Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca; Arequipa and the Colca Canyon; Lake Titicaca; and then Cusco and the Sacred Valley. We had adventured for between two and three weeks in each of these four areas and although it had been difficult at times it had often enough been a more than moderately wonderful experience. Now we went back to Lima and set off by bus on a leisurely overland journey from that capital city to Quito, the capital of Ecuador. It took about three weeks during which we had some memorable times, including one of the most exciting moments of all our travels.
In the bus station at Lima we had a new insight into Peruvian culture. We had to wait a while for our bus and watched television on a large overhead screen. Most people in Peru are of mixed race, that of the native Americans (for South Americans the word America describes their continent and they deplore the use of it to mean the United States) mixed with some blood of the Spanish invaders, or they are pure blooded native people. They all look Peruvian; that was our experience in the two months we had been there. But there are a few people of more or less pure Spanish blood who, of course, look rather European, and who form much of the wealthy and powerful ruling elite. We never met them. In the bus station we sat among ordinary Peruvians and watched Peruvian television, soap operas and news programmes and adverts, in which all the participants were of European blood. People from another world. What does that tell you about that society? I’m not sure, but it isn’t good.
Then we saw a cow fall from the sky, but that was after we had got on the bus and that was on television too. (I mentioned it in chapter five.) We travelled northwards to Pacosmayo on the Pacific coast. It turned out to be a strange town with weird birds over the sea including pelicans, turkey vultures, which are as ugly as those two words added together might incline you to imagine, and a bird we didn’t know the name of but if I call it the greater cormorant kite you’ll get an idea of how it looks. There were a few fishing boats, the world’s most dangerously decrepit pier, and some big waves which lured the occasional surfer including an American, oops, North American who we met over breakfast.
Next stop was Cajamarca when we got stuck in our hotel and later trapped in a shop by a massive demonstration against an American, oops, North American, mining company. The streets echoed to the cry El Pueblo, unido, jamas sera vencido (the people, united, will never be defeated). The speeches in the town square got more and more heated but then the thing fizzled out. Being rich foreigners we kept a low profile throughout.
On the bus to Celandin there was an Englishman, let’s call him Kevin, with his recently acquired Taiwanese girlfriend. They weren’t getting on well to the point that when he got off, she stayed on. He was another accident prone guy. It turned out that they had been robbed at gunpoint on a night bus a few days previously. He had his thousand pound laptop stolen and went to the police station to report its loss to be able to claim on the insurance. They asked to see his passport and it was then that his girlfriend discovered that he had pointlessly lied about his age to her, taking ten off his forty something years. While he phoned the insurance company to find that his computer wasn’t covered she was able to think about his lie. She thought some more during the course of the day with predictable consequences. All this he told us with great frankness and honesty; after all we were his friends, with whom he had a different standard of truthfulness to that which he practised with a lover.
It was in Celandin that we saw a man walking a dog on a lead, a strange occurrence that we hadn’t witnessed for a long time. Dogs are allowed to run wild in Peru. In the mornings and evenings they are very active, meeting and greeting friends in the usual unmentionable doggy ways, sometimes hanging out in amiable packs of half a dozen or more. In the heat of the day they are asleep and you might have to step over one in a doorway or on the street. They are never taken for walks on leads. When we got closer to this particular dog we saw that it was, in fact, a pig. This was quite normal; animals of all sorts are taken out in the morning and tethered to graze or root on some local patch of dirt.
Animals are much more a part of daily life in South America in the same way that we saw in India and Nepal. In a later blog post I mention: cows, sheep, goats, hens, pigs, llamas, alpacas, donkeys, horses, guinea pigs and dogs seen on a single walk in the countryside. And we saw a man trying to get on the bus with a cockerel under his arm. But these are modern times; the bird was required to travel in with the luggage at the back. We heard it crowing from time to time along the way.
We were in this relatively little visited area of Peru because we wanted to visit a place called Kuélap, a mighty hilltop fortress of the pre-Inca people known as the Chachapoyas, the people of the clouds. We met the Chachapoyas in the form of 200 or so mummified corpses in the museum at Leymebamba. They were mostly skin and bone, tiny figures bound up tightly, their knees pulled up against their chests and arms tucked in close so that their hands covered their faces, mouths open, as if in pain or fear. The museum was funded from abroad and we met a Swedish dentist working there, taking the mummies out of their temperature and humidity controlled room one at a time and determining the age, at death, of each one by examining their teeth. And so we got to see a five hundred year old teenager as close up as you could wish. He had skin but no flesh, teeth but no eyes, and colourless rags that had once been clothes. He didn’t look happy.
