But it would not be appropriate to describe it as a low point becasue we were camped at 4,200 metres above sea level (masl). Jasper, of the Dutch couple, had calculated that this was 14 times as high as the highest point in Holland. Matt from Cornwall had admitted that it was rougly 3 times as high as Ben Nevis, Britain´s highest peak. It is even higher than every one of NZ´s real mountains. We were seriously high up.
Day One
The day had started with a 6am pick up from my Cusco accommodation. When the party was complete, the minivan carried us and our support crew out of Cusco´s valley and into a countryide of very low tech farming. Early morning pigs quartered the edge of the road looking for anything edible. Suddenly our route took us off the paved road over a terrible track between farmhouses. Surely this wasn´t the way to Mollepata, where we were scheduled to start walking?
Indeed not. We parked and while Mario, the cook, and his daughter/assistant Maria got breakfast ready, Jose, the guide, showed us an Inca site, Tarahuasi, that is still being excavated and restored and is thus not on the regular tourist trails. There were no imposing Imperial Inca walls, but some working water channels and a carved stone with an image interpreted as the moon.With his back to a grove of eucalyptus trees Jose gave us the first of several history lessons. "Inca" was the title of the leader; the God living. The rest of the population were not called Inca. We do not call the ancient Egyptian peoples "the Pharoes", Jose argued. The leader was the Inca and the people were the Quechua. We should call it the Quechua civilisation. The fact that Jose is of predominatly Quechua blood and speaks Quechua as his first language is merely incidental. We were impressed by the logic and had to correct Jose several times over the next 4 days when he used the common term, Incas, to describe the people who served the Inca.
Behind Jose dozens of birds called and fluttered, despite the eucalyptus being exotic trees from Australia. And for once I had not bothered to carry my binoculars. Curses! But I did manage to remember enough to identify two species later with the help of my field guides.
Breakfast was served with paper napkins on a folding table. The four trekkers and Jose sat on little camp stools. It could have been a picnic at Henley, but I doubt that mate de coca features on Henley table cloths. Drinking ´coca tea´ and chewing coca leaves is a centures old tradition in the Andes and is a boon to those struggling with the altitude. Jose advised that we would need to absorb 20kg of leaves to have a hallucinogenic effect. We wondered whether the few grams in our tea means we could test positive for cocaine. I presume not, or the Peruvian football team would all be suspended.
As the van crawled through the ruts back to the road a lady drove her herd of cattle out to graze on the mountain. One steer (or young bull), one heifer and one calf. How can she make a living from these resources? On the other side of the lane a man was ploughing. It was the first time I had seen a ox-drawn plough except on a TV documentary. I´ve since seen another example - and in over a month I have yet to see a tractor in Peru.
One thing I did see was a ground tyrant. This family of birds was new to me, but the size and upright attitude was unmistakeable. Another tick. Good.
When we did reach Mollepata there was a fiesta in progress. Once again (see Pisac post) a brass band of indifferent quality shambled to the church and disappeared inside. On this occasion the square was being decorated with pavement art, but instead of chalk the colour was provided by chopped vegetable matter. I´m sure the green frame was simply grass clippings.
We now came to our first decision, would we start walking or continue in the van? Jose recommended continuing in the van. We had a hard climb on Day 2 and it made sense to preserve our energy. We felt this was good advice but, as we watched other groups sweating in the sun, we wondered if we had been a bit feeble. Jose pointed out that the cheaper treks did not use minivans but the public bus to Mollepata instead, so they had no option but to walk.
This was also our lunch stop, and in no time Mario had whipped up a delicious soup (no packets) and a nourishing main course. Despite the choices offered, we all stuck to the infusion of coca leaves to finish the meal.
And now to the real business. We shouldered our day packs and set off. Back in Cusco Wilbert had earnestly coached me in high altitude tramping; take small steps, breathe in through the nose to avoid heat loss, take short rests so that the muscles don´t lose heat and suck coca toffees. Remember it´s not a race. I tried to put all this into practice, but it was hard. Breathing through the nose was the toughest part. My body craved more oxygen and I wanted to suck great draughts into my lungs. Worst of all, I was the slowest. I knew it wasn´t a race but I´m not used to being the slow one on the trail and, irrationally, I felt I was letting the team down.
