LAURAL WEINTRAUB

Dervla Murphy is without a doubt a singular human being. She sets out from Cajamarca, in northern Peru, en route through the Andes to Cuzco, a journey of 1300 miles. She travels on foot with her daughter, Rachel, who turns ten en route to Cuzco, and a trustworthy mule named Juana. The trio cover more-or-less the same ground that Francisco Pizarro and his men covered in 1533 on their way to conquer the Inca capital. Although she recounts in her travelogue a number of horrifying scenarios--treacherous mountain passages, near-starvation, thieving campesinos, horrendous swarms of biting insects--she never loses her composure. Rather, she remains cheerful throughout it all. Her ruggedness is extraordinary, and many of the campesinos she encounters along the way find in hard to believe she’s a woman. She describes the journey in regular installments, diary-style, recounting the constant challenges she and her daughter face in trying to meet their daily needs--for fool and shelter, above all (bathing and grooming are less essential). More important than feeding themselves, Juana requires fodder, and the only real dread that Murphy betrays is that Juana may go hungry.