How to Walk a Puma

by Peter Allison

  She didn’t look convinced.

  ‘They don’t have schools here either,’ I added facetiously.

  She laughed then and we were stamped in, and in no time we were back in the vehicle, shivering from our brief exposure to the bitter mountain air.

  The temperature had gone from pleasant and sun-soaked in San Pedro to a harsh, windswept chill now that we had hit three and a half thousand metres. As the vehicle climbed further we passed larger lakes with the occasional pause for photos. Small herds of vicuñas scattered at our approach, their daintiness in stark contrast to their more famous relative, the camel. The lakes themselves were so saturated with naturally occurring minerals that the water ranged from red to green, with shades of blue and orange in between.

  Despite their toxic appearance, each lake had a population of flamingos working the water, avocets too, and many smaller birds that took off before I could get close enough to identify them, probably alerted by my harsh panting. Every step up there felt like a marathon, and just climbing a rocky outcrop for a better view left me wrecked, condor bait—if there had been any condors around. This was without a doubt the most inhospitable place I had ever been to. Parts of this mountain range had never recorded rain, and temperatures ranged from scorching in the lowlands to the breath-fogging cold of the spring-fed lakes.

  Our group was all European, apart from myself and Eduoardo, our driver, who was Bolivian. The Minke was, as noted, proudly Welsh, there was a French girl, a softly spoken young German man with spiky dyed-red hair, and a Polish couple. The Polish couple spoke no Spanish, but the woman had some understanding of English, so that—conveniently for me—became the common language.

  ‘Can you breathe?’ I asked the Polish woman as she stumbled up onto the rock beside me. All she did was pant in reply, waving at her mouth to indicate she couldn’t speak. So I guessed not. Not only had I not been at altitude for some time, I had never before been quite so high. Australia and Botswana, the countries where I have spent most time, are both markedly flat, their highest peaks mere pimples on the landscape compared to the Andes. I was struggling.

  There’s a certain sheer bloody-mindedness that comes with being a bird watcher, that seemingly most passive of activities, and so when we reached our final destination for the day, the azure Lago Colorado, I was determined to get out there and see what new species I could spot from its shores. Lago Colorado is one of the only places on the globe where three species of flamingo can be seen, as well as many specialist high-altitude species with eponymous names like Andean goose, Andean avocet, and gasping foolfinch. (One of those names might have been made up while addled by lack of oxygen.)

  There was nowhere near enough water in the vehicle for the group, and the dehydrating caffeinated drink the driver constantly sipped on would do me no favours, so I took what water could be spared and set off on what I thought would be a leisurely stroll. The flamingos were easy to find, as were several of the other larger species. It amazed me how diverse the bird life was—we had peaked here at four and a half thousand metres, a punishing altitude for anything with lungs, yet I easily saw twenty species of birds in a few hundred metres. For some reason, though, I was convinced that on the other side of the lake, only a half-kilometre around, would be more species that I had not seen before. There was no logical reason for this, but like many enthusiasts, bird watchers can become irrationally fixated. So I stumbled along, mouth open, ignoring the dizziness I felt and the weakness in my legs. A drab brown bird called a cinclodes lifted off in front of me, so plain that it could only delight the most hardened bird nerd; I was sufficiently inspired at this sight to carry on.

  A natural spring fed the lake, and I soon found its outlet, which was bright green with algae. I was thirsty, having finished the bottle of water I’d brought, but feared drinking from even this most pure of natural sources might turn me green, like an anorexic Hulk.

  I pushed on, spotting a few more species, my shoes now coated with dust as I could only drag my feet, not lift them. Eventually it dawned on me how stupid I was being—a remarkable moment of clarity considering how foolishly I’d been behaving to that point. I could barely breathe, and a mere stroll had me close to collapse. Now I had to get back.

