Camp on High Puna. 1 December
An uneasy night. I changed the picket thrice and each time I woke had the impression of being suspended from the mountainside by a bit of rock inserted between two ribs – an illusion, of course, but one with an uncomfortable basis in reality.
Finding a small scorpion under the tent made Rachel’s morning; her only complaint about the Andes is the lack of wildlife. She and I (wo)manhandled the load up the brutal gradient to make life easier for Juana. As we struggled with the last instalment Rachel glanced back and saw her staring anxiously after us, straining hard at her picket – unprecedented behaviour. We were deeply touched: as Rachel said, “You’d expect her to want to see the back of us at this stage!” Surprisingly, she was in excellent form this morning.
We ourselves are now on a spartan diet because of the bank strike. It will take us at least a week to reach Andahuayalas, the next town with a bank, and we cannot change travellers’ cheques elsewhere as no one in these parts has ever heard of such things. We are down to 935 soles, of which 600 must be kept for fodder leaving 335 to feed two people for a week; and a simple meal for one in a wayside eating-house costs at least 100 soles. Our emergency rations are but a lovely memory and our food-box contains only a kilo of ship’s biscuits (nothing else was available in Ayacucho where most of the shops had closed), a small tin of instant coffee, a small tin of sardines and a dozen soup cubes. “That’s a coincidence!” exclaimed Rachel cheerfully. “We can each have one mug of soup every evening.” There’s no denying she has a positive approach to life’s little drawbacks. Let’s hope she feels equally cheerful the day we drag our emaciated bodies into Andahuayalas.
Twice this morning the road dropped into deep glens, glossy with long grass, and we stopped for Juana to graze while we washed in swift brown streams, clear and cold. Towards midday a solitary shack appeared by the edge of an oatfield far below the track and I slithered down to buy a gigantic bundle of oats from a young man who spoke only Quechua. I could scarcely heave the awkward load onto my back but the young man made no attempt to help; then he stood staring as I struggled back to the track. This brand of unchivalrousness seems odd to us but is quite natural here: and quite logical. Women tough enough to walk from Cajamarca to Cuzco should be able to carry loads up hills … Yet I still get my cultural lines crossed occasionally and find myself inwardly reproaching the campesinos for their lack of gallantry. So it was today, perhaps because hunger is making me peevish. I found it much harder than it would normally be to carry a heavy weight up a steep slope of sticky soil at an altitude of over 12,000. No wonder the permanently under-nourished Indians have to chew coca every day to keep going.
While Juana guzzled we sat on a flat rock savouring our meagre noon ration of ship’s biscuits and watching the sky cloud over. As the downpour started a young woman hurried down from a nearby potato field and warned us, rather superfluously, that we would soon be very cold and wet. Although she could see that Juana was just beginning a large meal she offered us no shelter. It’s remarkable that we have never once been invited into an Indian home; in my experience of peasant communities, this degree of aloofness is unique.
The sun was shining again as we roped the surplus oats behind the load and continued towards the high puna. By 3.30 we were at 13,500 feet and still climbing with a strong wind at our backs. That shack was today’s last trace of humanity. Here are no dwellings, no people, no animals, no traffic: just us and a desolate immensity of pale brown and olive-green undulations, sweeping away to an encircling rim of distant mountains. All afternoon the great and healing silence was broken only by rumbles of remote thunder and the small shrill alarm calls of black and white lapwings. Towards sunset we could see storm clouds piled high in the northern sky, their dark mass repeatedly riven by golden zigzags.
This superb site is on a long ledge of soft turf with acres of top-quality puna grass nearby. The western mountains are flat-topped and, as I began to write, a broad orange band of after-light was glowing most strangely between their royal blue bulk and the inky clouds above.
Another Camp on High Puna. 2 December
We allowed Juana her freedom last night so that she could make the most of the exceptionally good grazing. Predictably, she moved closer and closer to us and was almost in the tent by morning. Today it was our turn to march on near-empty tummies. We had no breakfast, having finished the ship’s biscuits last evening, and at noon we shared the last tin of sardines. Rachel never once complained, but perhaps she was mentally composing a letter to the NSPCC about being expected to walk twenty-two miles on half a tin of sardines at 13,700 feet a week short of her tenth birthday.
Five vehicles passed us during our twelve hours on the road: two buses and three trucks. Otherwise the landscape was unmarked by humanity. This was Andean grandeur at its most sublime: an overwhelming, exalting combination of surreal rock summits, lake-strewn moors, vast circular grassy valleys, apparently bottomless rocky gorges and ever-changing, wondrously tinted skyscapes. I got so ‘high’ on this mix that Juana suffered an alarming misadventure during the afternoon. Rachel was leading us across a green valley floor when she misjudged the nature of the ground and Juana suddenly sank to her belly in a bog-hole. That was a nasty moment. I felt the sort of extreme fear that gives one unnatural strength. Mercifully the ground all about was fairly firm; Rachel didn’t sink at all and I only sank to my ankles. We had the load off within moments, though not the saddle as the girth was inaccessible. Juana had panicked briefly – nostrils flaring, eyes rolling, breathing short and fast. But we talked soothingly to her as we unloaded and saw the panic ebb. There was nothing more we could do to help, apart from continuing to give loving verbal encouragement in steadying tones. She struggled hard, throwing her head high as she strained to free her forequarters. At the third attempt she made it, getting her forefeet onto comparatively firm ground. Then Rachel and I heaved with her to free her hindquarters. We were all trembling in reaction as we cautiously picked our way towards the nearest dry slope. When I had retrieved our gear we rested for half an hour before reloading. This unfortunate incident was entirely my fault. We have learned from experience that these grassy valley floors can be treacherous and I should have had my eyes on the ground instead of feeling poetical about the clouds.
This is another superb site, near the edge of the puna and again with good grazing. But as usual at such altitudes there is no fuel so our coffee and soup cubes are merely tantalising. For supper we each drank several mugs of cold water. “At least we’re not thirsty,” said my philosophical companion. “And tomorrow we’ll get to Ocros. And yesterday we only spent 50 soles on fodder, and today we didn’t spend anything, so we’ll have 150 soles extra for our own food tomorrow.”
Camp in stony field. 3 December
What a day! Physically and emotionally it was by far the most demanding of the entire trek – and now I’m facing a sleepless night.
