by Stafford, Ed
We visited some of the major cities along the route by boat and by plane in order to make some contacts (police, expats, local government) and to drop off supplies that we could use when we eventually walked back through. We finally arrived in Lima, Peru’s capital, in late March and with the help of a very friendly English-speaking Peruvian called Marlene managed to acquire fifty-two maps from the National Geographical Institute of Peru and two nine-month extended visas (that later turned out to be illegal) from the Ministry of Interior. We waved the lovely Marlene goodbye from the rear window of an overnight bus and adjusted the seats to near horizontal. Our morning destination was to be the coastal holiday town of Camaná from where we intended to start walking from the Pacific Ocean, up and over the Andes in search of the furthest source of the Amazon.
Full of diazepam and having slept for about twelve hours, I awoke to Luke digging me in the ribs and pointing out of the window. Through drug-hazed eyes we gazed with overt amusement and covert apprehension at what proved to be a slight oversight on our part. The sun was still low in the sky, casting long shadows across endless sand dunes. ‘Have you ever been to the desert before, Ed?’ chuckled Luke as we both started to mock our own incompetence. ‘Perhaps we should take a hat,’ I suggested, ‘some sun screen, too, and maybe a bottle of water.’ There wasn’t a shrub in sight.
In Camaná we checked into a large pink concrete hotel with an empty swimming pool. No Westerner ever came here – it may have been a tourist destination at one point, but by March 2008 I doubt that anyone would have wanted to spend their precious vacation in this dusty outpost. That evening I couldn’t resist going down to the water’s edge and seeing the Pacific Ocean, where we would physically start. I can’t remember why, but Luke didn’t come with me. I got a mototaxi the four kilometres and asked it to wait for me while I took in every detail of the dirty, stony beach, the sewage outlet from the town and the flocks of gulls and vultures.
Drabness aside, I became quite emotional. I was here, at the start of our journey, after years of dreaming and fifteen months of planning. Looking inland, though, I was more than a little apprehensive about the barren hills that loomed behind the town in a haze of dust. I decided to go back to the hotel and study our new maps to see if we were going to be able to follow a watercourse all the way through the desert and up into the Andes.
In general whenever I allowed myself to think about the journey as a whole I could get myself worked up in seconds: partly overexcited about the sheer adventure, partly overwhelmed by what we’d confidently claimed was possible.
First, we needed to meet up with Oz. We had decided initially to walk without a guide. Because of me being ex-military and both of us being expedition leaders we decided we were quite capable of conducting this trip ourselves. But the closer the journey came the more I started debating about whether my Spanish was really good enough, and what I was going to do when we came to settlements in the Andes where only Quechua was spoken, not to mention the other thirty-two languages we might expect in Peru alone. Luke had only a few words of Spanish. Before we had left, a friend had put us in touch with a young Peruvian called Oswaldo Teracaya Rosaldo. Oz was an aspiring guide, twenty-four years old, and he reportedly spoke good Quechua, Spanish and English. Over two short emails I negotiated a wage of seven American dollars a day (bartered up from five) and told him to meet us in Camaná on 30 March 2008. Electronically, at least, we had a guide.
Having lived in Argentine Patagonia, I’d worked with many South American mountain guides before. I was imagining a real character who stood tall and tanned with rugged stubble, a weathered face of experience and a sharp wit. The boy who turned up was stick-thin, had a pudding-basin haircut and was nervously overpolite to the point that his character was invisible. Dressed in a red England football shirt and red nylon tracksuit bottoms, he had virtually no kit and as little English. I took a deep breath and looked for the positives. My Spanish was better than his English so that meant we’d end up speaking in Spanish, and as a consequence mine would improve. Luke spoke to Oz mostly in English – using me as a translator for all but the most basic communication.
We sent Oz out with a fistful of money to buy himself a jacket and some boots. He had worked with that friend of mine the year previously and so I was still fairly confident he would know what he was doing. He returned with a fake leather racing driver’s jacket with mock sponsors’ badges sewn all over it. It was hilarious, neither waterproof nor warm: I started to wonder just how much mountain experience this boy had.
