Chavin de Huantar. 25 October
By noon a kindly crowd, anxious to provide advice and moral support, had gathered outside Foro’s herreria (blacksmith’s shop). The neighbouring baker, by now an old friend of ours, helped me to hold Juana’s head. Foro and his amigo the cloth-merchant – Sinchi, who had closed shop for the occasion – held her legs. During hind feet shoeing, the relevant leg was tied to a rope that had already been firmly knotted to her tail: an ingenious kick-inhibiting device. She behaved well on the whole, considering how bewildering and alarming this experience must have been. Once she seriously attempted to kick out all round and escape, but when I fiercely berated her she immediately went quiet. The spectators were much amused to find that she has learned English. (Did they but know it, most of the words employed were pure Anglo-Saxon.) We were concerned to see her wincing as the nails entered the injured hoof but Foro thought this of no significance. That foot is naturally more sensitive than the others and will remain so for some time. His task completed, he fetched a small bowl of chicha and with the fingers of his right hand sprinkled Juana thoroughly – a ch’ura, to call upon her the blessing of Pachamama (Mother Earth, who is everybody’s and everything’s mother).
We are rejoicing to see our mula again looking so bonito; today she was described by an onlooker as ‘el mas bonito’ – the prettiest mule he’d ever seen. She has regained most of her lost weight and shines like a chestnut after Rachel’s twice-daily grooming. But of course she looked puzzled and miserable as she walked gingerly away from the herreria in her first set of shoes, not sure why the ground suddenly felt so odd …
The shoeing team then celebrated its notable achievement in the cloth-shop; Sinchi also sells cerveza. He climbed a tremulous ladder and handed the dust-laden bottles down from a high shelf above the bales. “Now people have no money for beer”, commented Foro. “Or for cloth”, added Sinchi sombrely. We sat on low wooden stools and shared a glass, as is the custom. I, being the hostess, filled it and handed it to Foro, the guest of honour, who poured several drops onto the floor – because Pachamama has to be served first – then quickly emptied the glass, shook out the froth and returned it to me to be refilled for my other guests. They also gave Pachamama her t’inka offering before drinking, as did I when my turn came. Nobody would accept a second glass. Outside fiesta time, the average hard-working campesino drinks only moderately, if at all. In our fortnight here we’ve seen no more than three drunks and all were notorious local cases, the chicha equivalent of winos.
We’re looking forward to being back on the trail tomorrow, yet hating the thought of leaving Chavin where we’ve been made to feel like honorary citizens. Today many people hurried towards us to say “Adios!” and urge us to return soon – I wish we could! Rachel looks quite melancholy this evening; she is going to miss the many contemporary friends with whom she played football and hide-and-seek while I went on short treks through the nearby mountains. Apart from the other benefits of our stay here, it’s done us both good to be away from mother/daughter for several hours each day.
Camp on wet Ledge of High Mountain. 26 October
Juana stepped out smartly today, already adjusted to her new footwear, and I was ecstatic in a perfectly-fitting pair of secondhand Peruvian army boots.
The path to La Union presumably runs slightly south of east across this 14,000 foot Cerro de Vincos puna. I say ‘presumably’ because the map shows no path of any kind. However, we know by now that it tends not to be explicit in these areas and many of our Chavin friends assured us that a little-used trail does exist.
At the head of the Chavin valley we turned east into a ravine where curiously gnarled trees grew on cliff-faces between a variety of shrubs laden with blue, yellow or pink blossoms. Here we had the rare good fortune to see, right beside the path, a magnificent twenty-foot Puya raimondi in full bloom. This spectacular plant, found only in a few areas of Peru and Bolivia and now protected, is the tallest flower spike in the world and reputedly lives for a century, flowering but once before it dies. We paused, wonderingly, to examine it. The lower half resembles a giant green porcupine in a temper, and from amidst the yard-long, rapier-sharp leaves rises a thick ten-foot stalk covered with thousands and thousands of dainty yellow flowers – looking rather as though they had been stuck on, like Christmas decorations. According to the Bradts: ‘This is the oldest genus of the Bromeliad family, a huge group containing over 1,600 species. Pineapples and Spanish moss are both Bromeliaceae … An estimated 8,000 blossoms grow on one stalk and attract the hummingbirds which probably play an important part in the plant’s pollination. Other birds nest among the spiky leaves and some stab themselves to death on their doorstep’.
Higher still, on the edge of the puna, we saw several rima-rima plants with large bushy leaves and fragile bright red flowers – not unlike dog-roses, but bigger.
The sun shone warm this morning but by noon dark clouds were crouching coldly on the mountains above as we traversed a massive rock-wall with a sheer drop into a tree-filled canyon. Already this tricky path had been causing us some apprehension, because of our new-shod Juana, and when the rain started I found my fists clenching with tension. On the more or less level puna the path soon became a mud-rink and we all found it hard to remain upright. Here for the first time Juana slipped, completely lost control, went over on her side and for a moment lay floundering. As we helped her to her feet Rachel stated the obvious: “Lucky this didn’t happen on the way up!”
By 2.30 it was snowing – not heavily, but enough to give the puna a new stern beauty as those vast bleak widths glimmered strangely beneath a pewter sky. It was intensely cold and soon the snow had turned to sleet-cum-hail-cum-rain. We marched on miserably, unable to see far, while the wind whined steadily through the stiff ichu grass. Everywhere the ground was impossibly water-logged – and anyway it would have been lunatic to unpack (unless forced to by darkness) in such dire weather. I hoped desperately that we might come upon a tambo shack, but humanity has made no mark on these desolate heights. Then at last our path rose still higher, taking us onto the shoulder of a cloud-wrapped mountain where we found a wide ledge, with abundant grazing. As the light faded the sleet eased off and the wind dropped; so by working as quickly as numbed fingers permitted, and using unwonted ingenuity, we contrived to keep our night-gear dry. We then huddled close in the tent, thawing each other while eating an unhelpful supper of bread buns, frankfurters that had frozen in their tin and water that was already iced. “I think if we ever come back to the Andes we should bring a stove”, said Rachel.
Casa on Puna. 27 October
What an awakening! There is always some lavish compensation for the incidental inconveniences of Andean travel. The temperature rose during the night and when I crawled out of the tent at 5.45 the clouds were dispersing. Turning towards Juana I saw, seemingly on our own level, the southernmost peaks and ridges of the Cordillera Blanca – mighty silver phantoms, floating in an ocean of darkness. Pumpuyac, Quilcayhuanca, Barcapalca, Jangya-Cocha … They sound as mysterious as they looked this morning, in that pale pre-dawn light – their bases invisible, the muted radiance of their summits a vision to be remembered forever.
