Walking the Amazon: 860 Days. The Impossible Task. The Incredible Journey

by Stafford, Ed

  The first mountain village we needed to get to, perched at 2,700 metres above sea level, and 1,800 metres above Señorita Mabel’s tourist information centre, was Uñon. This was a two-day hike and the lovely Mabel asked us if we wanted her to get the villagers from Uñon to send down a man with a donkey to help our ascent. As we had already struggled somewhat we decided that this was quite a good idea as we were about to start doing some serious hills.

  At about this time, Luke’s and my differing approaches to how the expedition should be conducted became apparent. He wanted to enjoy the expedition as much as he could and so the idea of getting a donkey to carry his kit was very appealing. As it was to me I suppose, except I felt that it wasn’t quite right. In my mind I had always imagined us carrying all our own weight in our packs, and so I agreed to the donkey only if it was carrying food and water but we were carrying all our own kit.

  Why? Because we had agreed that this was to be a man-powered expedition and I really felt that was the way I wanted to do it. Explorers of days gone by like Henry Morton Stanley went into Africa with huge teams of locals acting as porters and vast herds of animals to carry everything. I like the fact that modern exploration is about getting your hands dirty and putting the effort in. It’s what sets it aside from simple tourism because the physical feats are massive challenges in themselves. That said, I compromised and agreed to the hiring of the donkey.

  The rendezvous with the animal was organised and instructions had even been sent via Mabel’s cell phone to send down a day’s worth of food on the animal. We consequently climbed the first day relatively fast as we had to carry only a single day’s food. That night, at the proposed donkey rendezvous, we camped and showered beneath an irrigation reservoir. The man-made swimming pool’s glacial contents overflowed via a small stone opening to form a steady torrent of near freezing shower water that cut into our bruised shoulders and made us squeal out loud at the sheer cold force.

  So far we had seen no sign of any donkeys and by the next morning it became apparent that we had been stood up so we breakfasted on the last of our food – a small plate of spaghetti each washed down with raspberry jam – and set off up the hill to Uñon.

  If we had struggled on the flat, going steeply uphill suddenly reduced our pace even more. Each step was an effort and we set ourselves little goals so that we could keep going and stay positive. I’ll just get to that bend, that rock, that cactus. By mid-morning, having climbed several hundred metres on dusty tracks, we met two donkeys and their owner coming down the steep hillside towards us. The climb had been relentless and we were hungry and exhausted and wanted nothing more than to pile our packs on to the donkeys. We greeted the man warmly and he seemed to think that this was a great fun day out. He proudly produced his food, as requested – a bag of dry pasta and a freshly slaughtered chicken. Not exactly what you might have in mind on a steep mountainside but Oz started to come into his own before my very eyes. In a flash the chicken was plucked and diced and frying in garlic on the battered old kerosene stove that Luke cranked into life. The pasta was even toasted before water was added and within forty minutes we were wolfing down huge mouthfuls of filling chicken pasta.

  With newfound strength, we surprised the donkey owner by turning down the offer of putting our packs on his animals and started to trudge slowly up the hillside with them on our backs. Somewhat superfluous now, the old man and the donkeys followed us, but I was glad that Luke, too, felt that he should carry his own pack. The walk to Uñon was incredibly steep but when we did pause for breath we witnessed beautiful Inca ruins and ancient agricultural terraces from a long-dead civilisation.

  We turned into a shallow hanging valley above a steep canyon and were mesmerised by the quaint beauty of Uñon with its neat fields of crops and small clusters of mud-and-stone houses. The climb took a total of ten hours and, thanks to Señorita Mabel, we were greeted warmly by Elard, the village governor. He then took us on a little tour of the village including the bare room in which we were to sleep. The village had no road access but we were amazed to see the Internet in the school as well as mobile phone reception. Everything (satellite dishes, generators, computers and sofas) had been brought in by donkey. There was a pretty pink church overlooking a pleasant plaza with thousands of bees flying in and out of tiny burrows in the dirt floor.