They say that age is not a factor in altitude sickness, but I´m quite certain it is harder for an older body to adjust to high-altitude activity. My lungs have had 55 years of life at sea level to unlearn. If Sir Edmund Hillary needs oxygen when he visits Nepal these days I guess it´s all right for Bill Heritage to puff and take frequent rests in the Andes. If you want to know, I was fully 30 years older than everyone else on the trail (except Mario, and he has lived all his life at altitude).
For all that, we all completed the climb to the first nominated camp site well inside the time Jose had predicted. He told me several times that I was doing well. "The others are fast." And 5 minutes after I arrived at the site I was fine. Once the effort stops, the body quickly recovers its equilibrium.
Decision no.2. Shall we press on to a higher camp site? It would be colder, but it would mean less of a climb to the pass on Day 2. Here the wisdom of the extra few kilometers in the van was evident. The weather was beautiful today and who knows what it would be like tomorrow. We picked up our packs and moved on.
It wasn´t a long hike, hardly more than climbing around the shoulder of the mountain. Jose had estimated one-and-a-half hours, but Jasper had timed the youngsters at 1 hour. Apparently I was truly not far behind.
And I had overtaken a trekker in another group. At least I wasn´t the slowest on the trail.
The camp site at Salkantay Pampa is at 4,200 masl. I took the picture by holding my arm out and pointing the camera where I hoped it would capture both the sign and my grinning face.
And it did - look!
The warning about the extra cold was, if anything, understated. It was bitterly cold and none of the foreigners was terribly constructive in pitching camp. Jasper and Winnie had one tent, of course. Matt and I had the option of separate tents, but we agreed that sharing would provide a morsel more heat in the tent.
In the dining tent we were presented with hot drinks and freshly popped corn. This, I thought, is sensible. Carb loading before the effort of scaling the pass. What Matt and I didn´t realise was that this was merely a pre-dinner snack. At 8 o´clock on the dot Mario served another 4-star soup, followed by a main of such size and succulence that I felt it was an insult not to finish it. The result was that I ate far too much, even though I could not clear my plate. This no doubt contributed to the miseries during the night.
Day Two
We were roused soon after dawn with a hot cup of mate de coca, and by the time we had packed our sleeping bags direct sun was visible on the upper slopes and the air was warming up. Mario´s breakfast for mountaineers included a yummy Spanish omelette. I know a couple of guys who have climbed Mt Cook. I must ask them if they have been served with a hot breakfast at more than 4,000 masl with mountain caracaras wheeling overhead.
No-one had slept well and we had all heard avalanches rumbling down Mt Salkantay in the night. However, anyone who looked out of their tent in the night was treated to a glorious display of stars in the cloudless sky.
Matt´s thermometer had registered -2 degrees Celcius when we went to bed at 8pm, but +5 degrees in the tent. No-one´s water bottle had actually frozen, but the little lake nearby was covered in ice. A fist sized rock lobbed at the pond just bounced and skidded away. Ice on the trail was at least 5mm thick. Jose estimated that it had probably dropped to -10 during the night.
We hit the trail again. Walk 20 to 30 steps, pause for a few breaths and shuffle on again. Just keep going, little be little and suddenly Jose was talling me that the pass was just 12 seconds away. Yes, there were the others grinning and taking photgraphs. The sign said this was the Salkantay Pass; Jose insisted it was the Humantay Pass. Whatever, all the authorities agree that the saddle between the two mountains is at 4,600 masl, about 13,800 feet.
I added a stone to one of the cairns to thank the apus (mountain spirits) for my safe arrival and took lots of photos.
Me, Jose, Winnie, Jasper and Matt. The picture is badly framed and poorly exposed but it does prove we made it to the top!