We moved off at 7.30, in brilliant sunshine. Across a narrow boggy valley our path could be seen climbing again, to run level for a few miles along the flank of a flat-topped ridge. Beyond that we were overlooking a broad green valley, very far below, with a solitary stone hovel on its level floor.
Around the next corner, we began a gradual descent into an extension of this leg-of-a-dog valley. Half-a-dozen thatched cabins were scattered towards the far end, which seemed to be completely enclosed by an impenetrable semi-circle of fierce rock-peaks. We could see no path going in any direction, apart from trails connecting the dwellings. But doubtless the inhabitants – from here like crawling insects on a billiard table – would tell us of any possible exit.
Not so, however. A young Indian woman in a flame-red skirt – milking a cow near one of the hovels – stared at us, wide-eyed and speechless, with evident fear. (“No wonder!” said Rachel. “Up here we must seem like something off Mars!”) Two men took refuge in their corrals when we turned towards them and as we don’t know a syllable of Quechua we couldn’t make reassuring noises. So we wandered hesitantly on, soon coming to a swift stream, no more than a foot deep, which inexplicably brought out the worst in Juana. It took us fifteen minutes to persuade her to cross and she continued in a foul mood for the rest of the day.
Now the rock peaks were close, beyond expanses of ichu grass interspersed with treacherous marshy patches and stretches of odd pseudo-bog. This weird phenomenon is peculiar to the high puna; it has a lethal appearance but is safe to walk on though it sounds hollow underfoot (very disconcerting!) and is criss-crossed by icy rivulets. It looks like a discreetly patterned carpet, being almost completely covered by tiny round green stemless plants, of a fascinating design.
Where the ground began to rise towards the rock barrier we met a many-skirted spinning woman wearing a bowler hat and driving a few score sheep out to pasture. Mercifully she proved less fearful than her neighbours; though she didn’t actually stop to address us, and spoke only Quechua, she clearly conveyed that we were on the wrong path. I rather desperately repeated “La Union?” – shouting after her, as she hastened away from us. She paused, half-turned and pointed to a black mass of serrated rock, towering against a royal blue sky on the far side of the valley. “I don’t believe it!” said Rachel. “Unless there’s some path going around instead of over?”
We climbed diagonally to the crest of a steep ridge that here ran across the valley like a gigantic embankment – and then we were transfixed. Below us lay a ‘secret’ lake, some four miles by two, so closely in the embrace of its surrounding crags – streaked silver and charcoal grey – that even from this morning’s highest point it had remained invisible. The unexpectedness of this still splendour, wondrously combining different shades of green – jade green, bottle-green, emerald green, lime green – gave me a momentary dreamlike feeling. I stood motionless and bemused, as though this beautiful illusion must fade before I could move. Why do these remote, high lakes so powerfully affect one? Apart from their visual beauty, they have an extraordinary aura which is quite overwhelming.
“Now I can see a track!” said Rachel, indicating a faint path winding around the shore and disappearing at the base of that ferocious jumble of rock-peaks. At noon we came to a few clumps of ichu grass and stopped for snacks all round. Then the sky abruptly clouded over, increasing the drama of the lake’s colouring. As we continued the clouds let go and that rain contained slender splinters of ice, instead of hail-stones.
From the base of the pass we could see, far below on the wide shore, an extraordinary geological phenomenon: a dozen oblong grey-brown boulders, of identical size and shape, sprawled like stranded whales magnified ten times.
Looking upwards, we felt renewed scepticism. Even by the standards to which we have become accustomed, it seemed absurd to expect any path to cross that wall. We paused to adjust the load and Rachel said: “This is like something out of a horror film”. I could see what she meant, though in a mad masochistic way I was still enjoying the incomparable splendour all around us. But now it was a merciless and menacing splendour. The lake – so still when first we saw it – had been roused from its silken slumber and was half-obscured by speeding sheets of sleet, moving across the white-flecked surface as though someone were hastily drawing an endless succession of curtains. And through the eerie noon twilight jagged peaks loomed sinister, like the turrets of some Bad Fairy’s palace.
It was unfortunate that our toughest rock-climb came so soon after Juana’s first shoeing. There was no one obvious path up; it seems that the few who use this pass have varying views about the least suicidal route. Juana became more and more bolshie as the path did likewise. But no: that’s unfair. Sometimes she was right, prudently to refuse stretches of smooth rock that were feasible for me but formed, in her estimation, a death-trap. Three times we were forced to descend hundreds of feet and start again in our quest for a mulish way over a particularly difficult bit. These alternative routes were atrociously dangerous in my view: of iced mud and preternaturally steep. But Juana much preferred them to the rock-slabs. Meanwhile Rachel had sensibly abandoned us and was finding her own way up by a route that from my distance looked more suited to an ibex than a biped. It certainly wouldn’t have done for a mule – or an ageing Mamma.
When we reached the 16,000 foot pass my heart was hammering, my leg-muscles were throbbing and my lungs felt sore. Here the wind was like an icicle-tipped scourge and the sleet at once froze on my sodden husky-suit. (I had given up trying to use my space-blanket as a rain-cape, an impractical exercise when one is struggling up a precipice in a gale with a refractory mule.) Rachel was awaiting us, studying a chorten-like cairn that must have been in the making centuries before the Spaniards came. We paid our tribute to the local aukis, aware that we might soon be needing their assistance, and then considered the intimidating scene ahead. We were looking down a long, wide valley – though we couldn’t then know how long it was because clouds restricted the view. Like many major Andean valleys, this had something of the Russian doll about it. On the pass, one was so awed by the immensity of the panorama that one couldn’t take in the confusing detail of the valley floor, where mini-valleys between mini-mountains contained still smaller hills and hollows. The head of this valley was some 3,000 feet directly below us. Slightly to the left, as we peered down through the gloom, lay a perfectly circular, jet-black lake from which sprang a full-grown river – no puling infant stream, but a fiercely foaming adult torrent that raged away down the valley, disappearing into the mist. (This river is vaguely suggested, but unnamed, on our map.)