Luke and I divided the communal kit between the three of us and we watched as Oz stuffed everything into the new canoe bag that we’d given him to keep his kit dry and then tried to force that heavy lump into his backpack. Luke and I looked at each other, worried. You only have to attempt this impossible feat once to realise how absurd it is. He didn’t even know how to pack his bag so Luke stepped forward and tactfully gave him a few pointers.
In truth, although things weren’t perfect I wasn’t too worried. All we really needed was someone who spoke Quechua and who we could communicate with. We had that and we could teach Oz the skills he needed to walk with us. Most importantly, he was keen and excited about this new venture. It had been quite a courageous step for him to travel at his own cost to the coast of Peru to meet two foreigners and so I decided that Oz was OK – and that we were lucky to have a Peruvian to walk with.
On April Fool’s Day, the day we’d decided – bizarrely – to leave, we were not ready. We’d not cut the maps down or made many of the last-minute tweaks that were necessary. Over eggs for breakfast we decided to delay our departure by a day, give ourselves some more time and leave, composed, the following day.
On the morning of 2 April we came down to breakfast, this time with our huge rucksacks. It was the first time we’d carried them with ten days of food in each one and we were shocked by the weight. We didn’t have scales at the time but, on reflection, I would say they were about 48–50 kilograms. Oz’s was less because he and his pack were a lot smaller, but his must have been close to 35 kilograms. Anyone who has hiked with a backpack will know that this weight is clearly daft, especially if you are planning a year-long (or longer) walk across an entire continent.
We knew all this but the problem was that we’d fallen into the trap of thinking about this as an eighteen-month expedition rather than a three-week walk up to Nevado Mismi. We had committed to blogging – which meant a Macbook, a BGAN and a digital camera apiece. We had two tracking devices that were designed to update our position automatically on the website’s map – both about the size and weight of a household brick. We wanted to film a documentary so we both carried an HD video camera, five spare batteries, forty mini DV tapes and a basic cleaning kit. We had been given a day and a half’s training in how to film by Ginger TV. We were writing a book, so we had several waterproof ‘Rite in the Rain’ journals and special all-weather pens. We wanted to be able to do radio interviews and to have the ability to make emergency calls, so we had a second BGAN with spare battery and a telephone ancillary to make it work as a satellite phone.
Every bit of electrical kit had a charger; most had cables to connect one to the other. Each piece of kit was in individual rubber dry bags with handfuls of silica sachets to combat moisture.
This was all apart from the kit we needed to do the walk, such as tents, clothes and navigation equipment. Every opportunity or idea that had been put to us we’d agreed to. ‘What’s another 800 grams?’ we had smiled innocently. It added up to a phenomenal weight and we were now reeling at what we had committed to doing.
We said goodbye to the hotel and went out into the street to flag down two mototaxis to ferry us down to the beach. I went ahead with two of the packs in the first taxi while Luke and Oz followed in the next with the remaining pack. I was brimming with excitement and even the weight of the packs couldn’t stop me from feeling the sheer exuberance of starting our adventure.
We were here. We did
our ‘final thoughts’ interviews to the camera, and waded into the ocean in our jungle boots to make the journey a true crossing of the entire continent on foot.
Ocean behind us, we walked up the beach, feet sinking into the pebbles under the immense weight and started to exchange looks with each other. We were panting after 100 metres; after 400 we were shattered. We had to walk four kilometres back to Camaná to get to the start of the river that snaked up through the hills and as we approached the town again the sun was already high overhead. We were conscious of everybody pointing at us – the size of our packs was the spectacle – and we tried to walk nonchalantly as if we always did this sort of thing and waved at the laughing masses. As we reached the hotel I had the idea that we could upload the footage of the start and a blog from the hotel’s wireless internet while we still had the luxury of electricity.