  As I looked over the flamingo-coated lake, our camp, less than a kilometre away, suddenly seemed impossibly far. I groaned, made a shuffling turn, and started retracing the drag marks my feet had left. ‘I’m too old for this,’ I thought, returning to my new favourite theme. This time though I didn’t mean I was too old for adventure, but too old for such stupidity. Getting back seemed improbable; doing it before blinding dark certainly so. The sky was turning the same shade of pink as the flamingos, and there was no source of artificial light between me and the camp. This was no place to spend the night and wait it out—exposure could kill up here, and soon I wouldn’t even have the energy to shiver.

  I began dragging my feet again, a shambling figure. I’d told Lisa that I was going for a walk, but had neglected to mention exactly where I intended to go. How long would it be before they sent someone to look for me? If they had hardly any water in the car, would they have flashlights? This was not Chile but Bolivia, the country I’d expected to find in South America—undoubtedly charming, but chaotic and ramshackle. I felt such a fool as the light faded, too exhausted now to even lift my binoculars at what might have been a bird but was probably just an hallucination, the product of an oxygen-starved mind.

  The lake edge had a gentle curve that I needed to follow back to the camp, with an ill-defined trail following the arc. I decided to cut a corner, but soon realised the folly of that as I sank almost to my ankles in rich, gluggy mud, weighing down my feet further. I was torn between the need to hurry to beat the setting sun and conserving energy by moving at a less lung-busting pace. From the outside I must have looked like an arthritic tortoise, but I felt even more decrepit. Earlier I had found the lack of oxygen and its effects a novelty—not pleasant, but a new experience and therefore worth savouring. Now it scared me. I felt like I was drowning on land.

  One step, then another. I paused, leant over and rubbed my thighs. They ached, deep aches as though I’d run a marathon (not that I know from experience what that’s like). My mini-break over, I started moving again, making it only a few paces before stopping once more, my breathing now rapid and harsh, like a horny bull elephant that has spotted a breeding herd.

  In the distance I saw a light come on, and realised it was from the arrangement of huts that made up our campsite. It was still distant, too distant, and it hit me that I wasn’t going to make it. The will that had driven me forward to see some different birds was absent now. And, incredibly, making it through the night was not as powerful a motivator. I sometimes joked that my lack of coordination disproved the theory of evolution, and my lack of will to survive now made it quite clear that this was true.

  I pushed on as soon as I felt able to do so, the light now a beacon, drawing me towards it. I stumbled into some more mud, my shoes now leaden lumps. I seriously considered dropping to my hands and knees and crawling. Instead I shook my feet, one after the other; though the energy that took almost winded me, I broke into a stumbling trot, making it at least twelve paces before tripping and falling onto all fours, shuffling a while this way before getting up again and, with some newfound will, taking a few more steps.

  After a while the light seemed closer, brighter, and I considered shouting but doubted my voice would be any louder than a strangled fart. I stumbled along, my throat raw from dragging at the thin air. It was a ragged figure that stumbled into the communal room and collapsed onto the bed assigned for me.

  ‘You okay?’ the Minke asked me, looking up from her book.

  ‘No,’ I said, but before I could elaborate it became apparent from some squeaks and creaks that the Polish couple, not at all mindful of being in a well-lit room with four other people, were engaged in some under-the-blanky hanky-panky. It was hard to believe anyone could have the e
nergy for that under the circumstances; I didn’t think I could even muster the strength to laugh at it, but then a choked guffaw emerged that I tried to stifle with my hand. Soon the Minke and I must have looked as if we were engaged in the same activity as we clutched at each other to try to muffle our giggles.

  •

  Waking the next morning I looked out at the lake and berated myself for being a drama queen. It really wasn’t that far to the other side. But after taking my first few steps of the morning my legs went dead and my head pulsed with flares of pain behind each eye.

  Mountains are not my thing, I decided: I can’t ski (apparently I was born without a pelvis, as my legs drift apart as soon as I set off on skis and simply will not rejoin), I don’t like the cold, and while flamingos are all very nice, I prefer the jungle, where being a bird watcher might get me killed by something like a jaguar, but at least that had some dignity to it. We had three more days of travel ahead of us, and then some time scheduled in La Paz, perched at an altitude greater than any other capital city in the world. After that it was all downhill to the jungle, and there’d be no more getting high for me.