From the cairn, our path ran level along the narrow summit with low-seeming cliffs on our right, which in fact constitute the highest peak for many miles around. Then, where the mountainside became not quite vertical, we plunged down. This descent seemed interminable. Soon the zigzagging path became a racing stream and we were wading through icy water, slipping repeatedly on large, round stones. Here one had to keep one’s eyes on the ground and we almost collided with a superb de Paso carrying a mestizo wearing an incongruous straw sombrero. An Indian was following a little way behind, having some trouble driving six laden donkeys none of whom seemed to feel that their journey was really necessary. When one has become attuned to total desolation, it is startling rather than reassuring suddenly to meet other travellers. We crowded perilously onto a ledge, to allow this improbable cavalcade to pass, and in response to my plea for enlightenment the mestizo curtly informed us that there is no set path down the valley: one simply seeks the most appropriate route for one’s own purpose. I would have liked to know what happened next, beyond this valley, but our informant was not disposed to waste time on gringoes who plainly were loco. (Admittedly the weather was not conducive to leisurely chit-chat.) Rachel was scandalised to see a healthy young man riding up such a gradient. “Serve him right if he’s thrown over a cliff!” she muttered furiously, with which unchristian sentiment I had to agree.
Our stream/path ended abruptly where the stream became a waterfall cascading down a precipice. We stopped to think. Here our ‘pass mountain’ merged into the long ridge that formed one side of the valley. It would have been foolish to descend to the valley floor, where we couldn’t see what ravines, bogs, cliffs, marshes or impassable torrents might lie around the next corner. By ‘walking high’ we could more or less retain control of our destiny. So we stumbled miserably on, through dense brown thigh-high ichu grass which proved that – most unusually – no animals are pastured hereabouts.
Then the load slipped – no surprise, after such a descent. We turned our backs to the sleet while re-loading with numb fingers, on a slope so steep that our performance must have looked like a corny circus act. Juana registered her protest against the whole enterprise by moving at the least opportune moments, while I fought to tighten the girth, adjust the crupper, heave the load into place and securely tie the numerous essential knots. Poor Rachel did her best but is too small fully to control an exasperated mule on such a gradient; yet I could not possibly have managed without her assistance.
As we soldiered on the low dark sky, above the high dark mountain-walls, made it seem that we were in some fearful tunnel which would never have a light at the end. This is the sort of experience made tolerable only by ‘switching off’ one’s sensitivity to the physical – cold, wetness, hunger, exhaustion – and letting one’s mind go blank. Rachel asked this evening why we felt so tired when the actual distances and altitudes involved were not exceptional: we have often walked for ten hours and ended the day fresh. I can only suppose, in my unscientific way, that the extreme cold, and being wet through, required us to expend an abnormal amount of energy on that internal heat generation necessary for survival.
Gradually the valley floor became more comprehensible and at last we saw a foot-bridge not far below. Mercifully Juana crossed this meekly – I don’t think I could have taken another battle – and then we were on a distinct path which continued down the wide, turf-grassy valley floor. Here Rachel mounted and I again wrapped up in my space-blanket. Soon we could see our valley joining another, to form one of those spectacular T-junctions that give aerial photographs of the Andes such a crazed appearance.
This new valley had minute fields on the lower slopes. Eagerly we looked for a casa, having long since decided to crave shelter in the first available shack. But none was visible. Which way to turn? Here our path was one of many and in the vastness of this landscape the river had vanished. As we hesitated, a faint shout came from high on the mountain to our right, where a figure in a poncho was signalling to us to turn left. Waving our thanks, we struggled on. My numbed feet caused me to trip repeatedly and I had to hang onto Juana for support; she seemed aware that the situation had become pretty desperate and was back on the path of virtue. It was now 5.40 and the wind had dropped. Seen through a veil of pale grey rain-sleet, the slender, pointed rock-peaks towering close on both sides were like the background to some Gothic novel. Where the valley curved we rejoined the river unexpectedly and saw two square hovels not far ahead. Wisps of pungent dung-smoke rose from tiny, circular, igloo-type kitchen huts (half stone, half thatch), standing thirty yards or so from the dwellings. As we approached the first hovel a pack of five large snarling curs flew at us with bared teeth, which not infrequent occurrence doesn’t bother us too much. Yet neither does it encourage casual callers and we were proceeding discreetly to the next hovel when the leader of the pack leaped on me and tore the end of my space-blanket. It was that sort of afternoon …
A rosy-cheeked small boy, clutching a pet lamb, observed our approach and ran terrified to his mother in the kitchen. She emerged, looking bewildered; a dumpy Indian woman, not much taller than Rachel, she speaks only Quechua. But the situation required no words. It must have been at once apparent that we were in extremis and no sort of threat to anybody. She pointed to the dwelling’s deep verandah – virtually a three-walled room, thickly carpeted with puna grass – then turned back to her kitchen. Rachel collapsed in a corner, on a heap of cured fleeces, while I tried to unload. I was fumbling ineffectually, in a semi-coma of exhaustion and numbness, when husband arrived – a dark-skinned Inca-type who sought no explanation for this extraordinary invasion of his home but briskly unloaded, put our gear beside us and led Juana away to the corral. “Will she get anything to eat?” worried Rachel, through chattering teeth. I nodded emphatically, too cold to speak. No campesino would leave a mule fodderless at the end of a working day.
Rachel was too far gone to get out of her wet clothes. Somehow I unzipped a Diana-bag and helped her to change. Meanwhile several kids – human and animal, the latter in the arms of the former – had collected to stare. And our host was sitting on sheep-skins in the opposite corner, still saying nothing but looking kind. By now it was dark, intensely cold and steadily sleeting; the edge of the grass carpet merged into a morass of mud. While Rachel held the torch I slowly and painfully stripped to the skin, an astonishingly difficult task when every garment is sodden and one’s hands are numb. Rachel – now thawing – had to undo my bootlaces and pull off my boots. At last I stood naked but for my briefs in the searing cold; yet once free of wet clothes I began to feel warmer. (Inhibitions about naked breasts are unnecessary hereabouts: and even if they were necessary I wouldn’t have had them this evening.) Wife then called the family to supper and a few moments later husband returned with a heaped plate of boiled potatoes and two plates of watery soup. We fell on the hot food and I was aware of eating like an animal – devouring potatoes in their earthy jackets – yet the last few mouthfuls of soup were cold. I cannot recall ever, anywhere, feeling so frantic a need for food. By half-thawing me the meal made it easier to dress and I had just pulled on my Husky bootees when the family, having finished supper, assembled in the drawing-room, as it were. I wonder why? Although fuel is so scarce here, the kitchen must be warmer than the verandah. Elsewhere one might deduce curiosity, but not among the campesinos. Nobody tried to speak to us, or took any interest in our possessions. Also, why not add an outer stone wall to this verandah, thus making it into a small room? All building materials could be collected nearby. And why don’t the family sleep in the inner room instead of in the open air at 12,500 feet (approx.) with blizzards blowing in their faces? Again, why were we not invited into the warm kitchen on arrival? Was there simply no room for us? Or is there some ancient taboo against this?