Utterly exhausted, and in a slight state of shock, it was an excuse that we all leaped at and by the time we’d dumped our packs we thought it was silly not to have lunch there, too. We blogged over lunch and at about two in the afternoon the sun was unbearable outside. ‘Shall we stay here another night and leave tomorrow?’ I ventured. Again the suggestion was taken up, albeit somewhat sheepishly, as we’d hoped to get well out of Camaná on day one and we’d only done the four kilometres from the beach. We ordered a beer.
‘Tomorrow,’ I told myself, ‘we’ll wake up with our expedition heads on.’ We had precious little idea of what really lay ahead and it felt now as if we were dithering. We had packed food for ten days – would we need that much or would we need more? Would there be shops ahead? We had a handful of scanty descriptions from various locals but we weren’t too bothered. The unknown was part of the thrill.
The following morning we packed again and left the air-conditioned hotel for the last time. We’d decided that we’d start in the dark as we’d felt guilty about the previous day’s efforts and our packs actually felt manageable as we strode through the empty streets in the cool early hours of the morning.
The day took us clear of Camaná and immediately into a wide dusty valley with a small river and an equally dusty road to follow inland. We took a break on the hour for ten minutes and kept going as the day grew hotter and hotter and our packs seemed heavier and heavier, the straps cutting into our unconditioned shoulders. There is no doubt at all we weren’t fit, but my take on it was that we would surely get fit fairly quickly.
On the map we spotted a village that we wanted to reach on our first night so we put our heads down and walked. Late in the afternoon we arrived at the dusty settlement, receiving strange outsider looks from locals. Half-closed doors quietly shut and children ran away. We asked if there was a shop and were pointed in the direction of a small mud and stick house which sold fizzy pop and sugary biscuits. We drank litres of the cheap colourful fluid and asked the short, kind shopkeeper if she knew of somewhere we could stay.
‘Claro que si!’ she smiled. ‘You can put your tents up in our backyard.’ She led us back through the dark shop into a fenced-off compound with chickens and livestock.
I think because it was the first example of such generosity this night particularly stuck in my mind. It was exactly how I’d hoped the walk would be; turn up in a place, meet some kind people and stay with them in whatever they had to offer. This first night was a yard full of pigs and chickens and we erected our three small one-man tents. We were utterly shattered from our first day of walking and so decided that we should attempt to shed some weight from our packs.
The lady and her family thus received English novels, bird guides, binoculars, a machete, a compass, spare clothes, daysacks, fishing kit, batteries, extra knives and much more. I was embarrassed at the amount of kit we had brought ‘just in case’ and it made me realise we’d allowed the magnitude of the expedition to get to us. The family, however, were clearly thrilled and argued good-naturedly over who would get what.
The next day we packed up our tents, and our packs were noticeably lighter, perhaps now around 42 kilograms each for Luke and me. Again we slogged through the midday heat but were struggling pathetically, sweat pouring off us, not making much progress. Luke’s watch was showing readings of 50 degrees Celsius in the direct sunlight. His boots were too small and he had already developed quite big blisters so he had no option but to switch to wearing his Crocs (plastic sandals).
The majority of the first week was over flat terrain but the heat and the weight took their toll on us physically. The Majes Valley was wide and fertile and our initial worries about the desert were so far unjustified. The river itself was ice-cold as it was fed straight from the glaciers of the Andes and we trekked through fields of green crops surrounded by brown, dusty mountains.
Then we reached what seemed to be the end of the road. The river was wide and strong and cut right across the valley floor. We had no rafts with us as we’d put them in storage in Cusco when we’d entered South America, ready for the jungle, and so our way forward seemed blocked. However, an old man appeared as if on cue and instructed us to follow him. He led us up the steep valley side following a narrow path along its wall and the drop to our left was both steep and close. We hadn’t really quizzed the man as to how long this detour would take from the valley bottom and he just kept on climbing. Then he turned, pointed us vaguely in a direction up the valley, and headed back to his village. Aware we had been led into something of a situation, we had no option but to attempt to follow the faint path as the light started to fade.