  Elard told us how Uñon was having to adapt as a direct result of climate change. The rains that used to fall for four months of the year now scarcely lasted more than a month and the crops were parched and dry. Livestock was suffering, too, and the villagers had to look to new methods to bring in money. The only way the people could envisage surviving now was to push for an extension of the road network to link them to the outside world and the rest of Peru. If that were to happen, the gold mines that were built by the Spanish and kept working up to the Second World War by the Germans could be reopened and bring in an income. Both Luke and I felt sad that this beautiful, isolated community had to be linked to Peru by road after its centuries of isolation and we also felt privileged to be among the last few people to visit it in its romantic hidden state.

  To cross to the next village, Ayo, we first needed to climb from 2,700 to 4,500 metres to cross a mountain ridge. Our first guide and his donkey having done their stint, we hired another local man, Hector, to accompany us with his animal. The donkey carried the food and water for the journey and Luke’s too small jungle boots. As Luke loaded the donkey he caught my eye; he knew I thought him wrong to load his boots on to the donkey and I knew he didn’t care so much about carrying all his own weight and sticking to the agreement that we would make the journey truly man-powered. To me it undermined the essence of the journey and to be able to claim that we had done what we set out to do. Water sources were pretty nonexistent here and so much of the weight on the donkey consisted of two huge 10-litre jerrycans full of water.

  Without food and water, and having further cut down all but what we considered essential, both Luke’s and my pack weight dropped even more, to 35 kilograms. Even at this lighter weight the thin atmosphere at this altitude started to affect Luke in particular. He was visibly worried about the physical challenge of this leg and he set a very slow pace, adamant that he would not be rushed and that we would get there slowly but surely. Hector and Oz were impatient and kept disappearing off ahead. I stayed back with Luke but was also quietly hoping we could speed up – at least a little bit.

  For twelve hours we climbed, ‘poco a poco’, little by little, until we’d crested the summit and found a sheltered spot to make camp. By the latter half of the day I was just as slow as Luke and I remember wondering if I had ever before climbed with that weight at this altitude for such a sustained period of time. I hadn’t and nor had Luke – these were conditions we would just have to adapt to. We’d now been on the move for two weeks and the cracks were starting to show. In retrospect, the amount we’d travelled was nothing – absolutely nothing – but it was already a longer trek than either of us had ever made before.

  At the end of the day Luke and I found a rhythm and it was one of the last times I feel we really worked well together. We would treat ourselves with regular standing breaks and managed to set a steady pace that even left Oz and Hector behind. It felt like a team and we both took strength in the companionship and support we were giving each other. At the summit Hector offered me the plastic bottle he’d been sipping from all day. ‘It’s for the cold,’ he said. I smiled; I had a fair idea what the liquid was and took a long swig. The infusion of medicinal herbs and strong alcohol spread through my chest. It felt like urine warming up a wetsuit.

  Luke had been getting on fine in his Crocs and I liked the idea of not wearing socks and heavy boots and so joined him in this unconventional mountain footwear. OK, we both had to stop every now and then to remove cactus thorns from our feet but I found it liberating to have the wind rushing round my ankles and not have soggy, sweaty feet wrapped up in huge leather boots.

  Camping at 4,500
metres was cold and Hector made a bedroll for himself from the horse blankets. With frost underfoot we set off early downhill towards Ayo and it was late afternoon by the time we arrived. Thanks to Hector being well liked, we were welcomed and allowed to sleep in the town hall.

  Fed up with donkeys and hills, I wanted to change tack at this point and follow the canyon bottom close to the river. We spoke to some locals and they told us this was a crazy idea: the water was high and the canyon bottom was impassable. As it turned out, the alternative route was also dangerous: a thin, winding path up scree and then over a sharp 600-metre-high ridge that would involve lots of scrambling – but this time carrying nearly 40 kilos again (extra food) as it was far too steep for a donkey.