Kevin, on the other hand, who we bumped into again at Leymebamba and who came to the museum with us, did seem happier than before. But I noticed that his misfortunes extended to a resemblance to David Cameron. These things can’t be helped.
We found Kuélap difficult to get to, which made it seem a little bit of an adventure. We left Leymabamba early one Sunday morning in a colectivo, a cheap shared taxi which would take us to a place where there was a market that attracted village people from all around. The market was a very busy affair with an earthy character and it sold basic foods and necessities to ordinary people. Then we found a combi, as we had learnt to call the privately run mini-buses, to a road junction at a place called Tingo. It was a low lying place with semi-tropical vegetation and it was very hot. A small road from there wound up and up into the hills for several thousand feet to tiny misty villages and eventually to Kuélap. We hung about awkwardly hoping to maybe hitch a lift. Eventually a rough-looking old taxi with a rough-looking young driver stopped for us. The guy had a mean look, spoke little, and wanted to charge a lot of money. I felt uncomfortable but we took a chance. We had been robbed once before and had met quite a few others that had had the same experience so this was not exactly paranoia on my part, just caution.
We hadn’t gone far before I noticed the guy had a photo of a baby stuck to the dashboard. Straight away my perceptions were completely changed; this was a young newly married man trying hard to make enough money to feed the beginnings of a family. A nice guy. And when we came to realise how far and how high and what a rough road we were to travel with him that afternoon it didn’t seem so very expensive after all.
Maria, where we stayed for the next two nights, was a pretty village in a stupendous setting. It rested near the top of a ridge thousands of feet above the valley floor in the greenest landscape we had seen in Peru. There were lush fields of grass with cows grazing, ploughed fields of rich dark soil, and plenty of woodlands on the steepest slopes. A patchwork of different colours and textures all appearing and disappearing as clouds and shafts of sunlight drifted over the land. It reminded us of Wales but with a many times greater range of altitude and with every tree and shrub and flower and bird and insect different from those we would see at home. There were, for example, a number of hummingbird species, some with gorgeous colours, some with long tails. We came across their thumb-sized nests in the vegetation alongside the road. And in the evening we saw fireflies looking like hundreds of tiny florescent lights switching on and off as they drifted about among the trees. There were towering clouds and rainbows and, of course, wonderful sunrises and sunsets. And rain, plenty of rain.
We found a small guesthouse in Maria with a concrete patio at the back from which we had a view across the valley. It was mid-afternoon and we had time to visit Kuélap, two hours walk up a small country road. Kuélap is just a massive stone wall with few ruined circular buildings inside but it’s on top of a very high hill in a dramatically beautiful landscape. There were very few people there and we enjoyed clambering about enough to go back the next day. Flic described it thus:
After breakfast today we set out to walk or cadge a lift to Kuélap again. We walked a little then a lorry came and gave us a lift. The cab was full so we were told to climb up a ladder on the side. Richard went first and jumped down inside the lorry and stood up so he could see. I went up and sat on some planks of wood above the driver’s cab. It was a brilliant way to travel, head out in the air, landscape falling away below. I had to duck for branches occasionally. Got to Kuélap rather elated.
At first we were the only people there. It’s quite overgrown and mysterious with so much hanging grey lichen and big red bromeliads. We watched lizards and sky and landscape. Then a bunch of Peruvians came and made a lot of noise and took photos of each other and then took photos of us.
And I photographed them high on the edge of the fortress, the modern day People of the Clouds, silhouetted against a stormy sky. They were having more fun than their ancestors in Leylebamba, wore brightly coloured clothes, and weren’t fleshless at all. Far from it.
Just as we were leaving the site we came across a tourist group who had just arrived in a minibus. I recognised one of them and called out his name, Kevin. He didn’t want to talk to us much. He had clearly got over the loss of one girlfriend and was in animated conversation with a new potential conquest. I wished him luck.
Kuélap is sometimes talked of as the Machu Pichu of the north. Although it’s not so impressive it is in a similarly astounding hilltop setting. But walking and hitching along a quiet country lane and being alone there in the quiet of the morning is a much happier and rewarding experience than being part of the tourist mass at Machu Pichu. And Maria is an unspoilt village with a meaning in the landscape and a community connected to the land itself. It was a good place to be at the end of our visit to Peru.
A few days later we were on the border of Ecuador at a remote place called La Bolsa. We reached it in a beaten-up shared taxi driving down a dirt road through lush steamy tropical forest and farmland. Across the river, on the Ecuadorian side, the track was rougher and wound up a very steep slope through the trees. La Bolsa wasn’t even a village, just a few buildings and a couple of cafés. There was no traffic unless you counted the two cows wandering back and forth. We crossed a smart new concrete bridge and got our passports stamped in a little office. They didn’t have a computer on which to log our arrival so a couple of weeks later we had difficulty leaving the country on account of not having officially arrived. We sat in the shade outside a café for three hours waiting for transport to the nearest town. It wasn’t completely uneventful; every now and then a flying ant would fall to the dusty ground and get pecked up by a chicken.