Last night we both slept deeply for an unbroken eleven hours; this may be nature’s way of making up for lack of food. At dawn our world was piercingly cold and completely cloud-enveloped; as we began the long descent visibility was down to about ten yards. Both aesthetically and practically this was frustrating. We were being cheated of the view – always spectacular as one leaves the puna – and if any redura existed we couldn’t see it. Then for a moment the shifting clouds allowed us to glimpse an unimaginable abyss just below the road and we realised that this was not redura terrain. Neither of us admitted to acute hunger pangs but we tended to snap at each other uncharacteristically.
Half an hour later the strengthening sun abruptly drew the vapour upwards, as though some gigantic stage curtain were being raised. Accustomed as we are by now to the magnitude and violence of the Andes, I felt my heart thudding faster as we stopped to stare. Below us, filling the whole visible world, lay a bewildering complex of serrated crags, unfathomable gorges, crazily interlocking spurs and sheer rock walls 2,000 feet high. But soon my elation and awe gave way to apprehension. How long would it take the carretera to find a way through? It suddenly seemed dreadfully possible that we might not get to Ocros before dark. And could Rachel keep going for another twenty-four hours without food?
Shortly afterwards I rejoiced, for the first time in my life, to hear the sound of a distant engine. The vehicle was approaching from Ocros and I decided to stop it and try to buy any food that might be on board. Twenty-five minutes later an over-crowded bus appeared; when I tried to wave it down the driver scowled angrily, hooted loudly and kept going.
On the next mountain we saw what seemed a possible redura, though had we not been in extremis we wouldn’t have contemplated such a descent for one instant. Thousands of feet below, my binoculars revealed a carretera bridge crossing a narrow river. From where we stood we could descend the puna-grassy mountainside if we tacked carefully and this open slope eventually merged into green pasture. We couldn’t see what happened after that but if we then reached the river it might be possible – I reckoned – to follow it (perhaps walking in it) to the bridge and the road. Ominously, however, there was no trace of even the most rudimentary path. Rachel was keen to experiment but I argued, “If a redura is possible, the campesinos make a path”. Quickly Rachel pointed out that hereabouts there aren’t any campesinos, so the lack of a path was no evidence. Next we studied what we could see of the carretera; it was visible for many miles ahead, snaking around mountain after mountain and still at the level we were on. There was no clue as to where it began its descent into the chaos beneath. I decided then to gamble on the redura, though I was horribly aware that in our debilitated condition we might not be able to climb back to the carretera if the gamble went wrong.
Our descent of the grassy slope left us nerve-wracked and exhausted; and then our way was blocked by a sheer hundred foot drop extending right across the mountain. Leaving Juana to graze and Rachel to rest, I went on a recce. To the right there was no hope; an impassable densely wooded gorge, containing the river, separated our mountain from its neighbour. But to the left it merged with its other neighbour, which was fearsomely steep and covered with scrub. Here a faint goat-trail raised my hopes, but it petered out on the edge of a hidden chasm. Retreating, I found another pathlet which took me high above Rachel and Juana – only to end at the base of a semi-circular precipice pitted with caves where goat-herds shelter and light fires. By this stage I was bounding up the steepest gradients, operating entirely on fast-flowing adrenalin stimulated by fear on Rachel’s behalf. Almost certainly she couldn’t make it back to the carretera, nor could Juana carry her. We were all at the point of no return.
Scrambling down through the scrub, I heard a pony neighing. I paused and listened. When he neighed again I turned towards the sound and forced my way through a pathless copse of low trees linked by tough creepers. Then suddenly I was on the edge of a rocky ravine, of modest proportions by local standards. Beyond rose a gentle grassy slope on which stood three ponies. If they could reach that slope, Juana could get off it … I studied the ravine. On the far side an easy path led onto the ponies’ pasture. But on my side there was only a rock stairs of such grisly instability that even Rachel and I would find it difficult. In normal circumstances no sane person would even consider bringing a mule down that 300 foot precipice. But the circumstances were not normal and I felt even less sane than usual. We could but try …
Turning back, I realised with a flicker of panic that I was lost. I blew my whistle long and hard and soon Rachel’s whistle answered. Carefully I descended, noting landmarks. Twice more I whistled and the replies guided me. “You’re a most useless traveller!” exclaimed Rachel when we were reunited. “What would your fans say if they knew how often you get lost?”
We spent forty minutes struggling through the copse; I had to clear a way for Juana by tearing down creepers that oozed a sticky and noisome fluid when assaulted. At the edge of the ravine we unloaded and commended our collective soul to whatever deity looks after lunatics in the Andes. I descended first and called Juana as one calls a dog. There could be no question of leading her or driving her on such a precipice; she had to feel free to make her own judgements. For long moments she stood gazing down at me with a comical expression of incredulity. I then abandoned every last shred of rationality and talked to her as though she were Rachel. “Come on!” I said. “You have to make it! You know we can’t get back to the carretera. And we don’t want to die of starvation on this goddam mountain. So get shifting!” Juana pricked her ears forward, moved towards the edge – then paused and glanced back over her shoulder at Rachel. At once I realised where we were going wrong and asked Rachel to join me. She was only half way down when Juana began to follow her.
“She should be in a circus!” said Rachel admiringly as we watched Juana recovering from her third skid on a long smooth rock slab. When at last she was safely down I imagined that our troubles were as good as over and my adrenalin inconveniently ceased to flow. Three leg-torturing climbs up the rock stairs to fetch the load and tack left me feeling dizzy and nauseated. And the ritual of re-loading – normally a routine chore – seemed like one of the labours of Hercules.
From the ponies’ slope both road and river were alarmingly invisible and we could see that their homeward path led very steeply up, away from the carretera. Five minutes later we were enmeshed again in dense scrub – but not for long. Suddenly open ploughland lay ahead and the carretera was directly below us, scarcely 500 yards away. “We’ve made it!” I shouted, almost weeping with relief. Again we tacked, stumbling to and fro across the sticky new-turned earth. And from the edge of that field we were indeed overlooking the road – but it was thirty feet below us and the drop was sheer.
