Camp outside Matara. 9 September
Arriving at Federico’s hacienda this morning, we were touched to find a group from the British Agricultural Mission waiting to see us off: a gesture that made both of us feel quite homesick on leaving the Cajamarca valley. We won’t quickly forget the kindness of the entire Mission staff during this past week.
Juana emerged from her stable looking slightly puzzled yet interested in the changing scene; this is, after all, her first day away from an obviously loving owner. I groomed her briskly, murmuring sweet nothings – not because grooming was necessary (she shines like a new coin) but to accustom her to my touch, voice and smell before I began the less pleasurable process of saddling and loading. Then Rachel held her, Federico’s groom hovering watchfully nearby, while I struggled to come to terms with those esoteric thongs and rings. (I’ve never been good with knots.) She stood motionless, only her ears twitching – forward! – as she happily received Rachel’s fulsome compliments. Having at last secured the girth and got the crupper on I relaxed; given this degree of good behaviour, the day might even come when the crupper could be left attached to the saddle.
Loading was easy. All our gear for the next four months is tightly packed into two small attached saddle-bags (made in England) and our two Diana-bags – one small, the other smaller. Hard, heavy objects – books, emergency food rations – go in the panniers, cushioned with clothes for Juana’s sake. My Himalayan flea-bag (one and a quarter pounds) and our high-altitude tent (two and a half pounds including poles and pegs) go in my Diana-bag with the two space-blankets. Rachel’s flea-bag (two pounds) provides the padding for one pannier and her Diana-bag holds our high-altitude clothing which is very compact. The panniers fit snugly behind the saddle and my Diana-bag is tied to the crupper iron with a length of nylon clothes-line. Rachel’s Diana-bag, and the heavy iron picket and tethering rope, balance the five-litre water container across the pommel; as the water-level goes down, the picket can be adjusted to keep the balance right. A mug and saucepan hang from each pannier. On my back I carry the day’s food and discarded garments in a light knapsack. My bush-shirt pockets hold notebooks, pens, maps (such as they are), compass, knife, whistle, passports and vital documents. Rachel has her own compass and whistle and we are both carrying prodigious quantities of cash in money-belts. When everything was in place, it seemed there would be no room for Rachel; yet she was able to mount unaided, despite the impedimenta fore and aft, and pronounced herself very comfortable. Then quickly we said our thank-yous and good-byes and to a fusillade of camera-clickings we were away.
Rachel was blushing under her riding-hat. “Just as well the media don’t know what we’re up to!” she muttered. And we shuddered in unison.
I was experiencing that familiar sense of unreality which always marks the first few miles of a trek into the unknown. One can hardly credit that the longed-for moment has arrived; and by the time one has come to believe in it, it has passed …
Already, at 9.15, the sun was hot in a cloudless sky. But soon we were climbing steadily, the land rising between what might here be described as ‘rolling hills’ – i.e., pretty impressive mountains, though not in the ‘savage peak’ category. Rachel marvelled at their colouring: great glowing patches of red and yellow, riven by wide streaks of orange and pink – as a painting this scene would have seemed vulgar, as Andes it was superb. But the drought-damage marred our joy. Beside the narrow stoney road, many hectares of withered young wheat lay on the cracked and desperate earth. Other fields were ploughed for planting; but if no rain comes, why waste seed? These fields had cactus hedges and when Juana noticed gaps on the right she made half-hearted attempts to turn towards home. Federico had advised me to lead her all day, foreseeing that she might take Rachel back to Martin.
When we reached our first plateau, at some 10,500 feet, a cool breeze came frisking over the red-brown dustiness from a massive mountain-range far ahead – a sheer wall (it seemed) of purple-gold-brown rock, rearing towards the deep blue sky. A few clouds were poised along its rough crest and we willed them to bring rain.
From the plateau we were overlooking a jumble of deep valleys, some blessed with vivid strips of green, marking the survival of streams. On steep slopes, far above the valley floors, hamlets of adobe hovels merged into their red-brown background. A few were thatched with sword cactus, most had red tiles bought at the nearest market and carried home on burros. We overtook one such caravan, driven by two barefooted campesino women who giggled nervously in response to our greeting.
Passing through a larger-than-usual pueblo in the early afternoon we saw a sheaf of dessicated maize stalks for sale. While Juana munched we drank beer and Inca-Cola, bought in quite a big shop from a polite but distant mestizo. His long shelves were ominously bare: salt, sugar, rice, macaroni, lavatory paper (unexpectedly!) but not much of anything. I mopped up the last of the beer. (Even in Cajamarca, the ‘grandest’ shops are now poorly stocked.) Juana was tethered outside and as we lent on the counter, gulping thirstily, an unkempt campesino couple appeared in the doorway dragging half a sheep’s carcass, still dripping blood. This was duly weighed, and the shop-keeper said, “Eighteen kilos”. Whereupon the campesinos erupted furiously, claiming that it was at least twenty kilos. The shop-keeper pointed to the scales needle, the campesinos shook their fists, stamped their feet and shouted. (“I thought they were meant to be a docile race!” said Rachel.) Then the shopkeeper shrugged, heaved their rather macabre property off the scales and made to return it to them. They looked at each other, then sulkily at the ground. The shopkeeper gave them a roll of notes and they trotted meekly away without counting them.
We continued down the long, deserted street between a straggle of detached, two-storey adobe houses given dignity by carved wooden balconies. Poverty was in the air, palpable as the dust that rose in the wake of a passing truck. All day we met only three motor vehicles, two buses and a truck; each left us shrouded and coughing. Juana completely ignored these horrors; she is an interesting animal, calm yet very alert.
Soon after, the road ran beneath shattered purple cliffs looking like stacked slates magnified 10,000 times. Here we paused to eat Amelia’s Cordon Bleu sandwiches, which seemed incongruously epicurean in our grubby paws. Then I inspected my left foot and discovered that my Mexican-bought boots are not as good as they look. I had thought I was developing a standard blister, as would be normal – so I ignored the pain. But on removing my boot a torn and blood-soaked sock was revealed, plus a deep hole in my foot; and the errant cobbler’s nail was virtually inaccessible. “What are you going to do?” asked Rachel, sympathetically. I surveyed my choices: I could either lie down and die or proceed according to plan. “Don’t ask stupid questions!” I snapped ungratefully, lacing up the guilty boot. It is at such times that one pays the penalty for travelling lightest; yet the advantages of that policy are greater than the occasional disadvantages.
Within a mile we had spotted our first redura (short-cut), a barely perceptible path across a level sandy plain where a few tall eucalyptus swayed in a gusty wind. Nearby, on our left, rose a sheer semi-circular wall of grey rock; on our right, the mountains were round and brown. Soon we entered a eucalyptus plantation where the young trees grew in rows some ten yards apart. Sheep, goats and a few skeletal cows grazed on sparse clumps of rough grass and scrub. Their herds – two tiny ragged children sitting in the shade of a eucalyptus – stared at us with alarmed eyes from beneath wide-brimmed hats. Next came a mile or so of curiously splintered land, its mini-abysses scattered with strange shrivelled shrubs. Then abruptly we were overlooking a deep, circular, irrigated hollow, containing the new dwellings of a Co-op farm. Turning left and keeping to the high ground, we crossed acres of stubble – the earth feather-light with drought – before negotiating a precipitous, shadowy ravine where Juana warned us of an inexplicable boggy patch. Mules are famed for their quick response to every sort of natural hazard. Remembering Juana’s inadequate lunch, Rachel dismounted for the tough climb back to the road. Then she requested her sweater; it was 4.45 and suddenly cold.