Although our host and hostess look so young they have seven children, from about twelve to zero, and father now directed the eldest (a pretty, cheerful, high-spirited girl) to bring us a saucepan of boiling water. We each gulped three mugs of coffee, which thawed us completely. I then hung our wet garments beside the few family rags, on sticks protruding from under the thatch, and stacked our gear in the corner. Rachel was much diverted by a pet lamb and pet kid, both spoiled rotten, who went bounding cheekily over everything and everyone until put to bed in the inner room with the three older children, whom we had ousted from the verandah. The room had to be tidied for them by the light of our torch; it contains a loom, stacks of sheep-skins and spun wool, mounds of potatoes and scores of empty Inca Cola bottles. Everybody sleeps on layers of sheep-skins beneath piles of old clothes and tattered blankets. Our host spread new sheep-skins beneath our flea-bags; then, obviously considering these bags absurdly inadequate, he fetched a newly-woven blanket – brown and white and silky soft like thistledown – and spread it over us. As a result, I have written this in an unbelievable glow of heat – unbelievable when one considers that we are lying in the open air in a below-freezing temperature. The human body is a marvellous bit of machinery; a few hours ago I was literally speechless with exhaustion, now I feel too lively after all that coffee.
By 7.30 the whole family was abed and the mountain silence broken only by the wailing of the baby, whose eldest sister had held him out in the sleet, bare from the waist down, and made appropriately encouraging noises, before handing him to his mother for the night. All these children are good-looking, bright-eyed, clear-skinned – a healthy brood, apart from a not incomprehensible communal cold in the head. They are naturally well-mannered and despite the trauma of our appearing out of the dusk they overcame their shyness quite quickly and by bedtime were beginning tentatively to befriend us. Before turning in, there was some lively conversation and argument between parents and children and one got the impression of a happy, affectionate family. But what will all these children do when grown up? Can this and the neighbouring valleys support an increasing population? And what are the prospects for illiterate youngsters forced to migrate to the coastal cities?
This has been one of the oddest evenings of my life. Even in the remotest hamlets of the Karakoram or Simien mountains there has been nothing quite like it –never such an absence of attempted verbal communication, combined with a most touching solicitude for our welfare. Probably we are this valley’s first gringo trekkers. Yet our host and hostess have made not the slightest effort to solve the mystery that is us.
La Union. 28 October
In the small hours I awoke and for an instant imagined that I was staying with some sybaritic friend and had forgotten to switch off my electric blanket. One couldn’t sleep indoors on these sheepskins. I looked out to see a dazzle of frosty stars in a cloudless sky. I wanted to stay awake to enjoy the blissful warmth but soon I was again asleep, having methodically scratched numerous flea-bites, from ankles to chin. When I woke next, at 5.20, the family was rising in that distinctive grey-blue light of pre-dawn in the high Andes. At once the five older children – all clad in scanty rags – set about their morning chores. The oldest girl, baby brother on back, hurried off with a small wooden pail (recalling a Little Grey Rabbit illustration) to milk two goats. She was followed by the boy who had first seen us, carrying his beloved kid from the inner room to its mother, for breakfast rations. Other children searched for eggs, fetched water from the river, fed the cuys, released a score of sheep from the corral behind the dwelling – and gave Juana a bucket of chopped barley straw. Then father was to be seen on the far side of the river, galloping hard on a sturdy pony towards a cattle corral at the base of the opposite mountain. Meanwhile mother was lighting the breakfast fire, but not wishing to be more of a burden than necessary we quickly dressed and loaded up.
I quailed at the thought of putting on clothes that had frozen solid. “You don’t enjoy all of travelling, do you?” asked Rachel maliciously, watching me hammering the ice off my jeans before struggling into them. I maintained a dignified silence. Moments after putting on my boots my feet were numb again. But the sky was cloudless – soon we’d have Inti to the rescue.
We were off by 6.30. Our host, just back, would accept no money so I recklessly gave him three tins of sardines, trusting we could replace them in La Union. (I was wrong.) He showed us a thickly iced pathlet down a steep slope to river-level. I then endured the first of my nine fordings of that river; as my jeans, boots and socks couldn’t have been wetter there was no point in removing them. Here the rio was some ten yards wide, thigh-deep, very fast and not warm. Juana, who had gone spare yesterday about a six-inch rivulet, splashed merrily across as though dawn bathes in melted snow were her favourite hobby. As the sun rose above grey crags Rachel glanced back the way we came yesterday and gasped – “Look!” I looked, to see ‘our’ pass, and the peaks around, catching the first horizontal rays on a glittering tiara of new snow. We wouldn’t have made it across today.
Briefly we walked through a world all sparkling – the frosted valley floor brilliant as though diamond-strewn, the icicles depending from nearly cliffs coruscating like Waterford chandeliers, the new-crowned peaks ahead flashing like silver beacons. But already the near-equatorial sun was warm and within minutes our feet were sloshing instead of crunching.
We passed one more hovel, where grazing cuys scuttled away from us and a turkey-cock angrily pursued us; Andean turkey-cocks should be listed as Animals Dangerous to Man. Before climbing out of that valley we had to ford the river seven times, for topographical reasons with which I won’t detain myself. Then our path rose steeply along a precipitous mountain of bare earth through which jagged rocks protruded at the most awkward corners. Directly below, in a narrow canyon, the river roared and foamed between boulders. Here the load caught on a rock and slipped to the river side, giving me my worst fright of this whole trek; for an instant it seemed Juana must go into the canyon. I yelled to Rachel to drop the leading-rope and stand still. Then, talking reassuringly to Juana, I crept onto the slope above her, prepared if necessary to release the load and lose the lot. (My diary I always carry on me; everything else was, in the circumstances, expendable.) But then Juana took charge. Slowly she moved forward, and Rachel sensibly hurried ahead leaving her to work out her own salvation. I slid onto the path – deprived of Juana’s support, there was nothing to hold me on that impossible slope – and watched in sickening suspense as the load slipped further beneath her belly. Calmly she continued for another ten or twelve yards, until she reached a lay-by of sorts with just enough room for me beside her. And there she stood still, waiting for the mess to be sorted out.