Speechlessly we surveyed the scene, noting with horror that two well-trodden paths led upwards from the ploughland to join the ponies’ track high on the neighbouring mountain. We could also see far up the carretera and nowhere, in that direction, was it accessible from our slope. Another solo recce was indicated. I left Rachel and Juana sitting and standing in attitudes of dejection and went towards the river; but its mini-ravine held an impenetrable thicket of gnarled thorny trees. Fortunately my adrenalin had been re-stimulated by this new crisis. Returning to Rachel and Juana, I continued past them around the shoulder of the mountain. And there at last was a point where the embankment was not quite sheer and the drop no more than eight feet. I whistled and sat down. A long time later the rest of the expedition joined me. Again we unloaded, and this time Juana didn’t hesitate. If she were an Irish mule I’d say she had a hunter somewhere up the family tree; she always gives the impression of enjoying even the most formidable jumps. Here she slithered down the first few feet, then bounded onto the carretera like a kangaroo. I hugged her neck and she rubbed her forehead hard on my shoulder: our usual celebration, post-crisis.
We were now in a sparsely inhabited area where potato patches appeared at intervals in the deep green valley on our left. The few locals we met spoke only Quechua and seemed half-afraid of us. Soon we turned a corner and saw Ocros on its eucalyptus-greened spur apparently fifteen minutes walk away, with the blue-hazed Rio Pampas gorge another few thousand feet below it. But so tortuous was the road that we didn’t reach food (ship’s biscuits again: there was no eating-house) for another hour and a half. One of the local policemen told us that our short-cut had saved us thirty kilometres – almost twenty miles. So that three-hour nightmare had after all been worthwhile.
In Ocros’s one shop even Peru’s ubiquitous tinned sardines were not available. It would in any case have been unwise to eat a big meal and we were happy to sit on the shop steps, surrounded by a riot of geraniums, slowly chewing ship’s biscuits. Each hard, dry mouthful seemed a divine experience. We miss a lot, in the pampered West, by never knowing real hunger. This may sound sadistic, but I’m glad that Rachel is occasionally having to endure extreme hunger, thirst, cold, heat and exhaustion. She will never again take First World comforts and conveniences for granted. And as she herself remarked last evening, she now knows how a large percentage of the world’s population feels all the time.
When we left Ocros at 2.30 the heat was enervating; it seemed incredible that only seven hours earlier we’d been suffering the agony of thawing hands and feet. Poor Juana was moving very sluggishly; Ocros lacked both fodder and grazing, but the policeman had assured us that Alf could be bought at the next village. Two and a half downhill hours later we proved him wrong. Although Alf is grown around Chumbes the inhabitants refused to sell any. Beyond the village we met a wordlessly friendly Indian woman driving two bony cows, five haggard sheep and a coughing lame pony; all the local animals are in poor condition so a reluctance to sell Alf is understandable.
We hurried down a steep redura through a brief downpour – refreshing at this altitude. Beside the track fields of potatoes and maize were protected by compact prickly pear hedges; otherwise the brown rocky slopes supported only desiccated scrub of no interest to Juana. At dusk we reluctantly entered this level stubble field through a gap in its cactus hedge. As we were rushing the tent up in the last of the twilight four inquisitive ragged children arrived from nowhere and were rivetted by our activities. It is unusual for campesino children to be so outgoing and we encouraged their sociability. The boy was aged ten, the three girls ranged from nine to thirteen. Despairingly I asked if they could provide some form of fodder – even paja would be better than nothing – and then we realised that only the eldest spoke Spanish. (There is no school at Chumbes and the Ocros school closed six months ago when the two teachers left because they hadn’t been paid for a year.) After some discussion among the children, Rachel and the older girls disappeared into the darkness to fetch paja – I assumed from the children’s home – and the others helped me to collect firewood, of which there is an abundance nearby. Half an hour later the girls returned, each carrying a load of maize straw. When Rachel told me they had stolen it I didn’t listen; recently Juana’s need has been blunting my moral sensibilities. The girls hesitated when I asked how much I owed them, then said “ten soles”: a fair price. The fascinated quartet hung around for another ten minutes, closely examining our equipment and watching our culinary activities (soup cubes and coffee!). But all the time they were being summoned by a clear though far-away female voice to which the eldest girl occasionally yelled a reassuring reply. Like most mountain peoples the campesinos can communicate by shouting over distances for which we would use a telephone. When the children left, Rachel and I were crouching by the fire, intent on our coffee-water saucepan, and twenty minutes elapsed before I discovered that Rachel’s Diana-bag was missing.
“You should’ve shone the torch on them as they were going,” said Rachel. Then she added shrewdly, “But you don’t like suspecting people, do you?”
I blame myself far more than the thieves. To have left a so-easily-snatched bag lying around in the dark was an act of true imbecility, especially as these children had obviously been mesmerised by our few possessions. This is an extremely serious loss. The bag contains our space-blankets, all our high-altitude clothing apart from husky-suits – which go with the flea-bags in my larger Diana-bag – and Rachel’s jodhpurs and my new slacks. How are we to survive on the puna without these garments? There hypothermia is a real danger, as the Bradts have noted – ‘this simple and efficient killer is often in the news under the name of Exposure’. We need almost everything in that bag; perhaps I should make an effort to recover it in the morning, however remote my chance of success.
When Rachel had gone to bed I built up the fire and went on drinking coffee to console myself; as a result I can’t sleep. Just now I listed the stolen items, with their prices, because for insurance purposes I must report the theft in detail to the local police. (Wherever they may be!) Incredibly, that tiny bag contained over £90 worth of clothing – at a conservative estimate, forgetting inflation. The irony is that these garments can be of no use to anyone living at this altitude, though if the children had enough initiative they might sell them to campesinos who herd flocks on the puna.
Camp on Spur of Forested Mountain. 4 December
Rachel was still asleep when I slid out of the tent at 5.30. The dawn air felt like cool silk and the sky was pastel-clouded. A narrow but distinct pathlet led me through six bare brown fields towards the source of last evening’s shouted commands. Soon I could see in the distance a wretched stone hovel isolated on a high ledge; no other dwelling was visible. As I climbed towards it there came a dramatic surge of colour in the eastern sky beyond the Rio Pampas. Suddenly the long cloud banks above a line of smoky-blue peaks were gold and crimson and the vast contorted landscape all around me was drenched in rose-pink brilliance. I stood still, forgetting everything – our lost bag, my vile coffee hang-over, my exhaustion after an almost sleepless night. During such Andean moments – and they are frequent – one’s own state of mind or body doesn’t matter.
Continuing upwards, I wondered about the composition of the thieves’ household: on that would depend my plan of action. In remote areas gringoes are occasionally murdered for no apparent reason so the presence of openly aggressive males would prompt a prudent retreat. Most Indians are too docile and gentle for their own good but the exceptions can erupt into ferocity under the combined influence of drink and drugs.
