t land here. An ambulance couldn’t reach us. Oxygen arrived almost forty minutes too late. A young woman who looked like a nurse quietly wiped away tears.
Another human life had come to an end.
The image of his face beneath the white sheet has never left me. Even today I remember every detail with unsettling clarity. I had absolutely no desire to continue climbing. The summit was only ten minutes away, but it no longer mattered. I turned around and began the descent toward Aguas Calientes, where the rest of my group was waiting.
Every step downhill was filled with thoughts about the American who, as I later learned, had been travelling with two women—one of them his wife. She had already reached the summit and was probably wondering why the trail had suddenly come to a standstill. Wondering where her husband was. Wondering why neither he nor the guide had appeared. I couldn’t stop imagining the moment she lifted the white sheet and saw the peaceful face beneath it. A face that looked as though it were simply asleep.
Only it never would wake again.
Part of me was grateful I hadn’t witnessed that moment. Another part was simply grateful that I was still alive.
Back in Aguas Calientes I found my group sitting in a restaurant and told José everything that had happened. He wasn’t surprised.
“In the last ten years,” he said quietly, “around twenty people have died on that mountain.”
Then he shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter whether you have a heart attack on the Moon or on Huayna Picchu.”
“Nobody is coming to save you.”
I nodded in silence before downing a shot of homemade liquor someone had handed me. Judging by the taste, I wasn’t entirely convinced it had been offered out of good intentions.