Head torches came out soon after 6 p.m. and we were stumbling our way through the dark in search of the next elusive settlement. Poor Oz only had a windup torch that we had bought back in England. We laughed at each other to hide the fact that we were all quite nervous about finding a flat place to camp with water. The valley side was loose with rocks and we dislodged several to send them crashing down the hillside. If one of us had fallen from the path we would have been in serious trouble as the drop to our left was precipitous and the path was no more than a thin goats’ track contouring along the steep valley side. Behind me I could hear a sporadic whirring as Oz wound up his torch.
We continued with a feeling of annoyance that we’d let ourselves get into this situation until eventually we started to descend and then heard a dog barking in the distance. We looked into the gloom and saw a dim twinkling light. As we approached the remote dwelling we all hoped that the people would be kind and let us put our tents up.
I later found out it’s generally not advisable to turn up at places after dark in rural Peru as people are far more suspicious of those who travel at night. Meanwhile, I approached a house and as warmly as possible called ‘Buenas noches!’ – good evening. An old woman came out and asked us who we were and what we were doing. When we explained she said that some other backpackers had just come through here – surely we must know them. ‘How long ago was it?’ we asked. ‘About two years ago,’ she replied.
Not only did she and her son allow us to erect our tents on a pitch of dirt outside, but they also invited us to sit around their fire inside their tin-roofed shack. We were handed large mugs of a hot, sweet liquid that was wonderful to drink after our anxious evening on the cliff in the dark. I asked, genuinely fascinated, what the incredible fluid was that I was drinking. The woman smiled back: ‘Tea.’
We were then given huge plates of freshwater shrimps cooked in garlic and butter. They had harvested them that day and Luke, Oz and I wolfed them down with elated disbelief in our eyes. ‘Muchas gracias!’ we repeated over and over. After the meal we put our tents up in the dark and crawled into our sleeping bags with that perfect combination of real tiredness mixed with a full belly and the relief of being in a safe place. We slept well that night under a blanket of warm, generous hospitality.
That same blanket was rather snatched away from our stiff corpses in the morning when Oswaldo translated the enormous bill that the lady expected us to pay. Having eaten and slept well we paid, of course, despite knowing that the p
rice was ridiculous; it just meant that in future we had to have that awkward conversation about money before we received any hospitality. If not, we would very soon run out of cash.
One indication of how few people came up this valley was several uncovered Inca cemeteries. Neither Luke nor I even knew that Incas practised mummification until we literally stumbled upon a mummified corpse in the middle of our path and then realised that bodies and heads with hair and skin still on them were scattered across the hillside. It was fascinating and chilling in equal measure; we realised that they must have been exposed relatively recently after a landslide.
The northern end of the Majes Valley led into the mouth of the famous Colca Canyon. Whereas valleys have an open, picturesque feel to them, canyons are not quite as simple to walk through the bottom of. The Colca Canyon is the second deepest in the world – second only to the Apurímac – which we would walk down a couple of months later. Both canyons are, at their deepest, a staggering three kilometres deep from riverbed to mountaintop. Often in the Colca Canyon the river fills the entire gorge between the two vertical cliffs. There are no paths and in some places passing is impossible on foot so we had to plan our route via the mountaintops on either side. The problems with choosing a route along the sides of the canyon over the mountains were that we would have little access to water and we would have to climb and descend thousands of metres every time we crossed a tributary canyon that entered the Colca. But there was no other option.
After our relatively remote adventure in our first week, the northern end of the Majes Valley was starkly different from the sparse stick and mud shacks we had seen. It was connected to the Peruvian road network and suddenly we were back in places with restaurants and hotels and even a tourist information centre. A very pretty girl who worked in the latter, called Señorita Mabel, helped us plan our route through the Colca. She had contacts in the various remote villages in the mountains surrounding the canyon and could contact them and let them know we were coming. How would she do this with villages that are so isolated that to reach them you have to walk or go by donkey? She’d called them on their cell phones, of course.