Gradually the road dropped to a sad trickle of a river in a wide bed of pale, sun-bleached stones. Green grass grew on the level bank but we reluctantly decided against camping here; this grazing must at present be precious to someone. Another redura took us up a long, rough brown slope where dead leaves rattled as we pushed through the bushes. (Rachel was walking again.) Back on the road we met a young mestizo couple and asked anxiously where we could buy fodder. The husband leaped over a low stone wall and pulled an armload of wild oats and coarse grass which made it unnecessary to lead Juana; hugging this priceless burden I hastened on and she eagerly followed. A final steep climb, to Matara, slowed us. Here eucalyptus smoke drifting from adobe hovels instantly recalled the Ethiopian highlands – as only a smell can recall a place.
Matara has acquired much graffiti on gable-walls, proclaiming the rights of campesinos and extolling revolution. It was now 6 p.m. and heavy clouds were gathering but we had no faith in them, having observed the same false promise every evening in Cajamarca. In the handsome, oblong plaza we left Juana guzzling, and collecting a crowd of excited, bewildered children, while we entered another large, dark, ill-stocked shop. Mercifully the beer supply is better here. Four young mestizos were drinking chicha and one offered me a taste from his glass. This brew is so much more to my liking than commercial beer that I offered him my bottle in exchange; but he insisted that I must be his guest. The shop-keeper apologised for the expanding tumult of children outside the door – “They are curious because tourists don’t come here.” Lucky Matara! While tethering Juana, Rachel had somehow dropped her shining silver-looking compass on the pavement outside the shop; and when we emerged one little boy shyly stepped forward and handed it to her. If Matara were on the tourist-map, would he have done so?
Juana’s supper was a big worry; nobody in the shop had been able to help. When we consulted three policemen, sitting on a bench outside their station, they immediately sent two youngsters off in different directions. One officer had a round chubby face which he was evidently trying to render more intimidating by the cultivation of a fierce moustache. He laboriously wrote our names in a register, then opened his desk drawer and presented me with two eggs that had been wrapped in a handkerchief for safety. “Food to give the senorita,” he explained, looking anxiously at Rachel – who was sitting outside the window attending to her print-deficiency by reading Watership Down in the fading twilight. Eleven hours is a long time to go bookless …
Darkness comes quickly here; at this altitude one tends to forget how close we are to the equator. Soon the stars were out above the irregular roofs of the substantial yet neglected houses surrounding the plaza. Then the youngsters returned – fodderless. But meanwhile Chubby-face had been thinking and he ordered them to guide us to a large field of failed barley on the edge of the town where Juana is now filling her belly, though not getting the nourishment she requires. As the boys led us through narrow, rough, unlit streets, where only feeble lamp-light glimmered in living-room windows, a brilliant half-moon sailed into view. So my first battle with my own weird knots was by moonlight. We have tethered Juana to a huge fallen cactus trunk: the earth is too loose and dry for the picket to be trustworthy. On today’s showing she is going to make an excellent Third Musketeer, though obviously we must expect minor differences of opinion during the first week or so.
This splendid camp-site is a trifle too bumpy to be described as ‘ideal,’ but one doesn’t expect interior-sprung ground in the Andes. On three sides tall eucalyptus surround us, on the fourth a high, dense cactus hedge hides us from the road. In view of the anti-tent-peg state of the ground we are sleeping under the stars, wrapped in our space-blankets. After a supper of bread and Cajamarca cheese, Rachel was asleep before I had finished my first paragraph.
Camp outside San Marcos. 10 September
I awoke, puzzled, just before midnight. Was I dreaming? But no – for the first time in fourteen months, rain was falling on the Matara region. Quite heavy rain, too, and it continued for three and a half hours. I hastily pulled books, torches and clothes under our space-blankets, drew Rachel’s space-blanket over her head and curled myself up in a ball. But Rachel is a lively sleeper and it proved impossible to keep her covered. When we rose at 5.45 her flea-bag and husky-suit were sodden. Yet one couldn’t begrudge the thirsty earth its relief.
It was a cloudy, warm morning, the dawn light silver and soft. Less romantic were the town’s powerful shit-smells, drawn out by the rain. Our field, I suspect, is a popular local latrine. As we loaded up, two trucks beyond the hedge were also loading up, with men going to the locally-famous animal-fair held every Sunday at San Marcos; many carried bound sheep and goats, slung over their shoulders.
By 7 we were climbing to a plateau bounded by arid red-brown slopes on which a maze of criss-crossing thread-like paths made a crazy pattern. Several groups of horsemen and a few horsewomen overtook us on their way to San Marcos and greeted us gravely. Juana brayed sociably to the ponies. Rachel was walking, so that her flea-bag and husky suit could be laid across the load and saddle to dry. In a small pueblo, where groups with churns were awaiting the Cajamarca milk-lorry, a young man kindly pointed out a redura down a steep slope of red earth between high red embankments. Then came a grey-brown plain where emaciated sheep grazed on nothing. At its edge we found ourselves staring into an apparently fathomless ravine, long, narrow and vegetation-filled; this Andean landscape is wondrously unpredictable. Suddenly an elderly limping campesino in a frayed poncho appeared like a genie and indicated another redura, half overgrown by green thorny bushes, which hairpinned around the side of the ravine. It then levelled out while taking us onto a bare, boulder-strewn mountain-side where it plunged precipitously to join the road near San Marcos.
Here Juana disgraced herself for the first time and had to be disciplined. This evening Rachel noted in her diary, ‘In one of these patches of dust Juana committed one of the worst sins a horse or mule can commit. When I was on her back she went down on her knees and tried to roll. Luckily I got off in time and Mummy pulled her up before she had time to roll on the rest of the things. Mummy gave her a good walloping and Juana looked most put out’
Already scores of campesinos were returning from the market, driving burros laden with hand-painted pottery, firewood, roof-tiles and sacks of God-knows-what. Some were leading pigs on strings, their squeals re-echoing from cliff to cliff in the narrow gorge. Others were driving cows or sheep or ponies. A few of the men had striking ‘Inca’ faces: aquiline noses, long bright eyes, delicately-drawn mouths, haughty expressions. Most women were carrying on their backs a bulky load of merchandise, packed around the statutory infant. Each group plodded silently on, eyes downcast, jaws rhythmically masticating coca-wads to blur hunger and fatigue.
On the edge of San Marcos – by Andean standards a biggish town – my questing eye spotted a small, square red flag above a doorway: the sign that a householder sells chicha. A bottle cost ten soles, as compared to seventy for a litre of beer. Sitting on the low parapet of a humpy bridge over a dried-up stream, I emptied the bottle before removing my left boot. “Sore?” suggested Rachel. “Bloody!” I replied literally, displaying a sanguinary sock. “You’d better find a cobbler”, said Rachel, “otherwise you’ll soon need a blood transfusion.” So we looked for a cobbler, but unsuccessfully because it was Sunday.
The animal market is held on a wide expanse of beaten earth below road level but as it was now 3.30 most of the fun was over. Yet the surrounding streets remained crowded and Juana was much admired by connoisseurs. “We’d better be careful tonight”, said Rachel darkly. In the town centre we had to force our way through the traffic. Instead of motor vehicles, hundreds of horses and cattle were being ridden or led in every direction without benefit of traffic laws. In the main plaza a very small boy was trying to pull a very angry bull in the required direction. The child’s face was puckered with irritation at the animal’s intractability – not white with fear, as would have seemed more natural. We stopped to watch this drama; eventually the child won and disappeared down a side-street, the bull ambling amiably after him. Down another side-street we lunched in a primitive eating-house with long crude trestle-tables and unsteady benches and a huge mud-range in one corner. Ample helpings of rice and beans, and a little tough mutton, cost us 100 soles each.
