Last Sept. 11, as my plane hummed down the runway for takeoff at LaGuardia International Airport, a second plane had passengers craning their necks.

Barack Obama's "Change We Can Believe In" campaign plane stood on the tarmac. The wings glared in the summer dawn; black SUVs were parked around the wheels.

I smiled at the slogan. The words felt right for where I was headed: the ancient city of Machu Picchu.

After seven hours of flying over the Gulf of Mexico and Central America, and bobbing through the turbulence of Hurricane Ike, we touched down at Jorge Chavez International Airport, in Lima, Peru, beneath heavy clouds.

My travel agent had told me not to worry when I arrived. "Everyone gets into Lima late. It's always crazy and crowded," she said.

Clearing customs, an elderly man wearing a green wool vest stuck out in the crowd of frantic people in the main terminal. He was holding a sign with my name, and in the commotion it appeared just as foreign as it did familiar.

Leaving the airport, en route to the cliff-side art community of Barranco, his taxi rattled and rumbled through vacant slums and then along a version of the Pacific Ocean I hadn't yet seen.

The spring equinox was the following week and my urge to tap into some positive energy, perhaps even ancient energy, had my head hanging out the window as we drove along the coast.

Lima was the staging area, a place to string together ideas and meet other backpackers, whether they were just landing on the continent or leaving it after months of trekking.

NEW FRIENDS

Barranco's Backpackers Inn served as my hub, where I connected with other Americans looking to summit the ruins of the once lost, Incan mountain city Machu Picchu.

On my second day, I received a small twisty bag of coca leaves from a pilot who grazed past me in the lobby.

"This stuff's illegal where I'm going back to," he said with a southern drawl, tossing the pouch toward me.

I put it in my pocket. The United Nations ban on coca and the negative press I'd read were enough to set aside the culturally embraced leaves for a moment.

Stepping outside, the neighborhood was misty and around 60 degrees until late afternoon, when the sun burned off the clouds.

Back at the hostel, a news ticker on the TV mentioned political upheaval in Bolivia. The doorbell rang and standing in the colonial foyer was a man wearing a New York Yankees hat. His name was Nickel and he was, in fact, from New York City.

Nickel explained there was a cosmic reasoning for our current situation in the world; wars, famines, extreme weather, the economy, they were all happening for prophetic reasons (according to his beliefs).

At a restaurant that evening with other travelers, a chef introduced us to anticucho, better known as cow heart. It tasted better than most other parts of cow and was not much of a cultural shock.

Within a day, Nickel's friends, Orestes, a martial arts instructor from Miami, and Mike, a cameraman for a respected news agency, arrived and began plotting their trek to Machu Picchu. They invited me along, but I decided to leave that day, telling the three that I'd be headed to Cuzco right away.

A few teenagers lobbed rocks at my bus as we slugged through Lima traffic, before merging onto the Pan-American Highway.

We passed through the Pisco, where devastation from the August 2007 earthquake was still visible in the roofless homes and the sidewalks littered with trash and coils of electric wire.

I stayed one night just outside the city of Ica in Huacachina, an oasis beneath behemoth sand dunes. The sci-fi lights of dune buggies could be seen pulsing in the distance.

In the doorway of a local café around midnight, I ran into the three Americans from the inn. They had caught a later bus. We stayed up long into the night, talking about Machu Picchu.

But in the morning, the guys had skipped town; this time I was the one left behind.

Before I left home, I had laid out some ground rules for myself. One was to accept loneliness, another was to confront fear. Going it alone would be just fine.

OFF ON THE TREK

Less than 24 hours later, I found myself in the dizzying cobblestone maze of Cuzco. The continuous up-and-down bus ride and twitch-inducing cold had left me nauseated.

That said, the Peruvian buses do provide meals and blankets. I took a taxi to San Blas, a neighborhood near Plaza de Armas, where I fell asleep, exhausted.

Later that night at a raging local disco named Momma Africa, I spotted the three Americans sitting in the lounge. Between laughter and generic high-fives, we agreed to travel to Machu Picchu together. I took it as a sign that we had split up several times only to reunite just days before the equinox.

In Cuzco, people are constantly trying to sell you used camping gear, guided tours and, more discreetly, cocaine. We found a tour agency that offered an alternate trek to Machu Picchu, so rather than wait for a spot on the overbooked Incan trail, just one block off the plaza, we each handed over $160 to a 19-year-old Quechuan named Johan. His knowledge of the region and as an experienced downhill cyclist was enough to sell me on the price.

Two days later with our packs and downhill bicycles, we set off in a van. I was glad to be getting out of Cuzco and on with the trek.

As the van drove up and out over farms, the mountains came into view. Johan remarked that he had broken his foot playing soccer and that his doctor said "to do something less dangerous," so he chose downhill mountain biking, a sport that had resulted in a broken shoulder and leg.

Reaching the summit of a glacier-capped peak, around 12,000 feet, Johan told the driver to stop.

"Aren't we starting in the jungle?" I asked.

"You guys are getting extra today," Johan boasted, sliding the van door open to get out the downhill bikes. I looked down the miles of winding road, overgrown with jungle brush.

Exhilarated, we tested our brakes then took the steep but paved plunge, bombing down the Andes for the next three hours.

Leaning into turns, yelping echoing cries of freedom, we descended into the jungle. By noon we reached a small village where we stopped for lunch. Continuing on for another four hours, we finally reached the village of Santa Teresa along the Urubamba River, where dinner and a warm shower waited.

The next day we hiked a portion of the Incan trail that climbed more than 2,000 feet on a crumbly path that had some of the group rattled. That night, we soaked our bones in the huge slate pools of the Santa Maria hot springs, where dozens of tour groups ended the day, floating in the humid night air.

FINDING THE LIGHT

The next morning we set out for Aguas Calientes, the town beneath Machu Picchu. Linked by an old train route, the town is a gathering place before heading to the ruins.

By late afternoon there was a charge in the air with everyone cranking up their energy level, sitting in pizzerias, snapping photos of the city shrouded in clouds, and watching the train whistle into the station.

Johan told us to get to sleep and be ready for our 4 a.m. walk up the same stairs that American historian Hiram Bingham climbed in 1911 when he stumbled upon the well-hidden city, built around 1,460 A.D.

In the early hours' starry darkness we set off through the town to join the long procession of mystics and tourists climbing the stone stairs for the spring equinox.

I lost my companions on the way up and wandered into Machu Picchu alone just before sunrise. I felt overwhelmed by this intricate, beautiful city where a society thrived long before they were conquered.

Several people in colorful robes were on a sun tower chanting with their hands in the air. Others walked sleepily through the narrow corridors and out to the open field, where nibbling llamas maintained an even lawn.

I found a flat spot on a stone wall with Orestes and Nickel. We sat facing the silhouetted mountains in the east, eyes closed, as the sun roared out of the darkness, giving us the light we were looking for.

Jesse Szymanski is a freelance writer and graduate of Hawai'i Pacific University. He lives in San Francisco.