  One of the reasons Luke had been a good choice of partner for me was that he was a climbing and kayaking instructor. I had made it clear to him from the start that in both areas he was firmly in charge, as his climbing and kayaking experience far outstripped mine. Luke, looking up at the ridge that we were to cross in the morning, described it as ‘death on a stick’.

  We set off in the pitch dark and made our way across the valley bottom from Ayo to the foot of the mountain. From there we zigzagged up increasingly steep scree slopes until we reached some near vertical crags at the top. The route we were to take was out of sight and we dreaded what lay ahead. I was back in my jungle boots but Hector’s donkey had mislaid Luke’s and so he was attempting this very precarious climb in his Crocs.

  Hector had gone home to be replaced by Efrain, a wiry man who had brought his pickaxe to cut footholds for us in the semi-solidified scree. He sauntered up the slope with ease as Luke, Oz and I steadily trudged behind with our huge packs. We climbed up steep gullies and traversed slim ledges. It wasn’t safe – we knew that – and several times I had rockfall come down on my head. We slowly worked our way through the crags – only once using the rope – knowing that a slip at virtually any point would have been fatal. Handholds would often disintegrate and although not too technical, the climb was the riskiest I had ever undertaken. I was glad that at least I wasn’t wearing Crocs. Luke removed his and climbed in his socks for a while. On several sections I offered to share my boots with him by lowering them down on the rope but he declined and seemed confident enough. At one point he was very nearly killed when a rock that he was pulling on came away and almost threw him off balance and down the cliff. Teetering on the edge of death, he held his balance, dropped the rock and didn’t fall. Efrain was optimistically holding the rope at this point but Luke weighed considerably more than the little guide.

  Undoubtedly the danger clicked us into a hyper-alert state and Luke and I both ended up loving the final stages. Oz, on the other hand, was making it clear that guiding in the mountains might not be his best career option; we had to coach him through several sections as he was absolutely terrified and had frozen.

  The route down was not as bad and we arrived in a tiny hamlet nestled in the most inaccessible part of the Colca Canyon called Canco. Canco is an idyllic settlement of only a couple of families who farm the tiny valley bed and raise cattle and crops. Beer in this type of settlement is scarce and expensive; even so, we were delighted to be able to buy some cold bottles to celebrate our survival.

  The following day, as we walked up the canyon’s southern wall heading for Cabanaconde, I was lifted by the sheer numbers and closeness of the Andean condors that floated on the updraughts of air coming out of the canyon. Such huge birds with near three-metre wingspans charged my soul and gave me strength. I tried to enthuse Luke but he just saw big vultures and trudged on with his head down. Our oversight that day was the cumulative 4,000 metres of climbing that meant we had to spend the night at the side of the road in a ditch several kilometres short of our destination.

  The 22 kilometres from Cabanaconde to Lari was again by road and this time it was gently descending the whole day. The Catholic town of Lari was the pot of gold at the end of the Colca Canyon from which we would launch our search for the furthest source of the Amazon. Overshadowed by the high Andes we knew that from here we were just two days’ walk from Nevado Mismi and the headwaters of the Carhuasanta, the furthest tributary from the mouth of the Amazon. We had been walking for three weeks and were pretty tired by this stage and needed to rest, so we took a few days to recuperate and make adjustments to our kit before beginning the attempt on the summit.

  Luke’s fiancée Katie was travelling in Peru and hoping to meet up with Luke when she could. He clearly missed her a lot while we were walking and whenever he found cell phone reception he was on the phone to her or text messaging her. As we knew we would be in Lari for a few days, it made sense that they would see each other. Luke checked into a hotel with Katie while Oz and I slept, bought supplies and then got very bored.

  Our three-week trek to the summit through the Colca Canyon had been inspired by Mike Horn when he descended the Amazon in the nineties on a hydrospeed and, further downriver, a dugout canoe. Mike had crossed the entire continent without the use of a motor and so we wanted to take up his very impressive mantle and complete the same journey, but this time without using the river’s flow to assist the descent. If we walked we would be the first to cross the continent via the longest source of the Amazon River, truly man-powered. Mike had set the standard and, as a result, taking a bus to the nearest road to Nevado Mismi was just not an acceptable option any more.