A mile outside San Marcos, beyond a wide, almost-dry river bed, we found this roadside site where short green grass grows between small unfamiliar trees. The main attraction was a neighbouring field of well-grown alfalfa, some of which we hoped to buy. This ground looked like common land but as we unloaded the owner arrived – a lean, severe mestizo – and forbade us to camp. “Show him the Prefect’s chit!” whispered Rachel. So I did, and all was well. Rachel can be useful on occasions; without her prompting, I would never have produced that vital document. Later, the owner’s charming adolescent son gave Juana such a generous helping of alfalfa that she couldn’t finish it. He indignantly refused payment – “You are our brave guests from Ireland!” This is my chief objection to using chits and letters of introduction; people then feel obliged to subsidise one, which is fine in the First World, where almost everyone is richer than oneself, but to be deprecated in countries like Peru.
As we set up camp a group of friendly little boys gathered to watch and offered to help Rachel groom Juana. Leaving them together, I went to bathe my lacerated foot in the murky remains of the river amongst droves of gigantic tadpoles. On the far side rose a sheer grey cliff, mottled with dark green vegetation. A path ran along its base and I watched colourful lines of campesinos returning from the market, almost all leading pigs of various sizes and hues. Then a solitary woman appeared, wearing a wide, ankle-length red skirt and a bright blue cardigan and leading an enormous bull with eighteen-inch horns and testicles almost to the ground. She was carrying a plastic bag of toffees and looked abstracted and worn; after puberty, most campesinos seem old. Directly opposite me she suddenly paused, helped herself to a toffee – and presented one to the bull. He accepted it gratefully, she scratched him between the horns and they went on their way. I begin to see why these Indians have a reputation for great kindness to animals, a most unusual trait among hardship-driven peasants. Again, like the Tibetans.
Our enjoyment of the sunset was curtailed by swarms of stealthy midges and shrill mosquitoes who recked nothing of insect repellent. Not so long ago, San Marcos was known as the Gold Coast of the Andes and abortive attempts were made to resettle its inhabitants on higher ground.
Camp in Field by Irrigation Channel. 11 September
A day of such splendour that this evening I feel drunk on weak coffee.
We were up before 6 – luckily, for an irrigation channel had just been opened to flood our site (hence its green grass) and the camp would soon have been awash. Juana was in a bolshie mood, perhaps suffering from indigestion, but by 7.30 we were climbing through the most fertile land we’ve yet seen. Maize and potatoes flourished on well-irrigated hillsides and sometimes our little path wound through groves of exotic trees and shrubs. As we emerged onto high pastureland we could see, away to the left, vague clouds wisping around a mighty heap of mountains – like square granite blocks. Diminutive sheep were being herded by spinning campesino women, sitting on boulder vantage points with their colourful skirts spread around them – slightly like gnomes on toadstools. A pueblo of neat little houses had – most unusually – a paved main street and a café-bar-restaurant which I thought it seemly to resist at 9.30 a.m. There was much animal traffic – the market was busy – but no trace of motor vehicles. Here we bought our lunch: ten bananas for fifty soles. Expensive by local standards, but we’re far from banana-growing country.
Again up, the breeze becoming cooler, the pastures greener, the sheep more numerous. Looking back, we could see the mountains around Cajamarca and all the intervening wilderness of bluehazed hills and valleys. Soon dark mountains came crowding close on both sides: no more sheep or shepherds. Suddenly we felt very conscious of our smallness – three minute creatures toiling ever upwards. “We’re like ants on an elephant”, said Rachel.
All unexpectedly we reached the pass and stood wordless, shocked by the immensity of the grandeur before us. This was the very quintessence of mountain beauty – a boundless glory of heights and depths, of jagged rock peaks far above and curved valley floors far below – of range thrusting up behind range in sublime and eternal disorder. Through crystal air the colours glowed as though all the world were a jewel: green, brown, ochre, navy, gold, purple, silver. Above was the strong blue of the mountain sky and filling our lungs was the keen air of high and desolate places – elixir air, that makes one feel it must be possible to leap from summit to summit. This was a memory forever, an indelible imprint on one’s whole being. I hope Rachel, too, has received it.
No houses or pueblos were visible from the pass but for many miles ahead we could see sections of our red-brown track clinging to precipices. This was not redura territory; such sheer slopes permit no short cuts. The first stage of the descent took us to the edge of a 2,500 foot gorge. Along its sides were cultivated ledges and slopes, and a few hovels crouched at odd angles over staggering drops. The gorge floor was a dense tangle of trees and shrubs and very far above it towered a long purple-grey rock massif. The scale of this landscape is overwhelming.
Our track soon became a path, scarcely two feet wide, that hurtled downwards with a drop of at least 2,000 feet on one side. The surface was of loose dusty earth and round pebbles and here Juana more than atoned for this morning’s misdemeanours. It would have been unwise to lead her so I went ahead and she nimbly followed – never faltering, even on the most vertiginous bends – while Rachel brought up the rear to watch the load. I had mercilessly tightened the girth at the start; on such a gradient the law of gravity can do dreadful things and a slipping load could have been fatal.
Descending this path, one felt absorbed by the Andes. None of the surrounding mountains bore a trace of cultivation, though campesinos will attempt to grow something almost anywhere. The slopes were of red-gold or pale grey earth, with thick patches of brown or green vegetation and occasional clumps of pink or blue flowers–chiefly lupins, which are, I’m told, native to the Peruvian highlands. There were several essential lay-bys: narrow ledges, or shallow caves in the rock-wall. Two burro trains civilly gave way to us. And we gave way to an awe-inspiring elderly-looking woman, bearing some bulky burden wrapped in a striped blanket, who came skimming upwards as though she were ice-skating. Personally, I found going down exhausting enough. My ‘brakes’ (thigh muscles) were throbbing by the time we reached a vast, parched river-bed of large, loose stones and stretches of fine sand.
Here grew an extraordinary variety of giant cacti – grotesque and oddly threatening, yet beautiful in their own cruel way. The real threat came from tall thickets of thorny bushes, leafless and vicious, which grabbed us agonisingly, drawing blood even from Juana. Small dead black bushes had thin angular branches that snapped at a touch. Strange, low, naked trees, with thick shiny silver boles, had an evil-coloured parasite cactus growing from the junctions of its branches. Other, taller trees had very beautiful crimson pods that glowed among olive green leaves like slender flames. Yet others were leafless but laden with royal blue blossom; these also had pods which, when stirred by the breeze, produced the only sound in all this sunny desolation – a thin, sweet, magical melody, coming from everywhere and nowhere.
When our path disintegrated into a plethora of ambiguous goat-trails Rachel said, “I knew we’d get lost down here! You just have a mania for going offinto the wilderness.” This indicated that she needed her lunch so we sat on a bottom-burning rock and ate five bananas each and drank pints of water. We were now down to about 6,000 feet and amidst such aridity the afternoon heat was stifling.
The river-bed, if you can call it that, had become rocky, rather than stony and was broken by countless awkward little gullies, full of that malign bush with the fish-hook thorns. There was no way of avoiding those gullies, unless we turned back. I was relieved to find that turning back is against Rachel’s principles – it seemed only fair to give her the option – so we struggled on, bloody and sweaty, in what I assumed to be the direction of the road. Though roads do such quirky things hereabouts one couldn’t be sure… When eventually we found it there was one last snag: an almost sheer brick-red slope of crumbly earth, sans path. It was only about thirty feet high and we could make it – but could Juana? We decided to unload her if she said she couldn’t. I scrambled up, with some difficulty, and lovingly called her. She looked at Rachel, who made encouraging noises. Then she shook her head violently, rolled her eyes, laid back her ears – and took the slope like an 18 h.h. hunter. As Rachel followed I flung my arms around Juana’s neck and told her that she is the bravest, cleverest, most agile mule in all Peru: which was not flattery. She scratched her face on my hip and seemed to agree.
