Tracing Inca Trails: An Adventure in the Andes
By Eddy Ancinas
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EDDY ANCINAS and two women friends join a seven-day horseback trek in the Peruvian Andes that will take them on an ancient Inca trail—over a 15,000 foot pass and down into the jungle, where a train will stop and take them to Machu Picchu—however…
“I love your book – it’s quite a tour de force in that it’s interesting on every page.“
—Diane Johnson, Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Fiction and General Nonfiction
What People Are Saying…
“A rollicking, true-life adventure tale, Eddy Ancinas’s “Tracing Inca Trails” tells the story of an epic journey in Peru which tests the courage and resilience of three women friends.”
—Julia Flynn Siler, New York Times best-selling author of The White Devil’s Daughters and The House of Mondavi
Eddy Ancinas must be a wonderful person to travel with: she is curious, observant, well-informed, enthusiastic, and plucky. Her memoir of a sometimes harrowing, sometimes exhilarating trek through the Andes is a joy to read from start to finish.
—Molly Giles, author of Wife with Knife and All the Wrong Places
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“Eddy Ancinas’s innocence, passion, and indomitably adventurous spirit propel the reader through this extraordinary account of a singular Andean adventure. Peru’s distinctive character and culture come to compelling life in Ancinas’s vigorous prose.”
—Don George, Editor at Large for National Geographic Traveler and author of The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George
Synopsis
Book Information:
Publisher: She Writes Press (September 20, 2022)
Distributor: Publishers Group West
Language : English
Paperback: 200 pages
ISBN-10 : 1647422779
ISBN-13: 978-1647422776
Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
EDDY ANCINAS goes to Perú with two friends to ride horseback for seven days over the Andes and down to a jungle outpost where a train will take them to Machu Picchu.
A fall from a horse, a pack mule’s tumble over a cliff, and a train strike that leaves them stranded on the railroad tracks are just some of the misadventures that alter the course of their journey.
While facing mishaps and adventures with wit, grit, and humor as they traveled by foot, horse and the back of a truck, Eddy and her friends are deeply touched by the people they meet, fascinated by the clues to an ancient civilization they encounter, and enthralled by the spectacular setting where it all takes place: Andean Peru.
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Read an Excerpt
From the INTRODUCTION
Tracing Inca Trails by Eddy Ancinas
When I returned from Perú in 1986, I knew I had done something extraordinary. Together with two friends and a group of fellow travelers, I had ridden a horse for seven days over the Andes and down to a jungle outpost where a train would be waiting to take us to Machu Picchu—a much anticipated destination.
Along the way, one of my friends fell from her horse resulting in injuries. Two pack mules carrying our gear tumbled from the trail into a river. When we finally reached the train station, we learned there was a strike—no train to Machu Picchu, no way to get back to Cusco. What we thought was the end of our journey was the beginning of a new one. Setting off late in the afternoon along the railroad tracks, on foot and on horseback, we had no idea how we would get back over the Andes to Cusco.
During this adventure, as each of us responded to moments of terror and elation, distress and discovery,
we found individual strengths and vulnerabilities we didn’t know we had. Perú, with its great mountains and mysteries, was the perfect setting for a true adventure travel book. But who would read it? For months, friends and family had been telling me, I can’t believe you did that, and Glad you did it, and I don’t have to, or I’d rather read about it than do it.
Now, thirty-six years later, after numerous revisions interspersed with long abandonment in a drawer, I decided to re-visit the manuscript and meet the challenge of re-writing the story for today’s audience.
Convinced that love of adventure and the joy of discovery have no time frame, I returned to my manuscript and to Perú—still in love with the country and grateful for the lessons I learned along the Inca trails, where the mysteries of ancient civilizations continue to confound and delight travelers from around the world.
About Eddy
Eddy Ancinas grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and on a nearby cattle ranch. A non-fiction writer, she specializes in Latin American travel, skiing and the California West. She has published articles on Argentina, Chile, and Perú 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 renamed Palisades Tahoe in 2020), Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows: Tales from Two Valleys, was first published in 2013; a 2nd edition came out in 2019.
Eddy has an Argentine husband and is fluent in Spanish.
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