  Driving Blind with Jesus

  There’s an old saying in Africa that goes something like this: ‘You’re a bloody idiot, Peter Allison.’ Like many old sayings there is much truth to it, which may explain why I became so excited at the idea of spending five days floating down a tributary of the Amazon on tyre tubes. Lisa and I were in the office of a small tour company, and I hopped from foot to foot like a child with a full bladder, while the Minke, sensible and therefore unsure as to whether the trip was a good idea, prevaricated. Another option was to take a motorised canoe, in which case the same journey could be done in three days. However, that seemed incurably dull to me, and when I added wheedling and puppy eyes to my full-bladder dance, the Minke agreed to go the tyre-tube route. Before she could change her mind, we booked in.

  We were in La Paz, the world’s highest capital city, but since my evening of birdwatching at Lago Colorado, I’d become somewhat more acclimatised and the hilly streets only punished me mildly for daring to walk them.

  We decided to fill in the few days until the trip began by heading to the small town of Coroico, a few hours downhill from La Paz. The Minke decided to make her way there on a mountain bike, riding along the infamous Death Road, a path with sheer drops that has claimed many lives. My fear of heights precluded me from enjoying such an activity, so instead I took a minivan along a newer, only moderately more sane piece of engineering that was deadly looking for a mere fifty per cent of the time.

  After arriving in Coroico via our different routes and modes of transport, the Minke and I relaxed for a few days. Then the power went out, resulting in the whole town’s electricity being switched off. This was clearly such a common occurrence that everyone continued with business as usual, all with a stock of candles at hand. Unfortunately, we were waiting to hear from the tyre-tube people via email about a blockade that might make our departure impossible. Truck drivers, unhappy with some government figure, had blocked several routes out of La Paz, and were beating up any drivers who tried to get through. They were apparently tolerant of foreigners and might let them pass, but the situation could flare up at any moment.

  For hours we waited; finally, as the sun dipped beneath the omnipresent Andes and plunged us into gloom, the sound of refrigerators kicking into gear and lights dimly glowing told us that the town’s power was back on. Scurrying back to the internet café we logged on to find a message saying that yes, we were going ahead with the trip, and that the company had a blockade-busting plan in place. All we had to do was be back in La Paz the next day for a five am departure, instead of the previously arranged and far more civilised start time of ten.

  ‘Buggershitpisswee,’ I said. ‘We’d have to leave here at two!’ We found a working phone and to our surprise someone was still in the tour office back in La Paz. Whereas in the West many such places might have been inflexible with regard to our predicament, the man on the other end merely said, ‘Ah, no problem, we will leave later, how about eight?’

  So it was that at four the next morning, we waited bleary-eyed for a taxi we’d arranged the day before to take us back to La Paz. Shortly after we were climbing the switchback road, leaving the pleasant vegetation of Coroico behind for the stripped-bare mountainsides surrounding the ramshackle capital.

  •

  When Lisa and I booked the tyre-tube trip we’d been the only people interested, but we arrived back in La Paz to find the tour had filled up with six more people who would be joining us. They slowly assembled: a young English guy named Nick, an Israeli (‘Call me David,’ he said. ‘Not Ishmael?’ I asked facetiously, paraphrasing Moby-Dick. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘My name is Adair. But call me David’), an Italian woman named Gabriela, a Dutch couple, and a Spanish man named Thema with a bald and mottled scalp, who was the only person visibly older than me.

  ‘Okay, folks, here is the deal,’ said the man from the office, who spoke remarkably good English. ‘We cannot get through the blockade.’

  My heart sank. Had we left Coroico at the crack of dawn for nothing?

  ‘But we can go around it,’ he continued. ‘It will add a day to the trip, which we won’t charge you for, okay?’

  We all agreed, happy that our adventure hadn’t been cancelled.

  ‘Instead of taking just a few hours to get to the river, it will be a seven-hour drive, and I’ll admit that the vehicle is not the most comfortable, but it is the best we can do. Is everyone happy with that?’

