Huayhuash Peru 2007

Huayhuash, Peru – 2007


“Welcome to Peru,” Lea said, handing me the key to my room at the faded yet elegant residence, Home Peru.

“Welcome to Peru,” muttered the 8-pt. earthquake beneath my feet, giving a huge angry push. I had left the residence house and was shopping in a large Super Mercado on Arequipa St, when the first ripple surged underfoot, hurling wine bottles off the shelves, smashing them on the floor. Store lights bloomed into bouquets of glass. Windows cracked like ice floes. Sirens screamed, people cried, rosaries were clutched as the rare double quake—a 7.7 combined with a 7.5 that somehow, in Richter math, created an 8-pt monster—grabbed the store, banged it up and down, bent street lights and crumpled traffic barriers. Get outside! I thought, and flung my bag of bananas on the counter, climbed over the turnstile and joined the crowd milling and mourning outside.

Central Lima was lucky, since the major damage took place in Ica and Pisco, some 300km south, leveling the sandy seaport and home of the Pisco Sour, taking nearly 500 lives and demolishing dozens of antiquities. It struck my trekking partners, Lynne and Mike, as they were speeding along hairpin turns in a rickety bus in Parque Huarascan—it leaped into the air twice, thankfully landing on the road instead of tumbling into space.

Earthqaukes break through often along the west coast of South America, a troubled subduction zone in which the young, buoyant Nazca plate resists sliding under the older, crankier South American plate—a violent, underground family feud. Everywhere, Peru exhibits the tortured results of this constant subliminal unease.

The Cordillera Huayhuash, remote and raw, is no exception. Towering mountains thrust up like pyramids, with seven broken black shards topping 6000 meters, and seven more over 5500 meters. Raw, wild, jumbled—the snowclad heights rise up in pure tectonic agony. Glistening glaciers lick their way straight down. Remote and aloof, the Huayhuash is a wilderness of fluted monster peaks grooved with peculiar snow hoodoos, or penitentes, the bane of mountain climbers but spectacular when viewed in bright light, casting goblin shadows down from the summit. Unlike other trekking regions, the altitude in the Huyhuash never drops beneath 14,000-ft., and daily, we climb passes that rise several thousand feet higher. At night, avalanches thunder like cannon shot. The towering passes, freezing weather, isolation and daunting inaccessibility of the Huyhuash make this one of the most difficult trekking regions in South America—which, of course, makes it completely irresistible.

We are drawn to its remoteness: the fearsome, majestic Siula Grande, a formidable peak whose west face was climbed first by Simon Yates and Joe Simpson, followed by Simpson’s near death in a crevasse and chronicled in the book, Touching the Void. Throughout the region wind faint foot paths that, until recently, were the poaching grounds of the Marxist terror squad, the Sendero Luminoso, responsible for some 23,000-Peruvian deaths as well as those of many foreigners. From their Huayhuash hideout, they struck out at the local Indian population with nighttime food raids, strong-arm recruitment, and senseless murders. No wonder the tourists stayed away.

The trip begins in Lima with a short taxi ride to the bus station in an old car with tires so out of alignment that we drift back and forth between lanes, the driver uselessly twisting the wheel. His skill seems to be in anticipating the drift, then honking wildly to clear the path before it’s too late. The car feels soft and wobbly, hardly on the road, as it floats back and forth.

“Your car is dancing to the music,” I note, and he laughs. “Si, es bailando.”

To exit Lima, a dark city draped in a skirt of fog and smog, takes hours of driving through an industrial corridor of tire shops, tv factories, ferreterias, lube garages, glass factories and light bulb distributors. Here and there, a valiant palm tree reaches out, sooty black fronds signaling limply for fresh air. A dilapidated bullring lurks on the outskirts of town next to the Wedding Arena, a stadium where groups of couples convene for civil weddings, held four times a year. Glaring Traigamonedas line some streets, casinos aptly named bring your money.

The eight -hour bus ride to Huarez seems long at first, but as overstuffed seats flip smoothly back, knee high leg rests drop into place and an actual stewardess serves chicken for lunch, it’s clear that Peru is proud of it’s first class bus system, Cruz del Sur, and that the remaining hours should be enjoyed. There will be no more relaxing once the trek begins.
Huaraz, the popular launching site for adventures in the northern cordillera, rests amid a ring of towering white peaks at an elevation of 10,000-ft. Here we lounge for several days at Olaz Guest House, sipping dark coffee on the rooftop terrace, staring out in fascination at the towering, snow clad immensity of Huarascan, the highest peak in Peru.