Transport, when it arrived, turned out to be a ranchero, a truck with seats fitted onto the back, open sided but with a canvas awning to keep off the sun. It was a fine way to travel. Our first few hours in Ecuador were spent driving along an exceedingly poor dirt road cut into steep slopes of something that looked more like mud than rock. We could see that it must be very prone to landslides and that choosing that route at that time of year, the beginning of the rainy season, was taking a chance. It really was a road less travelled.
When we arrived at the bus station outside Zumba, our first Ecuadorian town, a man offered me something to eat out of a plastic container. I had a few of what looked like currants but which were crunchy and salty. They seemed nice until I looked more closely at them. They were flying ants, without their wings and fried but ants all the same. I didn’t feel like eating any more.
Ecuador didn’t make such a great impression on me after Peru. The landscapes are less dramatic, the people less colourful. I’m not going to say much about Vilcabamba, the weird place where people enjoy great longevity. I blogged: weird because there are a lot of middle-aged Americans who have moved into the area and weirder because of the sacred healing mystic nonsense people who are here in great numbers. The locals seem disgruntled but some of them are friendly. We walked along a dried up river bed looking at birds and fantastic butterflies and were interrupted in our nature studies by a young man called Charles Darwin; he showed us his I.D. to prove it. We have already met a Victor Hugo here so we weren´t too surprised. He asked us for twenty dollars but was very polite when we refused.
I’m not going to say much about Riobamba, where we stayed in: a small hostal with rooms set around a courtyard garden. Last night, as the light faded, we became less aware of the dozen or so gold painted concrete statues and other paraphernalia as our attention focused on the illuminated father Christmases and snowmen, the lights suspended in the trees, the hundreds of little red and green moving lights, like glow-worms, projected somehow onto the vegetation, and the elevator music coming from speakers hidden in the trees. Someone came in and I found myself saying ‘buenos noches, feliz navidad’. Good evening, Happy Christmas.
I’m really not going to say much about the day trip we made from Riobamba with an adventure tour company. We were taken up the side of the volcano called Chimborazo in a van with bikes on the back. After a short walk to a refuge at high altitude we were kitted up with waterproof jackets and trousers, balaclavas, cycle helmets, knee pads and elbow pads. Then we set off for what should have been a rather wonderful ride down something between six and seven thousand feet on dirt tracks and then metalled roads. The bikes had the brakes set up differently from at home with the back brake (essential for going downhill on a loose surface) on the right, which was almost impossible for me to use. I had to be picked up by the van and driven back. The weather was rough too with rain, hail, sleet and snow. We picked Flic up further down the hill.
And I’m not going to say much about travelling in a lechero, a milk truck: just a truck with three large plastic barrels in the back and all the other available space filled with standing passengers. Every now and then we stopped and someone would pass up a plastic bottle or bucket of fresh milk and it would be poured through a strainer into one of the barrels.
I will say a few words about our stay in Baños. First I’ll quote Flic:
Baños is a small holiday kind of town. It’s cheerful and has two plazas and a church with big paintings of disasters like an eruption of the volcano above the town and people fleeing, a flood and fire. A small picture of the virgin is in every picture. Some tradition. Around the church are stalls selling religious souvenirs and plastic inflatable ducks and rubber rings as there are many pools here filled with hot water from the volcano. We walked with our backpacks looking for somewhere nice to stay in. We found a hotel with my name on, El Eden.
Baños is surrounded by high hills and a volcano so as you walk around your eyes are drawn to the tops of the hills and you walk very upright, head held high.
We walked to a bridge over a canyon that led to a road winding up away from the town, trying to get a good view of the volcano. It had been active last April but is quiet now. The last time it erupted was in 2006 and the town had to be evacuated.
Flic and I followed a signpost to a mirador, or viewpoint, and walked along a track until we came to a large house with a sign outside reading soda bar. The building was fairly new, four storeys high, and had a concrete ramp zigzagging up the outside to the top floor. We made our way up the ramp past pots of geraniums and were met on the third storey by a friendly black labrador and on the fourth storey by a man in a wheelchair. He introduced himself as Alfonso and invited us in. The top floor of the house was one big open plan space with a kitchen hidden in the corner, a bar in front, one or two chairs and tables and the rest of the area filled by the curious junk that you might find in an attic. There were windows and sliding doors onto the balcony which ran the width of the building.