The road surface here was strewn with sharp stones. Far ahead we could see the green of a long, cultivated valley but we were immediately surrounded by bare, thorny, grey-black scrubland, palpitating in the heat, from which rose brown hills, low and round, with a solitary prickly-pear cactus squatting on one summit like some deformed sentinel. Rachel walked because of the atrocious surface, on which Juana occasionally stumbled.
At 3.45 we came to a road junction – a rare phenomenon in the Andes, for obvious reasons. Our road crossed the river-bed, now in a deep gorge, by a new metal suspension bridge – very long, very high, with very loose floor-boards. A freak wind roared up the funnel of the gorge, moaning most strangely through the structure of the bridge. Juana was appalled. The unnerving noise, the unfamiliar glinting metal, the rattling of the boards when I went ahead to coax her – everything about this monstrosity justified a mule being mulish. We surveyed the terrain, confirmed that the bridge was a must and blindfolded Juana – to no effect. Then we unsuccessfully attempted to back her onto the boards; if she could once be induced to set foot upon them all would be well. Next I unpacked our emergency rations and tried to tempt her with mint-cake; she snorted contemptuously, conveying that she wasn’t in the business of taking bribes. We were close to despair. I crossed the bridge and called; Juana didn’t budge. I returned, sent Rachel across, put my arms around Juana’s neck and begged her, with tears in my voice, to follow her owner. When Rachel shouted to her above the wind I went briskly ahead, tugging hard at the bridle – and suddenly Juana was clattering behind me, breathing fast with fear through distended nostrils. She would have been worth 500,000 soles.
Now we were in that long green valley. Not far from the bridge was the first dwelling we’d seen since morning, a miserable roadside shack. But beside it grew a field of alfalfa and soon Juana was having her just reward: four kilos for forty soles. The one-roomed shack was a family home-cum-‘shop’, stocking only beer and Inca Cola (no chicha). The furniture consisted of a single bed, sagging badly in the middle, a tin table and two wooden stools. When we arrived a wretched young campesino woman was sitting spinning in a corner of the yard, her toddler son lying across her lap tugging at a flaccid breast. He is aged seventeen months but looks less than a year. When Mamma went to cut the alfalfa she handed him to me and suddenly I fell into a slough of despond. He lay passively in my arms, his hair matted and nitful, his red little eyes oozing yellow matter, his face disfigured by septic insect bites, his clothes stiff with filth and reeking of urine. One of how many with no future? The yard held small piles of adobe bricks, roof tiles and planks. Mamma explained that her husband had been hoping to build another room but prices have risen so sharply he can’t. They hope to sell those materials at a profit.
Juana now had a problem, described thus in Rachel’s diary: ‘When we took off the bridle to let her eat in comfort we found she had a very nasty sore where the bridle had been rubbing against her nose. It looked very sore and we knew we couldn’t put the bridle back so we just left the problem until we had been refreshed by our drinks. Then I got her white leading rope and tide it to the two rings and it made quite a good little bridle as long as she’s good.’
We continued up the humid, well-irrigated valley between thriving crops of barley, wheat, potatoes, maize, sugar cane, bananas, alfalfa. I bought another eight kilos for Juana’s supper and tied it behind the saddle, much to her frustration. Despite this fertility the inhabitants look puny and ill-nourished and there were no pueblos, only scattered dwellings or small groups of hovels. Some fields were being ploughed by pairs of oxen drawing wooden ploughs light enough to be carried on the shoulder. We refilled our water-bottle from a roadside irrigation channel and added a double dose of purifying pills. By then we were in a muck sweat and this, mingled with thick white dust, gave us a coating of mud like Punjabi chickens waiting to be baked.
Mulish needs determined our choice of camp-site and we are in a small triangular grassy field beside the road. An irrigation channel flows swiftly on one side; on the other, tall shady trees conceal us from passers-by. About 200 yards away the roofs of two little houses are just visible above cactus hedges and as I write I can faintly hear the music of Indian bamboo pipes. There has been much equine traffic on the road, including several women cantering briskly, their infants’ heads bouncing helplessly and alarmingly from side to side. We have been observed only once, by a youth walking home, with his scythe over his shoulder, on the irrigation path. He paused briefly to admire Juana – “Muy bonito!” Most campesinos are extraordinarily incurious.
Beyond the irrigation channel lies flat wasteland dotted with tall bushes, leafless and black. On the top branch of the nearest bush an enchanting small bird – all cardinal red – sang his happy evening song, pausing at intervals to swoop through the air, making little clicking noises as he reduced the insect population. At 6.30 the long rolls of pearly cloud to the west briefly became gold, then rose-pink, fading to smoky blue. And quarter of an hour later the stars were out. While writing this I have drunk four litres of water.
Cajabamba. 12 September
One and a half people in a one-man tent on a hot night, when the entrance has had to be zipped up against insects, is not a receipt for sound sleep. We lay stark naked, dripping gently and scratching savagely. Yet neither of us felt tired this morning, as one would after a broken night at sea-level.
Further up the valley crops were replaced by goats and multicoloured sheep – black, white, brown, grey – foraging on harsh slopes. Outside one shack we watched two women weaving a vividly dyed blanket, but they ignored us so pointedly that we soon moved on. Here the average family holding is under four acres and the children look like Oxfam posters. But at least they’re not yet being eaten, as the Inca chronicler Huaman Poma reported some children were – and by their parents, too – during a ten-year pre-Conquest drought.
The Peruvian government, like so many others, is encouraged by First World countries to spend lavishly on armaments; yet it has no money to spare for even the most rudimentary public health service. Doctors’ fees (when there’s a doctor within reach) are so high that one illness can leave a family permanently in debt. The health-care scene was much better in colonial times; one of the outstanding Spanish virtues (following the Catholic medieval tradition) was concern for the sick. During the 16th century, eight hospitals-cum-poor-houses were founded in Lima and the largest and most richly endowed was for Indians. Many sierra towns also had hospitals, often staffed on a weekly rota basis by voluntary lay workers – members of religious confraternities.
In the yard of a large Co-op farm three campesinos were taking a tractor to pieces, or maybe trying to put it together again. The yard and buildings looked conspicuously uncared for and we were told this evening that the locals have been greatly disappointed by the results of Agrarian Reform. Previously they were not paid but given free shelter and seeds; now they have to find their own accommodation, buy their own seeds – and still they are not paid. A few haciendas have been returned to their hereditary owners at the campesinos’ request. But usually the owner doesn’t want his property back as it has been so abused that to restore it would cost more than he can afford, or at least is prepared to pay. Some haciendas were allowed to run down before their appropriation because their owners knew what was coming; others had been grossly neglected or mismanaged for generations. Peru, like many Latin American countries, is still suffering from a centuries’-old tradition of absentee landlordism. In colonial times – and the attitude has persisted – to own land was very important, to farm it productively much less so. Most haciendas have always been run by responsible – but rarely very knowledgeable – mestizo mayordomos while the owners enjoyed Lima life, using their sierra estates merely as holiday homes. Yet the average campesino now considers the pre-Reform system to have been the lesser of two evils.
We climbed for miles towards a flat-topped, red-brown wall of rock. Then we lost sight of it, while taking a steep redura along a white, dusty, rocky cliff which led to an even steeper redura up the rock wall. By 12.15 we were in the main plaza of this enchanting town on a well-wooded plateau.