As I reached the ledge a bent, wrinkled old woman came hobbling out into the sun, half-closing her eyes against the light. Behind the hovel the two older girls were releasing four goats from a decrepit corral. They and their granny looked equally alarmed when I called a greeting. After a moment’s silence Huarmi, the Spanish speaker, replied in tones of forced jollity. Meanwhile the goats were scampering away unheeded down the mountainside. Suddenly I was inspired to take notebook and pencil from my pocket and wage psychological warfare – an entirely unpremeditated ploy. Standing about ten yards away from the hovel I wrote quickly, scowling at the page and glancing up between every few lines to scrutinise the girls, their granny and our immediate surroundings. I ignored Huarmi’s ingratiating attempts to converse and granny’s hoarse, frightened Quechuan questions. Silence fell. Tension built up. For ten minutes I pretended to write: and ten minutes can seem a very long time. Then abruptly I closed my notebook, stepped forward and informed Huarmi that I would soon be returning with the police to take her away to prison because she was a thief and people who stole from gringoes always went to prison. Her indignant denial of guilt was unconvincing but I did admire her for standing up to me, though her shifting eyes were full of fear. She urged me to search the hovel, to ‘prove’ her innocence. As I stood in the centre of the one small dark room granny pawed at my arm, croaking agitatedly in Quechua and peering up at me with half-blind, bloodshot eyes. The two younger children crawled out of a pile of filthy torn ponchos on the mud floor and stared at me in scared bewilderment. There was no furniture; a few threadbare garments hung from the low ceiling; a few goatskins were stacked in one corner. This was more like an animals’ cave than a human habitation and my reaction was a strong spasm of self-disgust. Vividly I could see myself from outside: a hectoring, bullying Privileged Person ruthlessly taking advantage of the stupidity, ignorance and superstition of a half-crippled crone and a bunch of starving children – simply to retrieve possessions which I could well afford to replace. I faltered for a moment, longing to be able to turn away and leave these misfortunate people to enjoy their loot. Yet I dared not relent. Here and now those stolen goods were irreplaceable and without them we could not complete our trek.
Again I took out notebook and pencil, stared grimly around that pathetically naked shack and silently made pretend notes. After a few moments Huarmi, who had been standing by the door, turned and fled across the ledge. With surprising agility granny hobbled after her, screeching abuse. I followed and saw Huarmi hesitate, then turn back. She stared sullenly at me while granny continued to abuse her. Then slowly she raised a hand and beckoned me.
In silence we crossed three stubble fields beyond the hovel, then came to several acres of maize securely cactus-fenced; the only way in was via a difficult ‘stepladder’ of two interlocking dead trees. And there among the high maize stalks lay our bag, wide open. Each garment had been shaken out, no doubt in the hope of finding hidden cash, then hastily stuffed back; but nothing was missing. I felt weak with relief and found myself thanking Huarmi profusely: a rather inappropriate reaction. Only our financial crisis prevented me from giving granny a few hundred soles to compensate for the trouble we’d caused; amidst such poverty one gets one’s ethical knickers into the most frightful twist. Now, having had all day to reflect on the incident, I can see that I was over-reacting. But I shall never look back on this morning as my Finest Hour. And the whole episode revealed that my waffling on last evening about Rachel sampling the reality of Third World suffering was based on fatuous self-delusion. We may seem (indeed we are) fairly spartan in comparison with your average modern tourist. Yet we need some £90 worth of special clothing to enable us to survive on the puna and we know nothing whatever about real privation. Our treks are just playing with hardship. When we go hungry for a few days, or endure extremes of heat or cold or exhaustion, these are no more than Interesting Experiences. The certainty of plenty and comfort lies before us and we cannot even begin to imagine what it feels like to go hungry and cold for a lifetime.
Back at base Rachel rejoiced chiefly about the recovery of her Diana-bag, a most precious possession with RACHEL in gold lettering on its leather tag. To celebrate we had a morning fire for the first time and a full-scale meal of soup and ship’s biscuits and coffee – which non-spartan behaviour meant that we didn’t get the show on the road until 8.30, when it was already uncomfortably hot.
Today’s was the most dramatic – and debilitating – of all our Andean ‘downs’. When we crossed the Rio Pampas at 1.15 p.m. we had descended 11,000 feet from yesterday morning’s starting point on the puna. In four and a half hours we had experienced a bewildering variety of terrain and vegetation. Every moment the heat had become more intolerable as our track leaped down from ledge to ledge, each spectacular ‘step’ so wide that it had its own character.
Soon after starting we passed many ancient trees with grotesque roots spreading fifty yards or more and thick grey-green beards of rubbery creeper depending from each leafless branch. The next shelf was laden with low trees on which tiny spherical yellow blossoms dangled amidst delicate spring-green foliage. Then came an ex-hacienda covering thousands of acres – now a Co-op. In a lush paddock a dozen sleek ponies were grazing and their adjacent field of Alf tantalised us because we could find no one with whom to trade. Here we were back on the carretera and soon we came upon one of this region’s few dwellings, an adobe roadside shack with a shaggy cactus thatch. Outside it stood three young women – two of them looked half-witted – and a small boy with open sores all over his face and a minute skinny pup in his arms. As we approached everyone bolted into the casa and the door was slammed. I knocked and pleaded desperately for Alf, but the only response was a scuffling movement just inside the un-glazed iron-barred window.
In a narrow, semi-tropical ravine we were tortured by clouds of the locally notorious Pampas fruit-fly – a misnomer, we thought, as this vicious creature is obviously carnivorous. Soon every exposed inch of skin was covered with bleeding bites; as the minuscule brown devils escaped our frantic swattings we could see their transparent abdomens distended and red-tinted with Murphy blood. Mercifully they ignored Juana who all morning had been persecuted by larger flies.
Where the road ran beside a noisy small river we refilled our container; within the previous three hours we had drunk between us five litres of water. Both sides of this humid ravine were hidden by an exuberance of exotic shrubs, creepers and mosses; and between road and river sugar cane grew eight feet tall, tempting us … We offered some to Juana, but she spurned it in her exasperating way.