The fact that our near-disaster was entirely my own fault didn’t help during the reaction phase. When loading this morning my hands were too numb for efficiency, and then I stupidly neglected to check the girth before beginning that climb. One can’t afford ever to be stupid on these paths. As usual, I took it out on Rachel, who had in fact shown admirable coolness and commonsense.
It was now 9 a.m. and we decided on a drying session before re-loading, lest the sun might soon vanish. By the time everything had been spread out the mountainside looked like an unsavoury second-hand clothes stall. We then sat on the edge of the canyon (indecently exposed) and enjoyed our breakfast of sleet-soaked buns while Inti did his work. Happily this is not a popular thoroughfare; an innocent campesino suddenly coming upon two naked females poised on a cliff-edge amidst a patchwork of steaming garments might well have lost his balance and ended up in the rio.
Within an hour everything was dry, except our boots, and soon we were at the foot of this mountain where we had to ford the rio yet again. Not long after, a bewildering sound seemed to come from beneath our feet: a booming, crashing roar. And suddenly we realised that the river had disappeared – just like that. Its gravelly bed was still there, full of gigantic smooth boulders but bone dry. Some recent earthquake chasm (1970?) was doubtless responsible for this conjuring trick.
Now began a classic rock-stairs descent off the puna. All the way that freakish river-bed accompanied us and at intervals we heard the boom of the hidden water. About half-way down the rio reappeared, as abruptly as it had vanished – gushing from beneath the mountain to return to its bed. It then created a series of superb waterfalls, so close to the path that we were spray-drenched and so noisy that conversation became impossible. Where we turned onto the steep flank of a grassy mountain our rio also swung right and calmed down to wind through a broad, placid, fertile valley. These level paths are usually restful, but recent rainstorms had reduced this one to greasy red mud and provoked several mildly hazardous landslips.
In the next valley our rio joined a wider stream (not even suggested on the map). Gazing down at this confluence, we remembered the black lake below the pass and felt vaguely sentimental; one doesn’t often accompany a river from birth to death. And nine fordings create a ‘special relationship’. Our path descended to the valley floor about half-a-mile upstream from the confluence, but no bridge was visible. “It’ll be fun fording that!” exclaimed Rachel gleefully. I looked at the swirling brown torrent, some forty yards wide, and had my doubts. There wasn’t even an obvious ford and our path faded away on the valley floor. But then, as we were passing the only hovel in sight, barking dogs brought a young man (Quechua only) to the door and he indicated the shallowest stretch. I undressed before wading in, hanging onto the bridle with one hand and testing the way ahead with my palo. “This is terrific fun!” enthused Rachel, from the dryness and security of the saddle, when we were half-way across. By then the water was above Juana’s belly and coping with the current wasn’t easy. “Won’t be such fun if we’re all swept down to the Amazon”, I retorted sourly. But Juana was at her best today and soon we were safely on a pseudo carretera, all grass-grown and traffic-free. This took us through a serpentine valley of green bogland, grey boulders blotched with red-gold lichen, and tall rustling eucalyptus trees grouped around a few red-tiled dwellings. Then we discovered the reason for this carretera’s ‘pseudoness’. A bridge had collapsed, leaving only four slim tree-trunks in situ with wide spaces between them through which the rio could be seen racing rowdily. Juana sensibly refused to have anything to do with this calamity and we found a ford where the river was very nearly a raging torrent. It was much wider than at the previous ford and only thigh-deep; but the current was so much stronger that I had to fight hard to remain upright and even Juana wavered in her course, possibly because I was hanging on so dependently to her neck.
In the next gorge it seemed that Nature had gone mad. On both sides colossal cliffs exhibited the most bizarre designs – so dramatically sculpted by erosion and ravaged by earthquakes that an outbreak of superlatives is certainly justified here. Except that I can’t think which superlatives to apply to that geological fantasia.
Beyond another broken bridge we heard something repellent: the distant grinding and growling of an internal combustion engine. “A real motor-road!” diagnosed Rachel. And so it proved. Around the next corner our track joined a rough, stony earth-road and during the rest of the afternoon we were subjected to the noise of three trucks. We are now on an off-shoot of the Lima-Pucallpa highway (completed in 1945) which links the Tingo Maria region of the montana with the Big Wide World. Tingo Maria began as an experimental agricultural station, set up on the Middle Huallaga in 1938 with American help. It has since grown to a colony of some 30,000 settlers of mixed origins and (we’re told) few morals. The surrounding montana produces bananas, sugar cane, tea, coffee, rubber, cocoa – and coca. Tingo Maria’s existence, in a region previosly unpopulated and inaccessible, is frequently quoted by Belaunde and his supporters to justify a policy of more coast-to-jungle roads, despite the unique problems and enormous costs associated with road-building in the Andes.
Our pukkah (relatively) carretera took us into a long cultivated valley where I began to worry about Juana’s supper; no Alf or oats could be seen among the maize and potatoes. Nor was there any grazing, so we decided to seek a hotel and fodder in La Union. By 4.50, when the rain began, we were overlooking this grotty little town where gringoes are not warmly welcomed …
At the Hotel Dos de Maio a dishevelled, weaselly proprietor watched me unloading Juana in the shelter of the patio eaves and then led us to the corral. Leaving Rachel in our cramped room (no window, no candle, damp sheets), I set off into the twilit downpour in search of fodder. A sly-looking hotel-servant volunteered to accompany me as guide and an hour later we returned with four kilos of green oats purchased from four vendors, none of whom will sell me more in the morning. Rachel remarked that I looked gloomy; I always get uptight when Juana is underfed. From her point of view the puna, where she can graze all night, is far preferable to these cultivated valleys.
Tingo Chico. 29 October
The direct route from La Union to Huanuco is via Rondos, but a recent major landslide has blocked this track. So today was spent on the road, which adds twenty-five miles to the journey as it switchbacks through a vast tangle of arid mountains. We arrived in the scruffy but friendly hill-top pueblo of Pachas at 11, having covered exactly ten miles. (This carretera flaunts kilometre stones!) Here we unsuccessfully sought fodder and bought a waterproof poncho for Rachel. (Heavy black mackintosh, lined with thick cotton: 2,400 soles. Being an adult garment, this comes to just above her ankles.)