Like an x-ray, the light is of such clarity and brightness that gringo skin immediately seeks refuge—titanium or zinc sunscreen, enveloping hats with side flaps, anything to save face, to protect from the sun’s laser like intensity. The town’s Indian population is dark skinned and sun proof; the men wiry, the women like Bo Peep in their bouncy, short skirts—polleras-- held straight out by a huge froth of petticoats. Tall, flower bedecked felt hats—chullos--shade their faces, and across each back is slung a bright patterned mochila large enough to haul babies, alimentos, potatoes or firewood. Watching these women strut down the street, straight backed, the weight falling square on their leather shoes, is to glimpse the proud carriage of an Inca past. They cast bold dark glances and chatter in Quechua, hardly shy—this is their land, their mountains, their new future being forged by their growing population and the amazing appearance of an Indian president in Bolivia, Evo Morales. Everywhere, the Indian presence is felt. In Cusco, many street signs named after the conquistadors are being changed back to Quechua.

“Look at that,” I motion to Mike and Lynne.

A Quechua street vendor, skirts flounced around her on the stones of the street, sits on the ground, arranging her weavings and wares in a neat semicircle. Suddenly, her eyes sparkle –she is being kissed by a businessman! Actually, the Indian man dressed in suit, tie, and shiny shoes, looking as if he’s off to the bank, has stopped for an affectionate moment with his “indigenous” wife. Together, they represent the deep changes taking place in the Indian culture of Peru, where some family members put on traditional clothes and work the fields, others go to school, to downtown jobs, to Lima or beyond.

For example: our guide, Delicia, is a 22-yr. old Quechua from the village of Llamac, studies in Huarez and works part time for a tour company. She speaks no English, but is bright eyed, and eager to share her knowledge in Spanish. She brings her father along as the arrierero, or mule driver—an intelligent man who lives on the land but has strong and well-reasoned political views.

As we drive with Delicia toward the mountains to begin the trek, we stop in the plaza of a small village, Llamac. The air seems to tremble with clarity. Bright white streets slam into deep velvet shadows, eyes can barely adjust to the intense light. As the van stops, we see an Indian woman running down the hill, pigtails flying, skirt bobbing, toward the van.

“That’s my mother,” Delicia says with a hint of shyness. “She’s an Indigina.”

They kiss, Delicia tenderly offers her a gift of cupcakes, and we take off toward the mountains, noting that the mother looks aged far past her years, in contrast to her husband, the handsome Llamac. Being Indian means something different for each gender, for each generation.
“We are cholos” joked Christian, Delicia’s brother. Cholo means part this, part that, a term so deprecating that only a cholo can safely use it, and, in this case, uses it only with the confidence that its meaning is changing.

Life is hard in the Andes. “I saw an eighty year old woman nursing a baby,” our English friend says, yet we know that she was probably in her twenties. Another Indian woman, lined and ancient, has pasted brittle green coca leaves over her brows and under her eyes. She approaches me on the street, looking scary.

“Porque las olas?” I asked, indicating the green leaves.

She just shrugged and held her hand out for money. Pharmacies abound, drugs flow without prescription, but timeless remedies are still found in wild herbs such as pwaman ripa for the flu, cocoa leaves for hunger and altitude, or the minty munia plant, used as a tea to cure coughs.

By trek time, we’ve been pampered by grilled trout, garlic trout, tasty chicken planchada as well as spicy Indian food. How easy to fall into the rhythms of expat life, lounging over morning coffee, trading travel stories, sampling the inexpensive yet delicious food, sipping mellow Argentinean wine and maintaining elaborate email trees. It was obviously time to flex muscles, dare fate, begin our 11 days of extreme trekking.

But first, we spend hours sifting through a mountain of dehydrated food. This is an unsupported trek—no tea tents, no jolly camp cook to wake us in the morning with hot water and coffee. Instead, we have shrunk dinners into tight plastic fists—Thai noodles, chicken mole, pasta putanesca, to soften with warm water and cook in a skillet. Each night’s camp will begin with Mike firing up the stove, Lynne braving the freezing cold and making dinner, myself fetching water or cleaning up. Finally, we get the food down to a manageable amount—time to begin.

The first days of a trek are “problem” days, in which we work out misfires, oversights, altitude, illness, and equipment shortcomings. Mine turned out to be the stupid inclusion of an ultra light sleeping bag on a subzero outing.