The exit from the ravine was marked by an unnatural cliff, so perfectly square that at first we mistook it for the ruins of some gigantic fortress. Here we expected to see the Rio Pampas – but no. The road turned sharply north and gradually descended, between flourishing maize fields, along a sloping ledge. By then we were being maddened – almost reduced to tears – by the itchiness and painfulness of the fruit-flies’ bites. We were covered in a paste of dust, sweat and blood when at last we saw the Pampas and realised why the road had been forced to meander so. Here is no gorge, as we had imagined, but a broad valley; and at only one point do the mountains come close enough to support the bases of a ramshackle suspension bridge. This swift and powerful river now fills scarcely one-fifth of its bed; I wish we could see it during the winter rains.
Having crossed the bridge – Juana now accepts such horriblenesses as inevitable – we turned south to follow the carretera through a barren desert. The temperature would have been at least 110° F in the shade if there were any shade. I have experienced nothing comparable since I was foolish enough to cycle across the Punjab in early June, on which occasion I ended up with heat-stroke in Delhi. We considered resting until sunset and walking through the night, then decided it would be too risky to leave Juana without fodder for another five hours. So we drank deeply and struggled on. I wore Rachel’s riding hat turned back-to-front, Rachel wore a sweater with the sleeves tied under her chin and the back draped over her neck and shoulders.
Soon we passed a few circular bamboo huts with conical straw roofs – the dwellings of a work-gang for bridge maintenance. A friendly young couple clad in cotton rags, with sun-blackened skins, invited us to lunch and we could smell potatoes boiling. But in that heat the very thought of food made even Rachel feel queasy.
Our map might have been produced by one of those medieval cartographers who enjoyed letting their imaginations off the leash. It asserts that the carretera rises within two miles of the bridge though in fact the road runs level for many miles, curving around the bases of pale grey rock mountains from which heat radiated in perceptible waves. The thick air seemed suffocating and our only consolation was the disappearance of the fruit flies, which had stayed on the fertile side of the river. But their bites continued to goad us to demented scratching. The next three hours were hell. There was one ghastly stage when Rachel’s breathing became difficult and I thought she was about to collapse with heat-stroke. But after a fifteen-minute rest she struggled gamely on, knowing that we couldn’t camp fodderless.
At last we saw in the distance a river-level oasis of green trees enfolding red-tiled and tin-roofed houses. (This village is unmarked on our map.) Soon we were walking between banana plantations and orange and papaya orchards; outside a roadside shack we bought twenty oranges for 40 soles and their tangy juiciness revived us. But we never reached the village because a kindly old man directed us to a grassy redura that leaped out of the valley onto this blessedly cool mountain. At once we stopped to drink – we had been conserving our water supply – and emptied the container. I shall never forget the ecstasy of swallowing that hot, chemically-flavoured water. There is a frantic quality about extreme thirst that distinguishes it from extreme hunger.
This site is ample compensation for the afternoon’s inferno. We are on a grassy flat-topped spur, high above the valley and overlooking forested side-valleys noisy with waterfalls. All around grow giant prickly pear and wild geraniums. Far below the Rio Pampas looks like a thin brown ribbon thrown on the pale immensity of its sun-bleached bed. To the north-west stretches the whole awesome expanse we covered today, backed by the long, level line of the puna from which we descended yesterday.
Camp by Stream on Grassland. 5 December
Today we look hideously disfigured because of our inflamed and swollen bites; but after a night of torment the itch abated.
We rose at 4.50, to gain more height while it was cool, and climbed steadily and steeply for two and a half hours to the top of a forested mountain. Our path was a rock-stairs with deep steps – hard on Rachel’s short legs and also trying for Juana. We met a young couple having difficulty driving an overladen pony down the stairs; no doubt they live in the only dwelling we passed, a stone hovel amidst a few hard-won potato patches.
We remained at about 10,000 feet while crossing sunny expanses of grassland scattered with sheep, cattle and ponies. Here our few fellow-travellers were riding and looked surly and/or coca-bemused. Near the amiable, dopey little town of Chinceros we joined the carretera for a few miles, to food-hunt, and had a monumental meal of chips, steak and onions in a tiny eating-house. During the afternoon our redura dropped slightly to wind through a densely populated valley – where we found ship’s biscuits in a solitary shoplet – before climbing to this long ridge of open grassland which restricts our view ahead; as far as we can see, to east and west, it sweeps up to the horizon in great green waves.
We decided to camp early in this sheltered hollow (between waves, as it were) when a cold gale began to blow against us. Rachel has been enjoying a stream full of giant tadpoles and beyond the stream fuel was provided by the only patch of scrub for miles around. As we drank our coffee sheets of rain obscured Chinceros, on the far side of the valley, and at sunset the sky was a mass of hurrying storm clouds, all copper and purple and riven by lightning. Then our evening was marred by Rachel’s falling over a mini-cliff while peeing Niagara-wise in the dusk. Luckily it was only a ten-foot drop; in these parts it could have been 2,000 feet. But her right knee struck a rock and she returned to the tent pale with pain though resolutely tearless. Now when she moves in her sleep she whimpers slightly. Let’s hope this doesn’t impede her walking tomorrow.
The wind has dropped and I’m writing this outside the tent, lying on soft turf under a glitter of stars. Juana is loose – tonight will be a banquet for her – and has come to graze beside me. Her munching, and the thin quick song of the stream, only accentuate the silence all around us.
Camp on Balcony of Chicmo Municipal Offices. 6 December
We covered twenty four miles today, from which it may be deduced that Rachel’s injury – though the bruise is lurid – did not affect her performance. Soon after 9 we reached the puna, just as an enormous cloud came to squat on the landscape. We emerged from the mist at noon, during a two hour descent above a canyon so deep that on its grassy floor we couldn’t distinguish sheep from goats.
The next stage of that descent took us into a broad, well-watered valley where everything looked Irish. Huge sleek cattle grazed in emerald fields with dry stone walls or hedges that from a distance resembled hawthorn; the scattered stone cottages were straw-thatched; stands of tall hardwood trees made the lush, rolling sheep pastures look like parkland; clover flourished by the roadside beside sparkling irrigation channels and acres of flowering potatoes covered the lower slopes of the mountains. Nowhere else in Peru have we seen such farming and this evening we were told that the local Co-op is famous for its efficiency.
Towards sunset our road dropped abruptly into a rocky, wooded glen where it was impossible to find a camp-site; we had made a major mistake by leaving that fertile valley. But a friendly mestizo woman told us that we were near a pueblo and at dusk we reached this straggling village which seems to have been of more consequence in colonial times than now.