This is Juana’s half-day off because here we are staying with a friend of the Calderbanks – Mike Garnett, an English priest who has been working alone in Cajabamba for the past ten years and has fifty churches in his parish. He lives in what was formerly a convent, an attractively simple building surrounding a patio ablaze with flowers. At present several young campesinos also live there, while trying to make up their minds whether or not they want to go to the Seminary at Cajamarca to study for the priesthood. This is not an easy decision, nor is it easy for the Church authorities to decide whether or not they are suitable candidates. I’ve already referred to the Indians’ radical ‘adaptation’ of Christianity and the notion of a campesino priest is revolutionary. Despite ecclesiastical Resolutions in 1697 and 1725, and a 1766 Papal brief ordering the admission of Indians to religious orders, they have always been excluded from the priesthood by the local hierarchy. And one feels that to encourage them into a seminary now is locking the stable after the horse has gone.
Before looking for Mike we had to look for alfalfa – which has now become ‘Alf in Murphy jargon. We wandered up and down neat, straight, Spanish streets, almost free of motor-traffic and full of friendly people. Alas! we were too late for Alf who only appears in the early morning when the campesinos bring in burro-loads from their fields. Remembering then how our Mexican pony had relished maize grain, we decided to give Juana a well-earned treat. From an astonished grocer we bought two kilos at (relatively) vast expense. But Juana spurned it. In despair we tried to force-feed her, shoving a handful into her mouth. With luck the centavo would drop and she would realise that here was some delicious though novel nutriment. Baring her teeth most comically, she spat it into the gutter. Whereupon an enormously amused bystander informed us that maize grain is human food which no Peruvian animal has ever tasted. (A starting point there for some essay on the comparative economies of Mexico and Peru.) Accepting defeat, we sought Mike, who in due course solved the Alf problem – and also the cobbler problem which was, as you might say, no less pressing. He incidentally informed us that a white flag over a doorway means bread for sale: a useful tip. But what really made my day was an encounter with an ancient man, redolent of chicha, who ended a welcoming peroration by describing Rachel and myself as ‘two flowers that have sprung up on the pavement of Cajabamba’!
Camp on Ledge above River-bed. 13 September
Alf-trading starts early and not a leaf remained when we reached the marketplace at 6.30. As we gloomed over our problem – we couldn’t start with an empty mule – an Alf-laden burro appeared out of a side-street, followed totteringly by an old man, bent and half-blind. After some hesitation (this was a daily order for a de Paso breeder) he sold us six kilos for sixty soles. (The standard price; off the tourist trails, no one in Peru tries to overcharge gringoes.) This was enough for two meals so we left Cajabamba, after loading up on the church steps amidst a crowd of giggling children, with the surplus tied to my knapsack. We ourselves had been well fed on buns spread with avocado and salt, and a delicious drink of extraordinary gruel made from a local ginger-type root mixed with milk and cocoa.
Soon we were on a steep stretch of the Camino Real, where Rachel dismounted. Mike had told us that from Cajabamba to Huamachuco we could ignore the motor road as the Camino Real provides a shorter and more dramatic route; though given the form its drama takes, it probably isn’t shorter in time …
Reaching level ground we paused to gaze down on the old russet roofs of Cajabamba, tranquil and timeless amidst groves of tall eucalyptus. Then on, the Camino Real only slightly undulating for miles, its stone paving just visible under a carpet of soft grass. This luxury was appreciated by all; Juana sometimes trotted spontaneously out of sheer joie de vivre. Yet on either side was sadness: field after field of maize, potatoes and wheat all withered and brown and mournfully rustling in the breeze. Many substantial two-storey dwellings were deserted; whole families have fled to Trujillo or Lima to escape famine, as they think. This unfortunately is nothing new. Because of the erratic rainfall, two out of five Andean harvests are poor – if not as calamitous as this – and there is a long-established tradition of migration to the coastal cities in times of drought. For much of the way the Camino Real was lined with tall shady eucalyptus, or bramble hedges. In a village of straggling hovels a red flag fluttered and I swilled the chicha avidly, though it was bitter and weak and full of interesting insect corpses. One is advised not to drink alcohol at these altitudes but I can’t think why. Here a dozen unfriendly, jeering mestizo boys followed us for half a mile and tried to mislead us onto another track; but they turned back on the edge of the Rio Negra gorge, which lay some 2,000 feet below the edge of the escarpment. As yet no river was visible–just a vast width of pale stones, stretching as far as we could see to left and right, and beyond them an unbroken wall of soaring brown mountains.
“How does the Camino Real get through that lot?” wondered Rachel, dismounting. “We’ll soon find out”, I said cheerfully, tightening the girth. Here no Inca paving remained; the path was of loose stones or thick grey dust. Halfway down, gravity won; the load slipped forward and Juana (sensible girl) at once stood still. She had to be completely re-loaded though there was no room for us to stand side by side. I ended up tightening the girth squatting under her belly; luckily my relationship with those leather thongs and iron rings is now quite good. Towards the end of the descent it began to rain lightly; and far up the gorge, to our left, we could see solid banks of black cloud raining heavily – an odd phenomenon, like watching a waterfall that had started in heaven.
Down at last, we stood and looked around us. I was aware of an exhilarating isolation. Although a village was so near, we might have been – in the feeling of this desolate gorge – 1,000 miles from the nearest human being.
“Where’s the Camino Real?” demanded Rachel. We scrutinised the surrounding stoney waste – all those miles of it! – and could discern no hint even of a goat-trail, never mind a Royal Road. I waved a hand in a vaguely westerly direction. “It must be down there”, I said. “Why?” asked Rachel. “Why shouldn’t it be up there?” – and she waved a hand in a vaguely easterly direction. “I just have a hunch it’s downstream”, I said, wondering uneasily if Rachel was right. “Hmm!” said she. Bitter experience has taught her that her mother, though allegedly an Intrepid Traveller, has no sense of direction. We looked at the map, but the relevant cartographer had chosen not to go into details about this region. No camino, real or otherwise, was marked. So we went downstream.
First, of course, we had to find the stream – still invisible. It proved to be narrow (some thirty yards) and only waist deep but with a bed of rolling stones and a powerful current. Fortunately Juana decided that this was fun and happily splashed across, Rachel acrobatically placing her feet on Juana’s neck. I removed my boots and shirt and followed slowly, testing the river-bed with my stick. Then we wandered down the gorge for an hour and a half and never have I walked on a more exhausting surface: either round loose stones – very large – or deep soft sand. But that was a low price to pay for the austere magnificence all around us. On our right rose 2,500 foot cliffs of bare rock and vividly red earth. On our left were those brown, scrub-covered mountains, too close for their summits to be visible. And ahead was space – an infinity of blue sky. (The rain clouds were behind us, and dispersing.)
“I think we’re lost”, Rachel said at 3.45. “Could be”, I conceded, “but it’s worth it!” Then suddenly we saw a human, where the brown mountains receded slightly to allow a small patch of cultivation. The miserable little maize crop was dead and the equally miserable campesino, filthy and ragged, was herding five gaunt sheep amidst this worthless fodder.
“Donde esta Camino Real?” I shouted across the intervening wilderness of stones. The campesino came through a low thorn hedge and pointed to the ground we stood on. “Camino Real?” I yelled again, incredulously. The campesino nodded, then abruptly turned away and retreated inside his fence.