“You wanted to make it easy for the mules, ha ha?"

“You didn’t know we’d be in the Andes, ha ha?”

And so forth. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone thought it weird. Everyone had his or her own subzero bag to burrow in, cozy as fleas in fur. When I finally admitted that I hadn’t slept in 3 nights and was slowly freezing to death, despite trying to fit myself into the empty duffle bag, they were quick to offer mule blankets—a heap of them. Nightly, I layered on the blankets, heavy as cement, studded with stiff mule hairs and trail dust. Midway, Christian offered me his heavyweight down bag, which I thankfully used.

Then illness struck. First Lynne, who trailed behind, suffering from intestinal ills. Next, my own sweeping intestinal purge. Mike offered a round of cipro, which took immediate effect, and the arriero, Llamac, brewed up a delicious herbal tea, light green, with a stalk of something similar to celery floating on top. By the next day, the symptoms had passed, leaving us all healthy until several days later, when Llamac took sick. Clearly, human frailty is more obvious after days spent at elevation. Although the air is thin, clear, delicious, heady, and the light so brilliant the soul soars, the heavy hand of gravity always threatens, a cocked fist pushing hard, pushing backwards, pushing down. Altitude even affects the mules. “They lie down, they give up,” Llamac tells us. “So we cut them behind the ear to keep the blood flowing. This keeps them from getting sick at high altitude.”

Nando Parrado, who survived a plane wreck in the Andes, described the alien terrain as a “primeval world of crushing scale, lifeless beauty and strange silence…nothing (that) welcomed human life, or even acknowledged its existence.” As intruders, we felt this foreboding. Carefully, quietly, we inched our way through a void of pure silence, hoping for the best. . If mountains could speak, they would growl, Go. Away. Now.

Occasionally, the bleakness was broken by brilliant blue lakes, vivid as glacial tarns, filled with icy trout. One or two mud houses covered with ica grass roofs squatted along the route, but seldom did we see people. Only occasional guagadu cactus, or bright chancorda flowers peeking from beneath rocks. Midway, as we approached the Punta Tapuish pass, a group of Indians with shiny new shovels passed us on the trail.

“Going to the mines?” I joked. Most just nodded, but one man angrily began to shout, “las minas son nuestras, no suyas, nuestras! La plata es para nosotros, solomente nosotros!” The mines are ours, not yours, the money is ours, not yours! Although disturbing, we didn’t think about it until later, as we approached the pass where two American tourists had been killed in 2002. A large metal cross soared up against a lonely moonscape ringed by cliffs and steep walls of every possible mineral content – red iron, green copper, sparkling quartz. The colors were vivid at first, then finally mute dusty grey, the shade of the sky, the shimmering grey lakes, and the flat grey rocks jumbled like broken teeth around us. Here was the top of the world, guarded by peaks so towering, so ominous, that the idea of human intrusion, either by shovel or by foot, seemed ridiculous.

Yet the men with shovels, puny as ants against the mountain back wall, were obviously going to try. They milled around, glancing back at us.

Private mining? We wondered. No sign of Anaconda Copper, or the huge mine near Matacancha, or any of the Japanese mining interests laying claim to the region. Instead, a group of village men who might have stumbled on their own silver lode, looking for private profit.
No wonder they don’t want us here. Maybe we would remember the spot and try and take it from them. Or tell someone, or call the newspaper. Gringo spies, claiming their discovery. Conjecture and imagination, or perhaps intuition, yet Lynne and I still felt a mutual shiver of apprehension—our party was alone in the most remote spot of the Huayhuash. We should leave – quickly.

Nothing occurred to realize this vague alarm. Yet as we hurried down the slope to the next night’s camp spot, we scanned the mountains for men with shovels, seeing nothing. We were alone with scowling rocks, a mad chaos of wind carved peaks. Layers of rock were folded, tortured, bifurcated--frozen features of volcanic scorn. Cutting through at strange angles were exposed skirts of bedrock, gleaming with quartzite, zircon, and ghostly limestone. Gold, silver, copper, and mercury everywhere—an untapped mineral wealth that will change Peru’s destiny forever. Everywhere rose and fell the ragged chaos of unconformity. There was nothing here to offer safety.

On our final descent, we felt beaten, exhausted, limp from hiking, yet eager for the simple reward of—stopping. Not hiking. Not climbing up huge passes. Not eating dried food. Instead, the sweet relief of idling, sitting, eating ice cream, and, in my case, going home.