Juana-worry marred today’s trek. During the afternoon we stopped for an hour’s grazing on a rare roadside patch of grass. Then came a long descent into the hot, dusty profundity of the Maranon gorge; this evening we are at 6,100 feet, our lowest point since leaving the coast. Black clouds were assembling around the nearby desiccated mountains as we crossed this senior tributary of the Amazon (some claim that the Maranon is the young Amazon), which here is close to its source, yet wide, deep and swift. A with-it suspension bridge, built in 1956, took our road onto the main Lima-Pucallpa highway – and also onto the ‘main street’ of this sleazy newish settlement (pop. approx. 400). Once Tingo Chico hoped to become an important river port; now it has an air of irremediable failure and seems to be inhabited chiefly by drunks, prostitutes and thin dogs. However, our anxious eyes had discerned from afar an Alf field on the slope behind the houses. We asked two bedraggled mestizo women – sitting on a doorstep, half-heartedly combatting flies – if/how/where we could buy fodder; but they only stared at us blankly before retreating into their casa and banging the door.
Then a startling figure entered our lives, a slim young woman who against this background looked like a Vogue advertisement. She came tripping towards us and said in English, “I’m Katie – I work in Lima Airport as interpreter. You come from New York? Soon it is raining. You stay tonight in my house and tell me about New York!” I broke it gently to her that in fact we come from Lismore, which has more in common with Tingo Chico than with New York. But still she wanted us to stay – and here we are.
When Juana had been corralled and fed, a platoon of children helped us to carry our gear to a huge, windowless warehouse with a concrete floor. Three single beds stood against one end wall, obscured by a ceiling-high muddle of sacks, boxes, bales, crates and old clothes. All was dirt and disorder and squeaking cuys and unfragrant odours. The eldest girl assured us that by bed-time space would have been cleared on the floor for our flea-bags. Then she locked the room and handed me the key, a sad sign that on this highway we are within the ambience of urban ‘civilisation’.
I now had but a single thought: cerveza. Hastening to the nearest shebeen, only yards from our apartment, we found that it belongs to Katie’s sister, Isabel, the wife of a truck driver and at twenty nine the mother of nine children under twelve. Both sisters were sitting at the counter chain-smoking and intently playing cards with two policemen returning on leave from Tingo Maria. They look alike: small-boned and large-eyed, with elaborately made-up triangular faces framed in crudely-permed raven-black hair. Isabel, however, seems interested only in male customers: it was Katie who laid down her hand of cards for long enough to pour me a beer. She arrived here yesterday to visit her mother, one of two teachers at the local (unequipped) school which has 120 pupils, many of whom walk five hours a day in pursuit of learning.
By now the evening downpour had started but this didn’t deter Rachel from joining in an energetic ball-game with Isabel’s platoon. Watching her skidding around on the muddy ‘highway’, it was hard to believe that she had just completed an eighteen-mile walk in enervating heat. (We agreed before leaving Chavin that henceforth Juana will be ridden only in the most dire emergencies.)
Later, Katie and I talked with the policemen, who were posted to Tingo Maria because they speak rudimentary English – supposedly an advantage when dealing with drug traffickers. As Peru’s cocaine trade is now worth over $500 million a year (rivalling copper and oil as a dollar-earner), I’m sceptical about the official will to check it. (Several high-ranking army officers, and a few high-ranking ecclesiastics, are widely believed to be among the more professional traffickers.) According to one policeman, an estimated 900,000 of Peru’s seventeen million citizens are directly involved in this trade. Many coca-growing peasants now bring their crop to Tingo Maria (recently nick-named ‘Snow City’) and are paid $3.50 a pound for sound leaves, to be refined into pure cocaine which fetches $2,800 an ounce in the US. Apparently the renowned prosperity of Tingo Maria is chiefly based on coca money, rather than on all those other wholesome crops we hear so much about.
Katie invited me to cook supper in their kitchen. This was another windowless cavern, beside the bedroom – and in an even worse state of filthy disorder, with cuy droppings and puppy pools all over the floor, and two rusty bicycles and three rusty bed frames thrown in one corner, and crates of empty bottles stacked between piles of planks, and a large bitch and three pups begging for scraps, and a sleek much-loved coal-black cat sitting regally on the long ‘dining-table’ amidst antique food stains. By the dim light of a smoking kerosene lamp I added soup-cubes and noodles to a saucepan of Maranon water that already looked like soup. Katie contributed a plate of boiled potatoes and as we ate told us how much she hates Peru. Before getting her present job she worked and lived for six months with a Russian Folk Dance group, based (for some not too obscure reason) in Lima. “Russia is a very civilised country where I would like to live. There all are cultured and have enough. In Peru we are not cultured people. Our men have a complex and are ashamed to help their women with babies and housework. I prefer foreign men. In Lima I have a baby who is half Russian. He is much more beautiful than a Peruvian baby. He will be cultured because he is half Russian.”
The platoon arrived then – a wretchedly undernourished brood – and Katie cooked for them. To a large saucepan of water she added a quarter kilo of sugar, a tin of condensed milk and a half-kilo bar of cooking chocolate. All but the two youngest had one cup of this concoction, and a hunk of bread, for supper.
Then a mud-encased Lima-Tingo Maria bus arrived: the first bus we’ve seen since leaving Cajamarca. During the dry season this 350 mile journey takes eighteen hours; now that the rains have started it often takes a week. Several aggressively drunken passengers pushed their way into the kitchen and demanded food. At which point a grotesque fact dawned on us – this squalid cavern was Tingo Chico’s restaurant … As Katie served the five men (cold potatoes, chilli sauce, bread), we retired to the ‘bedroom’ and unrolled our flea-bags, having first spread our ponchos and space-blankets on the unswept floor. Rachel was soon asleep, despite much drunken brawling next door and a spate of shrill bickering between children and adults that is still going on as I write.