Walking down the other side was easy! With the body not doing the hard work of lifting my 90kg against gravity, the need for oxygen was reduced. This was more like it. I still lagged behind, but now it was because I was scanning the puna (high altitude grassland) for birds. Mostly they were little grey birds that would not come close enough to permit observation of identification details.
Jose was amused by my interest in birds and liked to tease that there was a "condor over there". Once he pointed at a "white condor" as a plane flew over.
The lunch site was at Huayracpampa, a large and marshy river flat. It was home to a few pigs and many large plovers that I was able to identify as Andean Lapwings. Tick.
Note that we had only got to the soup course. It is accompanied by warm garlic bread.
The afternoon hike continued downwards and we quickly exchanged the puna for cloud forest. The path was mostly quite narrow and the passage of thousands of ponies had left the trail as a rubble of irregular stones in a treacherous mixture of dust and bedrock. Hiking downhill is easy on oxygen consumption, but it is hard on ankles and knees. 
Finding secure footholds added significantly to the effort required.
There was disappointingly little visible birdlife. One hummingbird raced past at about the speed of a ´white condor´ and another one was seen as a singing silhouette. 
But there were interesting plants. The others all marched straight past sprays of gorgeous yellow and chestnut orchids but Jose called them back as I experimented with the super close up function of my camera. 
This is another type of orchid. There were several others rather less spectacular and I won´t bore the non-botanists with their photos. For scale, each ´bell´ is about the size of two peas and only slightly larger than the two-tone variety above.
The end of our trail was Collpapampa, where some beautifully cropped turf was an ideal campsite. The local farmer apparently cultivates this to promote sales of bottled drinks to trekkers. Maybe the tour company also pays for its use.
While Mario worked more magic on his two gas rings we collected dead twigs and branches for a campfire. We had descended to only 2,900 masl - lower than Cusco - and the forest retains some of the day´s warmth. It was comfort indeed to eat our meal by the light of the flames and then to drink coca and yarn until the last of the fuel had been used up.
This was to be a relatively short hike, so it was 7 o´clock before Maria called "Buenos dias" and handed round the morning drinks. Everyone had slept soundly and Jose´s enquiry detected no injuries. My right knee has a history of strange pains so I wore a brace on it just in case.
As a concession to the easier terrain Mario only served plain omelettes this morning.
Our hike to La Playa was "Inca level", i.e. up and down. The day was warm and there were plenty of stretches of loose rubble to demand attention. One spot was alive with swifts and swallows to remind us of the importance of mosquito repellent.
We followed the valley of the Santa Teresa River. It looked like ideal torrent duck habitat, but Jose had never seen a duck in the valley and, despite great vigilance, nor have I. However, there were still orchids of different kinds and increasing numbers of butterflies.
There were also more farms, although there was no vehicle access. Everything has to be carried by ponies or humans. The produce includes potatoes, bananas, avocadoes, a large and most delicious variety of passionfruit and coffee. The plots were tiny. No wonder selling a few bottles of water to passing foreigners was considered worthwhile.
La Playa means "The Beach" and refers to banks of boulders beside the river. Peruvians have a sense of humour! (And playa de estacionmento means parking beach, i.e. car park!) The straggling village is the end of the road and actually has a bus service. The campsite was once again delightful, springy turf. The trekkers actually get there before the horses, so we put up the tents while Mario whipped up another Cordon Bleu offering for our late lunch.
We had a free afternoon, so I retired to my tent and tried to enjoy a siesta. Unfortunately someone nearby had a very loud receiver tuned to Radio Misery. Properly the station was Radio Santa Teresa, but it played an endess succession of dreary songs. I came to believe that the singers would finish their 25 stanza wails and then shoot themselves in the studio. Occasionally an announcer would tell us the time with so much excitement that the news of 4:27 was apparently more wonderful than a large, unexpected legacy.Matt trying to ignore Radio Misery.
Again there were few birds. A couple of hummingbirds were spotted in gardens and flocks of parrots flew high overhead, chattering excitedly to each other.