  Katie and Luke said a tearful farewell and agreed to meet up again in Cuzco in a few weeks. Luke, Oz and I then set off from Lari to find the source of the Amazon. We had ten days’ worth of food strapped on to a couple of tiny donkeys owned by our new local guide, Feliciano. Our maps at this stage were good – 1:100,000 military grade topographic maps – so we entered the Wikipedia coordinates for the source into our GPS and set off. This ascent soon became higher than Luke had ever been before and he seemed to suffer more than the rest of us from altitude sickness. I couldn’t understand it as (a) we had tablets for it, and (b) we had gradually risen to this height over three whole weeks and so his body must surely have adapted by now. I am sure he could sense my frustration and he alluded to as much in his blog about summit day when he described me as running ahead doing star jumps while carrying Oswaldo above my head as he struggled on behind. It was fiction, of course, Luke’s poetic licence, but I felt his words were full of a real feeling of separation.

  After a night in a sheep pen that protected us from strong winds and snow, we crested the ridge upon which Mismi lay and looked for the valley on the north side where we could find the furthest source of the Amazon and the famous white cross. Our Wikipedia coordinates were about seven kilometres out but Luke and I had studied the shape of the mountains enough times that we instinctively knew where we had to look. We both felt as if we had been there before as we used our internal ‘force’ to guide us down into a wide, flat, grassy valley, hopping over mossy streams until I pointed to the base of a large escarpment of exposed rock and Luke agreed that we could see the cross.

  We scampered up the last few metres and everything was exactly how I had imagined it. The 10-metre-high rock face had a prominent shower of water flowing down it and it was obvious to see why the cross had been erected there. It was a picturesque and appropriate spring of water coming directly from the rock face.

  We took a few photographs and made some video recordings and then we noticed another cross, an iron one, 15 metres below. It had been erected in 1971 and claimed to be the true source. There was also a plaque from the Instituto Brazilian Brasileiro de Geografica e Estatistica in a separate place. I rolled my eyes at the frivolity of these expeditions all claiming their own official and different sources of the Amazon at differing points on the mountainside – and in fact on the following day we would find a second plaque denoting the fourth ‘official’ furthest source of the Amazon. We could see the massive snow-covered glaciers above us and knew that they had subglacial streams flowing from them and so we felt there was only one way to cover all b
ases and ensure we had been to the furthest source of the Amazon – and that was to climb to the summit of Nevado Mismi.

  We returned to a flat area and set up base camp on the Carhuasanta Valley floor. That night we set our alarms to 0430 with the intention of being moving by 0500.

  At 0545 on 25 April 2008 I looked at my watch and felt a jolt of fear shoot up my spine as if I was going to get into trouble for being late. As I crawled groggily out of my sleeping bag, the dark cold evilly penetrated my thin thermals. The night had been clear and our tents were ridged with ice. I woke each confused occupant one by one.

  We had half a mind to leave Feliciano at camp to guard our kit but then decided that (a) no one would steal it even if they made it all the way up here, and (b) it would be great if Feliciano, who had lived at the base of the mountain his entire life, could see the view from the top. He readily agreed.

  We were camped at 4,990 metres and so only had 610 metres to go to get to the top. With only the bare essentials, Feliciano in his flip-flops made from old car tyres, we started plodding slowly uphill. Luke was carrying the only pack that had a rope and med kit in it and, as he began to slow down, I offered to carry it. Perhaps this made him feel that he would be relying on me as he declined and kept walking very slowly upwards. It was at times like that that I have to admit the relationship with Luke occupied too much of my brain. I was about to summit the mountain on which the source of the Amazon springs, the sky was the clearest of blues, and the views were phenomenal and all I could think about was ‘Why won’t he just give me the fucking pack?’

  Thankfully, both of us stopped fuming at each other when we realised that the mountain required us to switch on. We were kicking steps into a very steep bank of snow and kept zigzagging up and up in the bright sunshine.