Immediately we were surrounded by scores of men, women and children, all pushing, shoving and giggling as they tried to examine the inexplicable arrivals and their oddly-loaded mule. When I asked for 100 soles worth of Alf there was a long silence, though we’d just passed several Alf-fields. At the back of the crowd a youth was now holding aloft a blazing brand (street lighting, Chicmo style) and the twisting flame revealed people shuffling their feet and whispering and looking doubtful. I don’t much like Chicmo’s atmosphere, though I can’t precisely define what puts me off. At last a youngish man volunteered to provide oats; he looked more alert than the average campesino but had one of those nasty cunning faces to be found all over the world – narrow and ratty. (It’s odd how the universal virtues and vices can mould the features of dissimilar races into identical expressions.) He added that he’d expect 200 soles for oats because all gringoes are very rich. (At the moment it would be hard to picture anything less rich-looking than the Murphys.) A policeman then forced his way through the crowd and reprimanded Ratty for being rude to Chicmo’s guests. The police –he said–would providefree Alf. Our self-appointed guardian angel invited us to camp on this spacious first-floor balcony, at the back of the decrepit colonial Municipal Offices. We are overlooking a rectangular common, surrounded by two-storey adobe houses, and Juana is securely corralled behind one of these, knee-deep in police-Alf. Apparently there are many livestock thieves in this area and the police so distrust the locals that once we’d carried our gear to the balcony one of us had to stay with it. Rachel then went off down the ebony-dark street between two policemen, to sup with them behind a shop where they have all their meals. She came back with 40 soles change out of a 100 soles note, yet she’d been given ample rice, fried potatoes and braised cuy, followed by two mugs of coffee; obviously she got the benefit of the police rate. Meanwhile I’d been eating ship’s biscuits as we can’t afford two suppers.
Here we’ve had five separate offers for Juana, two of them quite reasonable at 30,000 soles. Each man implored us to sell and assured us that the weekly bus from Chicmo to Cuzco would be more ‘reposeful’ than walking there. From what little we’ve seen of Peruvian buses on mountain roads, I doubt that. But the realisation that we’re now within a 24-hour bus journey of Cuzco makes the end of the trek seem horribly near.
Andahuayalas. 7 December
A short day’s trek, with an exhausting centrepiece and an astonishing end. Throughout the Andes we’ve had uncanny good luck. This morning Juana lost her off fore shoe on a precipitous redura leading down to a wide fertile plateau; and half an hour later we were in the biggish town of Talavera which includes among its amenities a blacksmith.
Antonio is the tiniest Indian we’ve met – a couple of inches shorter than Rachel – and he approached Juana with a judicious mixture of kindness and firmness. His son – the same height as Rachel–was equally likable though less cool in a crisis. And Juana made sure that this was a crisis. Antonio and son didn’t use the Chavin device of tying legs to tail and my function was to hold the head-collar and administer comfort and admonition, as appropriate. Unfortunately neither had any effect. Juana tolerated the removal of the old shoes with only a few token kicks. But when knives and nails came into the picture she grew more and more resentful, rearing up and pawing the air every other moment – which caused the crowd and the smiths to scatter rapidly, leaving me as heroine, centre-stage. Rachel hugely enjoyed the whole circus, squealing with laugher every time Juana stood on her hind-legs. A fascinated crowd had followed us from the Plaza and was now augmented by – apparently – all the residents of the nearby street, some of whom brought placatory Alf offerings (purloined no doubt from their cuys) which Juana rudely spurned. When Antonio decided to bandage her eyes and ears I assured him that this would only aggravate her ill-temper, and it did. She raged around in circles, almost jerking my arms from their sockets, until the bandages were removed. I then insisted on hobbling and tail-tying and at last progress was made – though slowly and hazardously, with many sudden lunges despite the inhibiting ropes. When we left Talavera at noon I knew how people felt after a day on the rack.
Most of the terrain we’ve crossed on the way from Ayacucho is unsung in the history books (for Juana’s sake we regretfully bypassed Vilcashuaman), but not so this province of Andahuayalas. Long before the Spaniards arrived it was famous as the base of the only enemies feared by the Incas, the ferociously brave Chancas who claimed descent from a puma and wore puma-skins on ceremonial occasions. Between 1350 and 1400 this tribe moved south from somewhere north of Vilcas and eventually subdued the Quechuas, an ancient tribe then ruling Andahuayalas, whose language was adopted for general use throughout the Inca Empire. In 1437 the Chancas invaded the sacred city of Cuzco but were repulsed by the Inca army under Pachacuti. Although a Chanca contingent later helped this Inca to conquer Tarma, the tribe was never absorbed into the Empire. After the Cuzco defeat, 8,000 Chanca men and women retreated into the forests of Cha-chapoyas on the Upper Marañon and the Incas became obsessed about the threat these formidable fugitives posed to the unity of the Empire. Now the Chancas as a distinct tribe are only a memory; the post-Conquest wars and epidemics wiped them out.
When the conquistadores had taken Cuzco, Diego Maldonado el Rico (the Rich) secured Andahuayalas for himself and soon it became known as the richest of all Peru’s 480 encomiendas. (An encomienda was an estate from which a Spanish settler was entitled to receive produce though the Indians continued to own the land.) Maldonado was born in Salamanca and achieved fame as the luckiest of the conquistadores. For helping to capture Atahualpa he was given a cavalryman’s reward (7,760 gold doubloons and 362 marcos of silver). As a gambler with dice he had soon won twice that amount in his spare time. After the murder of Atahualpa, when one of the Inca’s despairing and beautiful sister/wives wanted to be buried alive with her brother/ husband, as was the custom, Pizarro instead gave her to Maldonado with the intention of cheering her up. Maldonado also won a major share of the loot taken from Topa Inca’s palace. And soon after being awarded the fief of Andahuayalas he chanced upon several bars of silver, which had apparently strayed from a nearby Inca centre for smelting silver, gold and copper ore in wind-ovens.
When Maldonado died in 1565 he was widely regarded as a saint – though not by the Indians of Andahuayalas, on whom he had inflicted every abuse possible under the encomienda system. As an encomendero, he was not allowed to live on his estate and the Indians had to carry his ‘tribute’ to his town house in Cuzco. Pizarro kept his followers together in European communities where they formed an effective militia; and this suited the conquistadores, who had no wish to be isolated in such places as Andahuayalas. It was, however, part of the deal that encomenderos subsidised priests who did live among the Indians, busily converting them to Christianity – if necessary by intimidation. The greedy clerics sent to Andahuayalas by Maldonado have bequeathed to this area a tradition of implacable anti-clericism.