For his last dinner Mario excelled himself. After the soup five separate dishes were delivered to the table, all of them hot and all of them delicious. How did he do it? Even Maria was smiling. She ususally wore a very solemn expression. This was only her second trek and we suspected that she was not a genuine volunteer. We guessed that she was 15 or 16 and had only been recruited because the schools were closed due to a teachers´strike. Maria in her usual sombre mood photographed on Day 2.
Day Four
We have a mountain to climb and descend before lunch and an early start is essential. Maria´s morning greeting was accompanied by the sound of rain on the tents. Ugh.
At least there was a nice little hut to eat breakfast in, not the cramped dining tent. And what was this? Pancakes! Mario, I want you to come to New Zealand and open a Peruvian Restaurant.
My waterproof cape is more than 30 years old but it is still waterproof and it goes over everything. We trudge off on the muddy path leaving Mario and Maria to strike the tents and pack up in the rain. They are going to catch the bus (another reason for the early start) and meet us at the hydroelectric power station for lunch.
The trip documentation describes this climb as "hard" but there are two mitigating circumstances. This trail has not been churned up by horses and we are much lower so there is more oxygen. And maybe we are fitter.
Winnie leading the way with Jasper in pursuit.
Matt was not feeling well, so I was not last for a change.
After about an hour the rain petered out. The valleys were full of swirling cloud and birds start to make their presence felt. If there weren´t a real need to make good time this could have been a great birding morning. But we did see parrots just too far away to identify and the large brown birds crashing around in the branches are Andean Guans. Tick. Botanical studies continued with some strange and beautiful plants to admire along the trail.A fist-sized orchid after the rain. You can see the raindrops.
Jose´s attempt at a group photo at the top of the pass was out of focus, but I can tell you the ridge was strongly reminiscent of NZ bush, with many epiphytes and mosses.
Five minutes of descent brought us to Llaptapata, where a small part of the site has been cleared of bush and restored. Jose explained that the restored rooms have two doorways, which is interpreted as a meeting room or classroom.A history lesson at Llaptapata. Professor Jose holds forth.
Matt retired to the bushes for a few minutes and returned looking much better.
We had once again made good time so we enjoyed a long break to eat our daily snack of fruit and chocolate bars. Clearly Mario wanted us to finish the trek heavier than when we started. I saw a large bird with a puffed out rufous chest. It should have been easy to identify, but I have not been able to find it in my field guides.
The downhill from Llaptapata to Hidrolectrica is steep and tiring. The track is very variable and constant care is needed.
Once down in the valley I saw my first Peruvian morpho butterflies. They look very similar to the ones I saw in tropical Australia.
The lunch in Hidrolectrica is Mario´s farewell. He and the baggage were going back to Cusco. The trekkers have the choice of walking to Aguas Calientes or taking the train. Correction, Matt has no choice. He is not coming to see Machu Picchu with us and foreigners may not use the local trains so he has to walk 11km to catch his train from Aguas Calientes. Maria went with him to ensure he claimed his ticket and got the right train.
Mario always looked cheerful, even before he received his tip.
The rest of us took the train option. After brief confusion about where we were staying, we checked into a hostal. My room has no furniture except the bed. The ensuite bathroom was equipped with modern hardware, but the shower only delivered cold water. This is not a welcome discovery after four days of hiking.
So, after a cold sponge down, I packed my togs and set off for the local hot pools. By chance, Jose did the same, although I could not have missed the way. It was nothing like the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua, but the water was pleasantly warm and just the thing for a tired body. The pools serve liquor to bathers - in glass containers! Happily, I did not see anyone step on broken glass.
Aguas Calientes exists only for tourists going to Machu Picchu. Much of it is newly built and it is growing, but it is a clip joint. The restaurant dinner provided was significantly inferior in both quantity and quality to what we had enjoyed in the three previous evenings. Three traditional Andean musicians arrived and played loudly next to our table. They were quite good, but we didn´t invite them so we declined their invitation to buy a CD or tip them. I fear we did not make friends there.
And so to bed. We were to rise early again the next morning to visit Machu Picchu.
No comments:
Post a Comment