  ‘Seven hours, not a problem,’ I thought. ‘Sure,’ I said.

  Sure, the others all agreed.

  The vehicle, another four-wheel drive, was built to take only seven passengers, but there were eight of us, plus the guide we met at the office just prior to departure. His name was Cesar, pronounced ‘Chazar’, and he was a deep-voiced man with the weathered features of someone who’d lived most of his life outdoors.

  ‘And this,’ Cesar intoned in his bass rumble, ‘is our driver, Jesus.’

  ‘Holy Roman Empire,’ I thought.

  Jesus (pronounced ‘Heyzuz’) turned out to be a taciturn man who kept a bag of coca leaves stashed beside him. Coca (the raw material from which cocaine is manufactured) is perfectly legal in Bolivia, and at any given time more people than not seem to have wads of it in their cheeks, chewing it for the mild buzz it provides, and for its supposed benefits of increased concentration and alertness. Personally, I found it made my mouth taste of leaves and did little else except make my gums a little numb, which meant I spilled even more than usual of whatever I was drinking.

  We piled in, and everyone agreed that the Minke should get the front seat with its greater leg room, as she was clearly the tallest of our group. I was scrunched in the narrowest seat at the back with the Dutch couple, a friendly pair who had the blemish-free skin of people who lived healthily and rarely saw the sun. In front of me in a tight knot sat the four singletons, and we all chatted merrily as Jesus set off through the choked roads of La Paz. A wheel well that pressed into my buttock rendered my right leg numb almost immediately, but seven hours would be fine, I was sure. To ensure blood reached my foot I would just need to occasionally shift around as if breaking wind.

  We soon left the winding mountain roads and hit the broad, open altiplano. These high-altitude plains have been agricultural lands since the Incas, and are still tended by poncho-wearing Quichua people, accompanied by bored-looking llamas.

  As soon as we hit the flat plains Jesus put his foot down, continuing to chew monotonously on his coca. While we were travelling on one of these long stretches there was a sudden bang and our momentum abruptly decreased before the vehicle started to lurch about. I felt a clawed hand clutch my thigh and thought it belonged to one of the Dutch, then realised it was my own. We veered off the road, coming to a skidding halt some metres from the tarmac, where we all got out of the vehicle.

  As a guide
I’d changed countless tyres so I offered to help, just to give my still-shaking hands something to do. My offer was rejected and instead I threw one arm around Lisa, who I feared might already be regretting coming on this trip with me. Jesus and Cesar got to work changing the tyre, and recommended we walk to the town a kilometre down the road, where they would join us for lunch.

  The air was chilly, but we were all keen for a walk to stretch our legs, and the views were so spectacular nobody much noticed the cold. We were in an elevated valley, and from the dead-flat altiplano the Andes loomed on each side of us, rising to impossibly high snow-capped peaks.

  Only a few minutes down the road we were sprayed with dust as Jesus skidded to a stop in front of our strolling group, and urged us back into the vehicle. After a bland café lunch of maize soup and a meat probably best left unidentified, we were on the road again.

  By now we’d been driving for about three hours, and my back was already jarred from the uneven road and my right leg was so numb it felt detachable, so I was comforted by the thought that we must be close to halfway through the journey. So when Cesar said, without explanation, that the journey might take ten hours, we were all moved to a frozen silence, broken only when, for no discernible reason, Thema started singing a few lines of a Spanish song in a deep off-key voice, before muttering something unintelligible.

  We had ended up leaving La Paz at ten in the morning, so the original estimate of seven hours would have had us at our tyre-tube launching point at around five in the evening, maybe as late as seven allowing for the usual elasticity in Bolivian estimates of time. But Cesar bumping up the total trip time by another three hours made me wonder if we’d be on the road far longer again. Periodically I postured up, had a shake-shake of what my mama gave me, and settled back down, bloodflow assured for the next little while. To pass the time I started a sweepstake: the estimates of our arrival time ranged from the Dutch couple’s optimistic seven pm, through to my cynical one am.