Stable in Hamlet on Mountain. 30 October
I hadn’t been long asleep last evening when someone stood on my head: a novel experience. We each swore, in divers tongues, as Isabel appeared with the smoking lamp – followed by three other jostling men, redolent of pisco and demanding bed-space. When Isabel had shooed them out into the downpour, as though they were so many contrary hens, two of the three beds were occupied by Katie and numerous children, the younger ones whining and snuffling. As I was drifting back to sleep three sober bus passengers entered, shook their wet ponchos over me, climbed fully clothed into the vacant bed and switched on Katie’s Russian trannie. Frightful punkish noises then woke the platoon and contrapuntal wailing and sobbing ensued. All of which acted like a lullaby on the newcomers and when they began to snore Katie switched off. Some time later I had a most vivid dream. We were circus lion-tamers, rearing cubs in our Irish home, and the neighbours, who were all Peruvian, were charging us with some unspecified crime in the European Court of Human Rights. I woke (it was 2.15) to find that two large pups had curled up between our flea-bags (a nick-name that daily becomes more apposite) and one of them was making pre-vomiting noises in my ear. I hastily knelt and flung him towards the door with a sort of scrum-half movement. He achieved his vomit a moment later – and returned to base, his wagging tail tickling my nose. At 4.10 he repeated the performance. This time Katie woke too and having sympathised with my problem embarked on an animated discussion about the ideal age for marriage. The three passengers then joined in – they hadn’t much alternative, poor devils, Katie’s bed being less than a foot from their’s – and in the uninhibiting darkness the conversation became quite frank. Very frank, in fact. One had the impression all four habitually study American sex-manuals. I was rivetted, being of a generation that only knows two ways of doing it. Travel is so educational!
I rose at 5, like everyone else in Tingo Chico, and went with Isabel’s eldest to cut Alf. On hearing our approaching voices Juana greeted us cheerfully, as she always does, so we were unprepared for what we saw on entering the corral. Rachel gives a crisp description – ‘In the morning when we went to give Juana her breakfast Alfalfa we got an awful shock. There was a nasty cut on her withers. We looked around and saw a sharp piece of flint stickying out of the wall with blood on it. She had bled a lot from the cut and it had dripped down onto her hoof.
Sick with anxiety, I dashed off to fetch our Crown Wound Powder and a basin of salted water. Juana’s continuing to munch contentedly while I washed, dried and sprayed reassured me. Despite the depth of the wound, and the amount of blood lost (there was a pool on the ground), she was obviously not feeling too bothered. But the site of the injury meant that we had to load far back; today it would have been impossible to take her up or down a steep redura. Since this had to happen, the timing was fortunate; we can stay with the carretera until she heals.
This morning the sky was grey as we followed the Marañon upstream through a green, humid, semi-tropical valley. Long stretches of the carretera were impassable to motor-vehicles and almost impassable to us; now we understand why journeys can take a week – vehicles must wait at various points for the mud to dry.
Several times today we walked in convoy. Rachel, being more gregarious than her Ma, prefers these populated areas to the puna wastes – ‘Just a little way out of Tingo Chico we were joined by two young women and their donkey. They were a very nice cheerful couple who said that their house had been flooded during the night. The road was very, very muddy in some places. Juana and the donkey were right up to their knees. Sadly, it wasn’t long before we parted, our friends going across a bridge the donkey made a fuss about, but they only roared with laughter. At about one, after we had been going up for a little, we came to a shamlet where there were quite a few drunk men who followed us and one sober one. Juana had been going slower and slower so in the end we stopped for about twenty minutes to let her eat. The men stopped too. One of them who had been the drunkest but sobered up a lot offered to swap watches but Mummy refused because his was the better. Then they offered coca. They walked on quite a while longer with us before we got to their house’.
As the road climbed the dusty, pale brown mountains became more barren. We stopped often to ask for Alf, or oats, or even barley or maize straw; but this is another drought area and the locals need every morsel for their own animals. So all day Juana had only two nibbles of tough dry grass which can’t have done her much good. We were in quite a fodder panic when we arrived here and, after much persistent enquiring, found 100 soles worth of green oats.
This is a friendly hamlet. Seeing us unsuccessfully searching for a site – all the surrounding slopes are precipitous – our oat-vendor led us to an empty, doorless stable carpeted with barley-straw; and Juana is now safely corralled. As we unpacked, an enthralled crowd gathered around the non-door. Our host’s small son brought (unasked) a pot of hot water for our coffee and when I went in search of pan other small boys followed, all polite and helpful. They guided me to the shack of a young woman who bakes at home and whose coarse brown bread is a treat after the insipid white shop buns we’ve been living on. While I was writing this by flickering-in-the-breeze candlelight, our host arrived to spread an enormous alpaca-wool blanket over our flea-bags; the campesinos have no faith in modern trekking-equipment.
Camp on sloping Ledge on Mountainside. 31 October
Another broken night because of squabbling dogs and merrymaking humans; though that shamlet seemed so minute its nightlife was hectic.
During the forenoon we said good-bye to the distant Marañon gorge and turned towards the Quichupunta Pass; now that we’re on the carretera, things suddenly have names. Gradually climbing, we passed a few primitive hovels with vile tin roofs – in every country an inescapable consequence of motor traffic. (Not that we can reasonably complain about the volume of traffic today; two buses and three trucks in ten hours.) This pass was so easy that we were crossing it for half-an-hour, while the level road rounded the base of a remarkable solitary mountain – conspicuous all morning – with a circular rock summit extending beyond its grassy support like a stone sombrero. On our left, beyond many minor ranges, a powder-blue line of smooth mountains, their crests apparently beneath us, lay along the northern horizon – more than 100 miles away.
At noon we came on an isolated shack displaying a roughly lettered sign – PAN VENDE. But not today … An elderly mestizo, with a week’s beard and rheumatism-knotted hands, sat on a wooden crate in a dark empty room. He was drinking a homemade liquor of the poteen family while querulously chiding his son who lounged against the doorpost, chewing coca. In lieu of bread they offered me an Inca Cola bottle of liquor for 30 soles. Then a young woman called them to their lunch from a kitchen-hut some way up the opposite mountain. As there was meagre grazing nearby we sat outside the shack and Rachel sucked glucose tablets while I sampled the liquor, which was less deleterious than might have been expected. A moment later the young woman came bounding towards us with a plate of tiny boiled potatoes of varying colours: purple, white, pink, yellow, greenish, dark red. She was followed by the elderly man, carefully carrying a large enamel mug of delicious, herb-flavoured mutton soup, thickened with noodles – Rachel’s treat, to balance my spiritual refreshment. Neither of them would accept payment, nor did they want to engage in conversation.