Alfonso was a genial smartly dressed man in early middle age. He wheeled himself across the room and opened the door for us all to go onto the balcony. We looked out across the slopes of the valley covered in verdant farmland and orchards and dotted with eucalyptus trees. Below us we could see the gorge that held a broad fast-flowing river, the bridge that crossed it, the small town beyond, and above the town the volcano, Tungurahua, the upper slopes of which were covered in snow. Alfonzo got us some fizzy drinks and told us a little about himself. He had been in an accident twenty years ago at work and since then had played a part in the town council, promoting disabled access among other things. He showed us framed certificates and newspaper cuttings that congratulated him on his achievements. From time to time his dog bumped against us affectionately. Then Alfonso took us down the ramps and showed us the accommodation available, for the place was a guesthouse too. We decided to move up here from the town the next day. It turned out to be a good decision.
We hung out in Baños for a few days. Downstream of the town the gorge deepened and there were a number of impressive waterfalls. We rented bikes and cycled down the busy main road, the famous Route de la Cascades. The bikes were terrible and we ended up stopping a camioneta, a pick-up taxi, to transport us back to town where we managed to get our money back. We decided to tour the waterfalls in true tourist style in something called a chiva, an open-sided truck like a ranchero but with flashing lights and disco music to help us enjoy the natural beauty of our surroundings. We were the only gringos on board as Baños is a big-time resort for Ecuadorans. It was our first experience of South American style tourism, Peru being a less affluent country where people are too busy earning a living to indulge in such things. Everyone on board the chiva had a great time except us. The music was really loud, really awful and it was to me a torture. We did stop and cross the gorge on a little cable car and then later walk down for a close look at a waterfall. But then it was on the truck again in the now fading light and all the way back to town in our very own version of disco hell.
Flic tried out the thermal baths in the town and found herself to be the only pale person in an early morning crowd of brown people. The waters are supposed to be curative and there were a number of sick and disabled people among the bathers. She also shopped for presents as this was one of our final stops before Quito and the flights home. But the real high point of our stay was not a tourist experience but a natural phenomenon that we really hadn’t anticipated.
While we were in Ecuador we experienced proper mountain weather, none of that wall-to-wall sunshine stuff but big towering clouds and heavy showers and rainbows and intermittent bright sun lighting up the hillsides. And so when we heard a rumbling sound one evening we imagined it to be thunder. Its real cause was outside of our experience and beyond our imagination. But I did make a little joke when we turned off the light go to sleep that evening in our room-with-a-view at Alfonso’s. I said wake me up if the volcano starts erupting.
At four in the morning on November the twenty-eighth, 2011, I woke Flic up. I was as excited and happy as I had ever been. Reader, the Earth moved. I was woken by a tremendous roaring sound and the windows were shaking. I leapt out of bed and rushed across the room to look out. It was very dark outside, being well before dawn and a moonless night. Across the valley, above the town, Tungurahua was erupting. Red hot lava was flowing down the slopes of the volcano and huge red hot rocks were flying through the air. We watched individual boulders and counted the seconds before they hit the ground. Some were airborne nine or ten seconds. Is that possible? It’s what I remember. These rocks were travelling up hundreds of feet and we could see them from... I don’t know, five miles away? They were the size of houses? No, maybe not but possibly the size of a car or lorry and each weighing several tons. Those are the sort of forces we’re talking about.
We dressed and went outside to watch, sitting against the wall for about an hour before it began to get light. All the time we waited to hear the sound of sirens and fully expected to see the flow of traffic as the town was evacuated. The mountain would go quiet and then we would hear another great rumble, more lava would flow, more rocks would fly. It was, as they say, compulsive viewing. A marvellous experience.
It was less dramatic in the light of the day. We couldn’t see the red glow of the molten rock but we could see smoke and steam coming off it, a plume of smoke coming out of the mouth of the volcano, and the black marks where the lava had crossed and swept away the snow. The town was quiet. This was, apparently, a minor eruption and no threat to life or livelihood. It was exciting enough for us. In the afternoon we got a lift up the hill behind Alfonso’s and had a great view of the volcano. In the evening we sat outside and watched the show again.
A day later we left Baños and went by bus to Quito, the handsome crime-ridden city that I described earlier. We were there a few days before saying good bye to South America and setting off for home.
Flying across the Atlantic in the night was a strange thing. We were suspended in a thin tube of warm air in a cold empty sky above a cold empty sea, between continents, between time zones, out of this world. I had the opportunity to think of this as I was unable to sleep. Everybody else had their eyes shut and were deep in their dreams. I decided to set my watch to UK time; after all we were going east, rushing to meet the dawn. And so it was that I found myself a day ahead of my companions. They were sound asleep on Friday and I was wide awake on Saturday. South America had been difficult for me. I was pleased to be going home.