The river then played a nasty trick by swinging in to the foot of a sheer mountain, forcing us to ford it again. Beyond another long stretch of shifting, tiring sand we passed the remains of two ancient bridges, both of which had crossed now-dry tributaries just above their confluence with the Rio Negra. We were still on the wrong side of the river, which here was deeper and faster. As the gorge gradually widened we could see a long jumble of blue mountains against the far horizon. Now the red cliffs were lower and a gigantic rift appeared in the brown mountains – presumably the Camino Real’s exit from the gorge. We could no longer postpone our third fording of the river and this time Juana was a little disconcerted by the strength of the current – a reaction I shared.
At the wide entrance to the tributary valley, amidst a wilderness of dense thorny scrub, we really did get lost. When I cautiously went ahead, to investigate what might lie beyond a particularly menacing thicket, Juana impetuously plunged after me and Rachel’s left arm was severely torn by dagger-like thorns. Mercifully she ducked in time to save her face – these bushes were ten feet high – and characteristically didn’t complain though spouting blood. This evening she noted in her diary, ‘I got the whole of my upper left arm punctured by lots of slightly poisonous thorns when Juana dragged me through thorn bushes. You can’t controll her at all with the home-made riens we had to make because of her poor sore nose.’
Briefly we rambled south, passing a sinister colony of ten vultures sitting flapping their wings in leafless trees. “They’ll enjoy us when we’ve died of starvation”, observed Rachel. Our hopes rose when we found an active irrigation channel but on trying to follow it our way was blocked by an impenetrable thorn hedge. So instead we followed a stream a few inches deep, with an almost invisible pathlet beside it. For lack of anything else, we decided this must be the Camino Real: tomorrow will prove us right or wrong. Here we were climbing again, following a river-bed no less stoney than the Rio Negra’s. At 5.40 we came to this site, which is very beautiful but remarkably inconvenient from several points of view. We could have continued for another half-hour in search of grazing but my nail-hole was being tiresome. The Rio Negra had long since removed its bandage and too many wettings, plus sand in my sock, had not soothed it. So for this evening I decided to put myself before Juana, much to Rachel’s disapproval.
We are on a too-sloping ledge, some thirty yards by fifty and about ten feet above the river-bed at the base of a mountain. Our pathlet crosses this ledge and carries an astounding amount of traffic; half a dozen campesinos passed before sunset, ascending to their up-valley shacks. We seemed to frighten them, for they quickened their pace to hurry by without greeting us. A few other groups drove loaded burros up the river bed; green, red and blue skirts, and striped ponchos, made gay flares of colour against the grey stones. There is nothing here for Juana to eat – not even withered weeds – so we firmly waylaid an old man, almost invisible under a load of dry maize stalks, and bought a bundle for ten soles. I wanted him to take twenty but he refused: evidently ten is the market price.
We’ve cleared the tent-space of sharp loose stones but could do nothing about the bumps. The gradient guarantees that one of us (Rachel) is going to roll on the other (me) throughout the night. We ate rolls and sardines by brilliant moonlight while heaped-up clouds to the north were still orange-brown in the afterglow. Our pudding of some esoteric coconut-flavoured fudgey substance (presented to us in Cajamarca) might have seemed inedible had we not been so hungry. All was washed down by water tasting strongly of pills. Rachel then retired and I settled down to write. Here, I feel a profound content, perhaps partly because of the immutability of the scene around me. Few places today are safe from ‘development’ but no one, in the foreseeable future, is going to develop this defiantly inaccessible region.
Huamachucho. 14 September
When Nature called me at midnight the surrounding glory, beneath a flood of silver radiance, kept me sitting entranced on a rock for over an hour. Beneath our ledge the river bed glimmered pale. Near and far, dark mountain silhouettes stood out against a royal blue sky, faintly star-sprinkled. There was no stirring of a breeze, no whisper of running water: the stillness was so unflawed that it seemed the sovereign moon, floating high, must have put a spell on our whole world. To me that perfection of stillness is the grace of the mountains, poured into one’s soul. There is more to such experiences than visual beauty; there is also another sort of beauty, necessary to mankind yet hard to put in words. It is the beauty of freedom: freedom from an ugly, artificial, dehumanising, discontented world in which man has lost his bearings. A world run by an alliance of self-hypnotised technocrats and profit-crazed tycoons who demand constant, meaningless change. A world where waste and greed are accepted – even admired – because our minds’ manipulators have made frugality and moderation seem like failure in the Acquisition Game. A world where deliberate cruelty to each other, despite a proliferation of ‘humanitarian’ do-gooding agencies, is tolerated – because who can stop the multinational conquistadores? What I’m trying to express is scoffed at nowadays – or simply not recognised – or if recognised made into an off-putting cult. But I know, and have always known, that we 20th-century humans need to escape at intervals from that alien world which has so abruptly replaced the environment that bred us. We need to be close to, and opposed to, and sometimes subservient to, and always respectful of the physical realities of the planet we live on. We need to receive its pure silences and attend to its winds, to wade through its rivers and sweat under its sun, to plough through its sands and sleep on its bumps. Not all the time, but often enough for us to remember that we are animals. Clever animals, yet ultimately dependent, like any other animal, on the forces of Nature. Sitting there in the moonlight, it frightened me to think of the millions who have become so estranged from our origins that many of their children believe architects make mountains and scientists make milk. These are people who live always with artificial heating, lighting and transport. People who have never used their bodies (is this why sex has become such an obsession?) but use only their minds. And often not even their own minds, but the minds of others who have produced the goods that make it unecessary for individuals fully to live. The Box epitomises it all – millions passively absorbing misleading over-simplifications and being artificially stimulated by phoney emotions. Where are we at? The end of the road, perhaps … For we have travelled too far and too fast from the life the campesino still lives. And it may be that we are now meeting ourselves coming back – never a healthy encounter.
At Cajabamba, Mike remarked that one feels much happier away from the Affluent Society: but then he is living and helping here. My own feeling of relief, at having escaped temporarily into the freedom of simplicity, could be regarded as selfish romanticism. Yet I’m not arguing that First Worlders would be better off living campesino lives. Extreme poverty is also dehumanising and here the local poverty permanently shadows my enjoyment – as it doesn’t, oddly enough, when I’m travelling in India. Is this because the campesinos seem to lack that potent spiritual dimension to daily life which sustains even the poorest Hindu peasant? ‘Escape’ journeys like these are for me a necessary therapy. Whole areas of one’s humanity could become atrophied if one remained always within a world where motor-roads are more important than trees and speed is more important than silence.
I’d just returned to my flea-bag when footsteps approached and a cheerful whistling man passed by. Here one feels no tremor of apprehension on such occasions, however unexpected a sound may be. The vibes are reassuring.
By 7 a.m. we were on our way – as empty-bellied as poor Juana, having recklessly eaten our breakfast last evening. One of several campesinos descending with unloaded burros confirmed that we are still on the Camino Real. Crossing a stream – tributary of the tributary – we watered Juana and filled our container. This was a toughish uphill walk, again on sand and stones, and I was sweating hard long before starting the real climb. There was no pueblo but where the valley narrowed we passed a dozen scattered dwellings, causing alarmed small children to flee indoors. Rachel eyed the towering mountains that now enclosed us on three sides, leaving only a slice of sky above. “How do we get out of here?” she asked. “Wait for it!” I replied. And not long after our path swung sharply left and leaped onto a precipice. Rachel dismounted and I advised her to lean well forward during this ascent. Up we went – and up and up and up – the path narrow and dusty between drought-sick scrub and massive boulders, some the size of barns. As the air became perceptibly thinner, I feared for the ill-fed Juana. But she plodded steadily upward, never faltering. We greeted three small groups of descending campesinos who firmly snubbed us, as though gringo mothers and children driving mules to Huamachuco were a daily and rather unwelcome apparition.