The two miles from Talavera to Andahuayalas are tarred and made hideous by what seemed to us a constant stream of fast motor traffic. Beneath the tar lie the firm foundations of the Incas’ Royal Road to Cuzco; Andahuayalas was an important tambo with enormous lodging-houses and storehouses of which, alas! nothing remains. By Andean standards this is a built-up area where many newish casas look brash between tree-bounded fields of Alf, oats, maize and cane. It is also brutally hot, despite being at 9,700 feet. But we cheered up when we came to the outskirts of the town on its high ridges, surrounded by smooth-crested, forested mountains.
Like Talavera, Andahuayalas has a friendly aura. While I looked for a hotel with a corral Rachel sat beside a munching Juana on the pavement of a narrow street off the Plaza de Armas. When I returned to report failure I could see from a distance that Rachel was jumping up and down with excitement and grinning all over her face. She had discovered, from a chatty passer-by, that two Irish priests minister to the spiritual needs of Andahuayalas and live in a house overlooking the Plaza. Not having talked to a gringo for six weeks – since leaving Chavin – she was delirious at the prospect of meeting compatriots. And when we introduced ourselves to Fathers Des and Bernie, five minutes later, the smallness of the world was demonstrated yet again. Bernie – almost incredibly – is first cousin to our butcher in the tiny Irish town of Lismore.
Des has been here ten years and speaks fluent Spanish and Quechua; Bernie arrived only a week ago and is still suffering slightly from culture shock. At once Des set about organising a corral: not an easy task, but eventually Juana came to rest in the back yard of a new casa belonging to a young clerk in the Municipality. Moreover, permission was given for her to graze all day on the long, lush churchyard grass – and it’s a big churchyard. We had eyed this grazing coveteously on our arrival in the Plaza: by now we tend to view all vegetation through the eyes of a mule.
While we were wolfing cakes and coffee in the Presbytery dining-room – neat, bright and spotless – I suddenly became conscious of our quite indescribable filthiness and smelliness. No doubt our hosts did too: they soon suggested that we might like to use their hot showers. There was a Jekyll and Hyde touch about the Murphys Before and After that visit to the bano … (My new slacks, which fitted perfectly when bought in Jauja, now need a belt.) We then booked into the Gran Hotel, almost next door to the Presbytery and snootily described by The South American Handbook as ‘basic’. We reckon it’s pretty luxurious for fifty pence a night. Rachel has the bed and I’m happy with the floor. Most important of all, there’s a table and chair; a table to write on is the one home-comfort I do miss.
While Rachel cavorted around the town with Bernie – she is blatantly exultant about getting away from Mamma – I spent the afternoon engaged in deadly combat with the local bank. I have deliberately omitted my previous encounters with Peruvian banks. These institutions carry inefficiency, irrationality, xenophobia and sheer stupidity to the furthest extremes – and then some way beyond. No one who has not dealt with them would believe me if I described the simplest transaction within their portals. Suffice it to say that changing one cheque took three hours and forty-seven minutes. I emerged feeling that it couldn’t be true, that I must have been playing a part in some ham production of a poorly-scripted skit on Latin America.
As we supped with our new friends Rachel and I caught ourselves gabbling incoherently and repeatedly interrupting each other – not characteristic behaviour, but this escape from our own company has quite unbalanced us. We have decided to spend four nights here; Juana badly needs a fattening rest. Also, 10 December is Rachel’s tenth birthday and she has earned a real birthday party, complete with cake and Irish guests, instead of a tin of sardines and a mug of cold water on some mountain ledge.
Andahuayalas. 8 December
This is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and therefore a Peruvian public holiday. (The Blessed Virgin Mary is Commander-in-Chief of the Peruvian Armed Forces.) At 6.15 a.m. an enthusiastic brass band lured us onto the Plaza where a group of dancers, wearing scarlet 18th-century military uniforms, was performing by the church gate. Accompanying them were two men, one dressed as a campesino woman, the other carrying a long pole with which he repeatedly tried to lift the ‘woman’s’ skirts – not how we celebrate the Virgin’s feasts in Ireland … But that primitive comedy – there were howls of laughter from the crowd as the ‘woman’ indignantly leaped away from the pole – perfectly sums up popular religion in the Andes. Outside the church door one of the parish’s most precious treasures, a two-foot statue of the Virgin wearing a brocade, jewel-encrusted gown and standing on a globe covered in gilt paper, had been placed on a table to welcome worshippers to her Fiesta Mass. Then another, less bejewelled statue was borne across the Plaza on a gilded stand by a sallow, shrivelled elderly woman wearing a sodality badge and a solemn expression of concentrated piety. I couldn’t help feeling that the Virgin would much prefer the skirt-lifting campesinos. As the town’s middle-class mestizo citizens approached the church the dancers and their followers indulged in much teasing horseplay – running away with ladies’ mantillas and trying to trip up sedate gentlemen. A few people were tolerantly amused and tossed soles to the campesinos but the majority made plain their contempt for these uncouth gambols. Christianity is not a unifying factor in the Andes. Yet one is aware of its importance on certain occasions and of the sincerity of the participants, however they may choose to express their fervour.
The Indians who live within reach of Church influence are usually very pious, and very superstitious, and the whole ‘saint cult’ – especially the Marian cult – is to them of the utmost importance. Yet the church here was recently redecorated, out of his own pocket, by a rich American priest who insisted on reducing the numbers of statues displayed by way of stamping out ‘saint cults’. One is appalled by such crassness. The notions fostered by Vatican II have no relevance here. To the campesinos Christianity is of value only as a comfort. It is not a system of sanctions that raises their moral tone, or a system of philosophy that shapes their intellectual life, or a social service that looks after their educational and medical needs. If you deprive them of their saint cults, what have they left? They cherish their garish statues as friends. A favourite is a sitting statue of Christ, Lord of Justice. When Peru’s corrupt legal system reduces campesinos to despair they kneel or lie – sometimes for hours on end – before this statue, confiding to it every detail of the inequities inflicted upon their race. I have watched them praying thus and it is a most moving experience. As the statue cannot take action on their behalf they are behaving superstitiously, according to with-it theologians. But who can measure the solace – the psychological benefit – to them? One can see on their faces a relaxation of strain and a smoothing away of grief as they explain everything to the Lord of Justice. OK – so their religion is an opiate. But how can it help them if outsiders try to prune it of ‘idolatry’? It’s cruel nonsense to think in terms of ‘purifying’ their faith, to bring it into line with modern Catholicism, when all their traditions, and their present stage of mental development, are so unlike ours.