I am still being disconcerted by campesino aloofness. Although they so often do their duty by the passing travellers, offering what little hospitality they can, one is always aware of being kept at a distance – literally as well as metaphorically. Yet it would be misleading to use the term ‘unfriendly’. In the little pueblo of Jacas Chico, which we reached after a few more downhill miles, we were warmly welcomed and a twelve-year-old girl was sent into the depths of a nearby valley to cut five kilos of oats, for which we were charged only 30 soles. Her mother produced hot water for coffee, to accompany the dozen musty-stale buns we found in a bare-shelved grocery.
Jacas Chico is the most impoverished town we’ve passed through – not counting shamlets. Its long, muddy main street is lined with attractive colonial dwellings and it must once have been prosperous. Now it’s falling to bits and the near-impossibility of changing a 500 soles note proves its apartness from the money economy. I had to take my problem to the large but ramshackle home of a wool-merchant on the outskirts of the town. His tightlipped little wife was deeply suspicious and disappeared with the note for five minutes, during which I could hear her discussing the situation in an inner patio. She then returned, unlocked an ancient, beautifully carved wooden chest in a corner of the living-room, took out an unexpected ‘Jacobs Afternoon Tea Selection’ biscuit tin and carefully counted out fifty ten soles notes. When I offered her 50 soles, as commission, she frowned angrily and thrust my hand away. Throughout the whole transaction she addressed not one word to me.
While Juana ate we sat on boulders talking with Lucia the oat-cutter and her family and friends. There was the standard debate about our sex; the majority were not convinced when we claimed to be female. Lucia’s fourteen-year-old sister has recently had a baby which she nursed while talking to us. She was being much teased by a group of youths about her inability to identify the father, but neither she nor her kindly, chuckling mother was in the least put out by this. Jacas Chico is spectacularly sited on the edge of a plateau, high above the head of a long, narrow, fertile gorge. Lucia took me onto a nearby ledge and pointed down the gorge. “Huanuco!” she said. I stared, and after a moment could pick out a big town on a level plain forty miles away.
A redura reduced the distance to the next village by fourteen kilometres. There we had no alternative but to rejoin the road; on the surrounding slopes not even the campesinos have been able to devise a redura. By this stage I was, as Rachel observed, getting into one of my grazing tizzies. Then at last we saw a grassy site beyond a gorge so deep that its river is invisible though audible. Here Juana has a choice of grass, shrubs and herbs, but we are on a ludicrously sloping ledge with barely enough room for the tent. It’s a cloudless evening, after much midday rain, and suffocatingly hot. We’ve run out of water (my fault) and there are swarms of insatiable winged predators – at least four different species. We’ve also seen, for the first time in Peru, a few giant bats.
Camp in Field near Huánuco. 1 November
This morning Juana was again dripping blood. We assumed that she must have rolled on her wound, which has been healing fast. But no … When I mentioned ‘winged predators’ last evening I was being more accurate than I knew; the blood was coming from a vampire-bat bite on her neck. Fortunately an occasional bite doesn’t bother equines, unless the bat happens to be carrying rabies.
By 6.15 we were moving through a magical misty silent world of soft silver clouds, filling the gorge below and piled above us on harsh massive peaks – but soon dissolved by an orange sun. This has been a glorious day, despite extreme heat. (For the first time we are below 6,000; Huanuco is at 5,400.) Down here, amidst a colourful riot of jungly trees, shrubs, flowers and creepers, one might be a thousand miles from the puna. All day we were descending a narrow valley beside the Rio Higueras, yet another of the countless sub-tributaries of the Amazon – via the great Rio Huallaga, which the Higueras joins at Huanuco.
At 9 a.m., in the shamlet of Higueras, we were greeted by a happy, barefooted, charming old man with a brown smile-wrinkled face. Yes, he could provide Alf … He darted nimbly down a slope to cut it and we sat on the steps of an almost-defunct shop, drinking its last bottles of cerveza and gaseoso. An odd (even depraved) breakfast, but we had already sweated gallons. The old lady behind the counter moved stiffly and had a pain-marked face. She gave Rachel six buns (not stale) and was reproachfully indignant when I tried to pay her.
Our Alf-provider took us into his closed-down shop to show us photographs of five soldier sons. One of the empty shelves has been converted to an altar on which fresh bouquets of jungle blossoms are lovingly arrayed (in old fish tins) before technicolored pictures of Christ on the way to Emmaus, the Virgin Mary, the Little Flower, St Martín de Porrés and St Rose of Lima. Each picture was reverently taken down, shown to us and explained. The oil-lamp and four candlesticks were empty, so when payment was refused for Alf I donated 100 soles – which couldn’t be refused – for blessed candles.
Juana has had a good day. At noon we came to another shamlet where she enjoyed five kilos of Alf while we enjoyed an enormous meal of tripe and potato stew in a sleazy eating-house-cum-brothel (apparently). Two adolescents were blatantly fornicating in an alcove at the end of the dining-room while four children of about Rachel’s age peered sniggeringly through the torn curtain. With so much open space around, I can’t think why they had to do it there in broad daylight.
Down and down went the road, up and up went the temperature. Then we were into lush, profitable hacienda country, where the Spaniards lived in splendour; we passed the ruins of two Stately Homes. Now SAIS (Sociedad Agricola de Interes Social, which implements agrarian reform) controls all these miles of plantations and orchards – oranges, bananas, cane, maize, potatoes, a wide variety of vegetables, oats and Alf. Yet the locals look much more sullen and discontented than the Indians of the ascetic puna.
It was only 4, and we were within five miles of Huanuco, when this exceptional site appeared just below the road, concealed from it by tall eucalyptus trees. Nothing was grazing on all these grassy acres and there was no feeling of drought, penury, desperation … So here we are, helping ourselves. Nearby stand the graceful, melancholy ruins of another hacienda; and an elegant stone archway, engraved with a family coat-of-arms, spans the carretera – recalling the fact that it started life as a private road. The flies were intolerable until I had a brain-wave about exposing our faces, necks and arms to wood-smoke. Unlike most of my brain-waves, this one worked. (We are already so tanned and dirt-ingrained that an extra layer of brown won’t be noticed.) While I’ve been writing this there has been a fabulous display of meteorites in the cloudless sky. Are we passing through the tail of a comet?
It’s cruelly hot, even now, but I’m afraid to leave the tent open because of those dratted bats: they might actually like smoked skins … Today we passed two burros also bitten on the neck. According to their driver, the most effective deterrent is Milk of Magnesia, liberally smeared on the neck of the animal. But now, he said, it isn’t sold any more in Huanuco Mercado because nobody can afford to buy it.