The climb ended unexpectedly, as such climbs do; flies on elephants can have no over-all picture of the terrain. Suddenly we were on a level ridge, separating two valleys of incalculable depth. Looking back, we were also looking down on the summits of all the mountains we have so far traversed; we must have been surveying at least 100 miles of Andes. The conquistadores were not as keen on this sort of thing as we are. Pedro de Cieza de Leon, a soldier and enthusiastic chronicler who vividly described the Inca Empire as the Spaniards found it, recalled a similar ascent: ‘Climbing great and rugged mountains, so lofty that their summits were lost in the cloud and the accompanying scud … I was so done in that it was very difficult for me to reach the top and on turning to gaze down, it seemed that the ravines reached into the bowels of hell’.
From this ridge our path, now grassy and comfortable, dropped briefly before climbing to within a few hundred feet of the true summit. Rachel, once there, found it frustrating to be not quite on top. So she went scampering off to complete the ascent as though she had not just climbed 4,000 feet on an empty stomach. Perhaps she was a campesino in a previous incarnation.
Meanwhile I sat on a rock admiring the view – in this context a ludicrous phrase. Here was no ‘view’ but a whole universe of mountains, gorges, spurs, valleys, peaks, ridges – the remotest crags disappearing and reappearing through half-transparent curtains of pale grey cloud. Beneath a darkening sky the colours were subdued: olive green, cinnamon brown, black, charcoal grey, navy-blue.
The terrain immediately ahead was too irregular to be called a plateau, too wide and withdrawn from the mountains to be called a valley. Much of the land was cultivated: long, low ridges with shallow dips between. Yet if transported to Ireland those ‘low’ ridges and ‘shallow’ dips would themselves seem a respectable mountain range … Our path sloped to level stretches of thirsty pasture and withered maize fields scattered with adobe hovels too far apart to be called a pueblo. A few campesinos were driving bony cows or ponies, or small flocks of sheep, to their non-grazing. From our height they seemed to be wandering aimlessly, toy figures emphasising the vastness of their world. When it rained heavily for twenty minutes we rejoiced – and shivered, for suddenly it was very cold. We often hesitated at path junctions but when we sought directions the campesinos looked blank or uneasy or sulky and nobody answered. Amidst all this drought and privation, we were moved to hear poignant bamboo pipe melodies drifting out from several hovels at 9.45 on a cold wet morning. The Indians find much comfort in their music, which has remained almost totally ‘pure’.
The next ridge took us above Rachel’s summit and here I began to notice the altitude. Rachel, also walking, looked astonished when asked temporarily to forego the pleasure of human converse because I needed all my breath for climbing. Soon we had reached the Camino Real’s highest point between Cajabamba and Huamachuco. A low cairn surmounted by a small cross marked the spot. High peaks were all about, quite close, with sun-broken clouds straying among them. As we rested a small boy on a burro, wearing a poncho almost large enough to envelope both, abruptly arose out of the valley ahead.
The first stage of that descent plunged us into two long, narrow gorges from the depths of which we again had to climb steeply. Beyond the second we cravenly considered a brunch of emergency rations. Then, pulling ourselves together, we admitted that this was no emergency and proceeded with rumbling stomachs.
During the next, easy, stage we scanned the enormous chaos of peaks ahead, wondering how any path could possibly find a way through. Shifting clouds produced a changing pattern of subtle nameless shades; and from our height we could relish the contrast between the immobility of the mountains and the restlessness of the sky. A few families were driving laden burros from Huamachuco and when the track became vague we sought the guidance of their footprints. Passing a tiny pueblo, with no one in sight, we realised that what had seemed to be a shed was in fact a church of sorts; crosses were painted on a door that looked as though it hadn’t been opened for years. A large surrounding graveyard was enclosed by a seven-foot adobe wall oddly roofed with withered cactus. When the descent became violently steep Rachel dismounted, as another icy shower swept our mountain. We stopped for water at a clear spring; one loses an amazing amount of sweat at this altitude and our liquid intake had been spectacular all morning. As the sky cleared, we could see an elongated pueblo very far below in a narrow, tree-filled valley. This part of the descent was far more leg-taxing than the climb, though lung-resting. Our path changed to a rock-stairs for the last stage and wriggled its way past red-tiled shacks piled one above the other on a precipice. Crossing a puny river on stepping stones we stopped at the first open shop at 1.15 p.m., after six hours walking during which we had covered some fifteen miles.
It was unclear why this biggish shop had remained open; it stocked only ten eggs and a few dozen beer, the latter now beyond reach of local purses. Row upon row of empty Coca-cola and Inca-cola bottles lined the shelves, uncollected as there is no re-stocking. A kind mestizo woman with an attractive oval face and large sad eyes saw Rachel’s disappointment and insisted on giving us the remains of the family lunch: a small plate each of boiled potatoes, and maize stewed in some tasty juice – delectable, though scarcely enough to blunt the edges of our appetites. I bought two bottles of beer and four eggs but our friend would accept no payment for the meal. Her two sons, aged six and four, huddled fascinated in a corner, watching us eat. Their father migrated to Lima eight months ago, when trade virtually ceased in this pueblo, but he could find no work and now has TB. The four other pueblo shops have closed because there is so little cash in circulation. Yet Sanagoran is a sizable village with both secondary and primary schools. Its substantial adobe houses, often surrounded by large farm-yards, suggest modest prosperity; but now it has a disquieting atmosphere of life in abeyance. We left feeling sad for the locals and guilty about our still unfed Juana.
The Camino Real, here level and ten feet wide, continued through a sun-filled gorge between towering cliffs of jagged red rock or grey scrub-dotted earth. The river seemed quite full because confined to a narrow, deep bed. Stately groves of mature eucalyptus were swaying in the breeze, interspersed with plantations of silver-blue-green saplings – all quivering and shimmering. Beyond the gorge, our path rose gradually, following the curves of a series of red-brown mountains. By Andean standards this region is densely populated; its gentler slopes allow more cultivation, and enclose wider, more fertile valleys, than any we saw this morning. But we passed no pueblos and our hunger reached the ‘acute’ mark as the air became thinner and colder. I ate the four raw eggs, Rachel having declined to share them with me. Then the terrain was again uninhabited, as the Camino Real ran level along a sheer grey mountain wall of naked rock with a slit-like chasm on the left – its far-away floor a tangle of trees and shrubs. Ahead rose a bulky, forested mountain; and at last, between the trees, we glimpsed a few roofs. But another hour passed before we turned the shoulder of this 11,000 foot mountain, near its summit, and were looking down on a dense eucalyptus wood through which Huamachuco – at 9,300 feet – was just visible.
We stopped at the first hotel we came to, in a broad colonial street reeking of urine; scores of youngsters, some rather hostile and mocking, gathered to watch us unloading on the pavement. I then rushed off to fodder-hunt, leaving Rachel sitting on the hotel doorstep holding Juana. Mercifully I was in time to buy the last four kilos of the evening’s supply of green oats (no Alf here) from a friendly campesino woman who has promised to put eight kilos aside for me tomorrow morning. Juana munched ravenously while the hotel proprietor, an amiable but rather ineffectual character, sent minions to look for a safe corral. Rachel took our gear up a narrow, steep stairs and down a long corridor to our room, which has a carved balcony overlooking the street, a clean single bed, a clean bare wooden floor for me to sleep on, a tiny locker for me to write on, a feeble electric bulb for me to write by (luxury after torchlight!) and even a chair for me to sit on. Pretty good value for forty-five pence. When Rachel rejoined me it was dark and crowds of men had collected to admire Juana and beg me to sell her; the Peruvians are far more interested in our mula than in ourselves! After a cold forty minutes sitting on the pavement under frosty stars we appealed to a passing policeman for corral advice; he shrugged indifferently and walked on. “Show him the Prefect’s chit!” urged Rachel. But at that moment the mestizo draper whose shop is next to the hotel took pity on us and offered to corral Juana in his yard for two nights. We left her tethered beside a mound of withered maize stalks. Then to an eating-house for human fodder and so to bed, Rachel almost asleep on her feet as we crossed the deserted plaza.