Des admits that Indian mental and emotional processes are totally alien to even the most sympathetic outsiders, of whom he himself is obviously one. This comment consoled me. I’ve sometimes wondered if our failure to make personal (heart-to-heart) contact with the Indians is our fault, but I don’t honestly think we can be blamed for it.
Andahuayalas. 9 December
Today when we lunched with Des and Bernie our fellow-guest was an elderly ‘professor’ who has lived for twenty years in Europe and now tries to teach English in the local schools. Her own English is flawless but she is passionately opposed to English being a compulsory subject in Peru. In her own case she says it’s impossible to teach – without adequate materials – classes of 55 or 65, more than half of whom are simultaneously learning Spanish. She remarked (confirming our own observations along the way) that many youngsters now long to go to China, Russia, Eastern Europe or Cuba, rather than to North America. Yet English is still seen as the magic key to escape from Peru. She agreed with me that the national inferiority complex (often hidden behind a screen of chauvinism) is a psychological disorder which, together with a lack of genuine patriotism, or sense of nationhood, makes a chicken and egg puzzle. In her view an allied problem, common to all the Andean countries, is an obsessional mutual mistrust which prevents communities (not to mention the various regions and races) from working together and makes it almost impossible to run the Co-ops efficiently. Des interpreted the lack of hospitality as an extension of this mistrust: campesinos won’t admit unknown gringoes to their homes lest we might steal. A shattering thought; I would never have arrived at that explanation.
This morning Bernie paid his first visit to the local jail, where remand prisoners are held, and was pleasantly surprised. Six men share a small clean cell, no more crowded than many campesino hovels, and each has a comfortable bunk. Some of these men have been waiting three or four years to be tried, usually for theft. A minority are wife-beaters who have been denounced by their victim. Often the wives regret, when it’s too late, having complained about husbands who must then be fed by their families for an indefinite period – which may involve frequent difficult journeys from distant villages. The prisoners cook for themselves and those few who are neglected by their families are looked after by the rest. Tools and looms are allowed and the men do much wood-work, leather-work and weaving and may sell their products and keep the profits. It all sounds unexpectedly humane, apart from the fundamental snag that someone not yet proved guilty of a comparatively trivial crime can spend up to five years in jail awaiting trial.
We watched a pathetic campesino funeral this afternoon. The rough plank coffin held the body of a 13-year-old girl, the fifth TB victim in her family. Even in death there is no equality for Peruvian Christians. Poor corpses are buried in graves marked only by simple wooden crosses. Rich corpses reside above ground in their individual apartments in what we call ‘Death Villages’. A macabre form of protection racketeering is associated with this distinction. Families must regularly pay rent for coffin-space in a Death Village and, should the payments lapse, their relative is buried: a threat calculated to unnerve the most tight-fisted as it is believed that moved bones provoke a spirit to chronic restlessness.
Andahuayalas. 10 December
Rachel should remember her tenth birthday. This is Sunday and Des advised us to attend a Quechuan sung Mass. Musically this was a most moving experience which in an odd way – quite inexplicable – made me feel closer to the Indians than I ever have before.
The church was less than quarter full; its interior looks bare and un-Peruvian as a result of the restorations and reforms of that insensitive American priest. Like most large Peruvian churches it has a Treasury in which are locked precious statues, crucifixes, relics and other objects ofsilver and gold, often heavily bejewelled, and also trashy plaster ornaments which are equally valued by the pious for their religious significance. Recently there have been many robberies from Peruvian church treasuries, but it’s a point of honour (or superstition) that no one robs from his own parish church.
Last Sunday Des organised for the first time a collection during Mass. But the locals see no reason why they should contribute to the support of the clergy or the upkeep of the church building, while apparently receiving nothing in return. So the total number of soles donated came to less than £1.50. Yet Peruvians of all classes willingly pay cash for services rendered: a special Mass, a baptism, wedding or funeral. Indeed, they insist on paying, apparently feeling that without a financial sacrifice on their part the magic won’t work. This shocks Des and Bernie, which is to their credit – though surprising, because Irish clergy have always expected payment, even from the poor, for performing their priestly duties.
John Hemming has noted, ‘There were many fine, conscientious priests in Peru, and the monastic orders produced the humanitarians who agitated so tirelessly for the welfare of the natives … In the sixteenth century, as now, the only outsider who cared for the natives and devoted his life to them was often the priest’. Yet the encomienda system meant that men like Diego Maldonado could choose priests of their own ilk to serve their own purposes. The priest was the only Spaniard of any consequence legally permitted to live among the Indians and too often he became a third oppressor, emulating the encomendero and the curaca. In addition to all their other extortions, many clergy requisitioned Indian women as concubines. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala complained, ‘the curates and parish priests, from the concubines at their disposal, produce dozens of children, increasing the number of mestizos. There are priests who have up to twenty children’. The pattern established then continues to influence Indian attitudes four centuries later. It was generally accepted that Peruvians became priests so that they could own land, use cheap labour and abuse their religious powers to acquire considerable wealth. So the average Peruvian boy, whether Indian or mestizo, still instinctively identifies the Church with a bullying, exclusive Establishment which he couldn’t join even if he wished to.
We’d been looking forward to a mild shopping spree here but the local shops are poorly stocked for such a big town in such a rich farming district. Merchants are afraid to order goods that their customers may no longer be able to afford and today it took us over an hour to find a cake – any kind of cake – for the birthday party. And our food-box has been replenished only with the too-familiar buns, noodles and tinned sardines; no honey, cheese or even soup-cubes. Yet excellent meals are served at the friendly Mercado ‘restaurant’ where we always have breakfast.
Everyone seemed to enjoy this evening’s party in a large, grotty, ill-lit restaurant where there was only one other customer. The service was appalling, probably because the restaurant owners are anti-clerical. But our meal of steak, onions and chips, though not a novelty, was appetisingly cooked. The bottle of Peruvian wine I discovered yesterday in a dusty shop was quite disgusting, and it also required courage to swallow Rachel’s hard-won sponge-cake. But the symbolism of a birthday cake obviously mattered more to her than the taste. When she had retired we washed that taste away with rum and coke, an unlikely mixture to which I have become mildly addicted for lack of anything better.