The same. 15 September
At 12.15 a.m. two rifle shots woke me. Several more followed, and then a burst of machine-gun fire and a surge of angry shouting which ended in sudden total silence. When I enquired about the ‘incident’ today everyone was evasive. But it reminded us that while we are ecstatically ambling through the Andes the townspeople of Peru are enduring a period of considerable political tension.
By 7 we were back in the eating-house, ravenous again. We have spent much of today working on the camel principle and stuffing ourselves in preparation for lean times ahead. Our eating-house is a friendly establishment; its three dimly-lit, grubby rooms, leading into each other, have sexy trade calendars decorating the walls. Sitting in the back room, our view of the kitchen might weaken less robust appetites. Yet what comes out of that dire cubby-hole is delicious: spiced noodle soup and generous helpings of lomo saltado, a concoction of chopped goat’s meat, tomatoes, onions, potatoes and peppers all in a most appetising sauce. And for breakfast we had giant tortilla verduras – omelettes with onions, tomatoes and chips. As we ate, half-starved dogs wandered in from the street and cringed in corners, watching their chance to clean up under vacated tables.
We’ve decided that the mestizos, with some memorable exceptions, are not physically attractive; in this respect the mix hasn’t been a wild success. The Indians are far more pleasing to the eye, especially those with ‘Inca’ features who are usually, for some baffling reason, men. Sitting opposite us at lunch today was a tall man in a dashing embroidered poncho who had white skin. Peru offers every possible skin shade from almost white to darkish brown but a true white is most uncommon. Rachel observed that here, as in India, all the advertisements show pure whites.
After breakfast we sauntered through the market, where many stalls were ominously unoccupied. This seems an even less prosperous town than Cajabamba, though it’s a provincial capital and nearer Trujillo. Along the edge of the pavement rows of impassive campesino women sat behind piles of bright fruits and vegetables – huge purple onions, monster pumpkins recalling Cinderella, red and yellow bananas, orange and green oranges, sweet limes, rosy apples, plump, grooved crimson tomatoes, countless varieties of multi-coloured potatoes. If Mamma temporarily disappears, tiny tots are left in charge – incredibly on-the-ball infants who know the exact price of everything and give the correct change.
Huamachuco lacks the charm of Cajamarca and Cajabamba, though it’s another ‘undeveloped’ colonial town with spotless streets which seem to be cleaned every two hours by teams of sweepers. A hideous new cathedral dominates the fine main plaza, one of the biggest squares in Peru. We visited this blot on the townscape during a special service for a senior schoolboys’ confraternity and noticed that the entire congregation was mestizo. The interior is a nightmare of vulgarity and affectation but how many billions of soles must it have cost? While campesino children die regularly, nearby, of curable diseases … This is the sort of thing the Liberation Church of Latin America is determined to fight, to the point of schism if necessary.
This afternoon we found six tins of sardines which I hope won’t poison us; though only fifty soles each, they are rusty and thick with dust. We also bought half a kilo of noodles, which cook quickly on a camp fire, and in the morning we’ll buy two dozen fresh rolls. Yesterday taught us that however modest one’s demands it is not now possible to live off the Andean land.
We visited Juana four times today, laden on each occasion with green oats. Not the best diet – Alf is more balanced – but much appreciated. Senor Antonio’s large corral (yard) is approached through a small patio with a primitive baño in one corner where a handsome young man was vigorously soaping his torso this morning and looked comically taken aback to see us. In the yard a miniature black sow (like an Irish piglet) was quarrelling with her only child in a spacious clean sty. Elsewhere a tethered nanny-goat was enthusiastically consuming what looked like the remains of a bonfire. A small Alf-patch, visible over the wall, had died. Children swarmed, but only two of them were Antonio’s. During the afternoon his wife – thin, haggard, a trifle obsequious – invited us into the parlour and gave us her gynaecological life-story. Two boys aged nineteen and twenty are now at university in Trujillo. The next two babies were stillborn, the fifth died in infancy. Then there were four miscarriages before the two youngest arrived: now aged seven and nine but about half Rachel’s size. Rachel lives in a state of constant astonishment at finding herself already taller than so many adult campesinos; and it seems the growth genes – if there are such things! – of the Indians have won through and affected the average mestizo stature.
This parlour was a sad room: long, high-ceilinged, mud-floored, furnished only by eight tin and plastic camp-chairs ranged along one wall, a sewing machine in a corner and a few bits of ‘best china’ on a rough wooden shelf. Señora Antonio crochets woollen saddle-covers and tried to sell me one for 1,500 soles. When I looked at it with insincere admiration and murmured “Too much!” she at once dropped to 1,000 soles. “You must buy it to help this family!” Rachel whispered vehemently – “Think of all they’ve done to help Juana!” And I didn’t resent this rip-off; after all, Senor Antonio is determined to accept no corral payment. The thick warm blanket, of black, red and blue squares, will add a touch of luxury to our equipage and may ease Rachel’s seat during long weeks in the saddle. (Though actually she’s been out of it, so far, as much as in it.)
Long before the Incas arrived Huamachuco was the administrative centre for one of the larger Andean tribes, some of whom were quite advanced. The Incas wished however to seem the sole creators of all worthwhile culture, so their propagandists manipulated oral history to obliterate all traces of the regional cultures which they had used as ‘foundation stones’. Because the Andean peoples were without writing that propaganda still works. At the time of the Conquest, Huamachuco and its surrounding province seem to have been a lot better off than they are now. Pedro de Cieza de Leon reported: ‘Huamachuco was in ancient times thickly settled. There used to be great lords in this province who were highly respected by the Incas. With the past disturbances and wars, many of the people of this province have disappeared. Its climate is good, cool rather than warm, and it produces abundant food and other things needful for human life. Before the Spaniards entered this kingdom, there were in the lands of Huamachuco many flocks of llamas, and in the highlands and unsettled regions a still greater number of wild flocks, called guanacos and vicuñas … In the valleys of the plains the natives plant cotton and make their clothing of it, so they lack for nothing … But the wars the Spaniards waged against one another were like a plague for the Indians and the flocks’.
Pizarro and his men rested for four days at Huamachuco where they debated which route to follow to Cuzco – for here, unusually, there was (and still is) a choice. As John Hemming has explained: ‘They decided not to take the main highway through the Conchucos to the east of the Cordillera Blanca because of its many hills. They descended instead into the deep valley of Huaylas …’ We have decided otherwise, because today the Huaylas route leads eventually to an embryonic tourist area. Later, beyond Huanuco, we may have to tolerate motor-roads of a sort – ‘But not yet, oh God!’
Today we wrote many letters which seem unlikely to arrive at their destinations. The Post Office is a dusty, dingy barracks where there were no other customers and the startled clerk – elderly and taciturn – took eighteen minutes to adjust his scales and calculate the rates to Ireland, of which he had never previously heard.
This evening I stood myself a non-treat of a bottle of Peruvian non-wine – the most nauseating grape-derived potation I’ve ever tasted anywhere. “What better could you expect for ninety pence?” said Rachel.