Praying to the Pachamama
We’d been advised to be ready for collection by 8am. The bus arrived to collect us around twenty minutes before that. After a last minute dash to get everything packed into either the day pack for the trip into the mountains, or the main bags to be left behind, we scurried down the stairs and into the bus. We zigzagged around the city, collecting people in small groups from a variety of accommodations.
In no time at all, we had a small collection of strangers, doing what strangers do in confined spaces (not talk to each other and barely acknowledge each other's existence despite being almost in each other’s lap). At this point, we had a Brazilian couple, two Spanish women, a British woman, and then us (a Peruvian and an Australian). We stopped near the tour agency’s office and soon after the guide, Wilmer, arrived. He was friendly, with a broad smile and easygoing nature. He gave us a short run-down of the itinerary, gathered some information about who had the requisite passes for entering the area, and then we set off.
We started out of the city, stopping briefly at a roadside market for us to stock up on snacks and drinks. It took little time to break away from the city fringe, and the road wound along the rambling walls of the old lava flows as we passed the volcano cluster to the city’s north. Eventually, we turned east, and away from the irrigated land near the river. In truth the area is quite arid, with little vegetation away from the watercourses other than low growing bushes similar to those of our own outback.
We stopped an hour or so into the trip as a herd of vicuñas were spotted roaming close to the road. They’re (relatively) wild here; free to graze in the open plains of stunted vegetation, with the only price in return being that they be photogenic every once in a while. In the distance to the southwest, we could still see the cone of El Misti and in other directions, a number of other peaks rising high above the horizon. This part of the Andes feels less like a mountain range, and more like a high altitude plain with peaks occasionally breaking the horizon.
Some time after this, we stopped again at a roadhouse…of sorts. There was a cafetería for meals and snacks, and rudimentary toilets. In the carpark, numerous highlanders had set up craft stalls to hawk their goods to the numerous busloads of tourists on their way through to Chivay. Carpark and Cafetería alike were abuzz with people, as a number of tours passing through had stopped here in sequence. A short distance away, the crumbling remains of a small finca and some stock yards were bleached white, and on the other side of the road, a large dusty ridge loomed high above like a muddy wave about to break and crash down on top of us.
The British girl who was in the tour (I forget her name) started chatting with Edgard and then myself, glad to be able to break out of her faltering Spanish (which was still a million times better than mine) and speak in her native language. It turned out she was starting to suffer the effects of altitude sickness and was worried about the additional altitude we’d be gaining. In my bag of medical goodies, were a number of pills for dealing with altitude and motion sickness (we’d used the latter to good effect coming back from Machu Picchu). I’d not experienced the illness when going to Huaraz and Chavín, and so told her she could use my medication to try and counter the effects.
After we got back in the bus, I handed an altitude sickness pill to the British girl, but her co-ordination was off a bit from the effects and the pill, half the size of a tic-tac, dropped to the floor. In her semi-lucid state, she proceeded to try and look for it. I declared bankruptcy and dug out another. This one made contact and she got it down the hatch. In truth it was possibly too late given we were now only a few hours from the high point: El Mirador de los Andes, at 4900m above sea level. Wilmer’s term for the location was simply “the 4900”.
The further up we went, the more lunar like the landscape became. I’ve since learned that during the lowland wet season, large areas of this passage to Chivay become snowed in, and the desert transforms to a white wonderland. For now though, it was dry and barren. We stopped a few more times, once to get photos of Llamas dressed up with tassels on their ears especially for tourist photo stops, and another at a local anthropological museum that catalogues the biodiversity of the region. It always amazes me just how many critters live in hostile environments such as this, humans included.
It was here that I started to feel light headed, and every step felt like I was walking through water. Given my recent encounters with poor health, I assumed I must’ve still been recovering, and so kept movement to a minimum, but avoided the enclosed space of the exhibit. Outside the museum I found a young vicuña wandering in the carpark. So far all we’d seen were adults, and so I proceeded to prepare my camera to take a photo.
As soon as I lifted the camera to my eye, the aforementioned vicuña, who had been ignoring me until now, suddenly galloped towards me and leapt at the camera. It missed of course, and then made an effort to chew on my jeans and hiking boots. I wasn’t quite sure what it was up to, so moved away from it, but turned back to have another effort at the photo. Again, as soon as I raised the camera, it came charging at me. Seems that either the locals had trained it to attack cameras (a lot of Andean highlanders hate having their photos taken), or it must’ve had a bad encounter with a camera. At that moment, the rest of the group emerged from the museum, and one of the Spanish girls commented on my new friend, only to be set upon herself (she was also carrying a pocket camera).
From here we entered something of a no-man’s land, and the trip took on another dimension. Increasingly, the terrain became like another world. Numerous peaks were covered with sun-baked boulders ranging in size from small footballs to small cars, whilst other slopes were covered in dense shale that looked like snakeskin on a grand scale, and others again loomed as huge, roaming sand dunes. Had I the presence of mind to take photographs as we passed you’d not believe the strangeness of this landscape.
At some point, I began to notice little piles of rocks by the roadside. As the piles grew more numerous and appeared more frequently, I asked Wilmer what they were. It turned out they had something planned for us, and a few minutes later the bus pulled to the side of the road. Wilmer then told us the brief story of the rock piles, called Apachetas; offerings to the Pachamama (earth mother). The story was that these were made by people wishing safe passage across the high altitude pass, and that it was a custom going back to Incan times. I’ve not really been able to verify that last part.
In the area where Wilmer had set us down, the ground was covered with Apachetas of varying sizes. It was so crowded that the only way to build an Apacheta impressive enough to be noticed by the Pachamama, was to go further along the road, and away from the road’s edge. I was interested in making an Apacheta, but of more interest to me was a ridge of rocks a small distance away, and the snow capped peaks beyond. As I hurried towards them, the little voice in the back of my head became more pronounced. You’re suffering from altitude sickness, slow down.
When I reached the line of rocks I took a few photos, then turned around to look towards the bus. It hadn’t felt like I’d travelled very far but the bus looked like it was a hundred or more metres away. Egdard had followed me part of the way, and when I got back to him we hurriedly built our Apachetas, photographed them, and then rushed back to the bus, where everyone else had already boarded.
I was now appreciating how dangerous altitude sickness can be—my growing delirium fogged my ability to think rationally. I’d felt no sign it was affecting me until we got out of the bus at the museum, and the effects had subsided once we started moving again. That I’d not suffered any ill-effects when we were in the north and went to similar altitudes, certainly left me in denial for much longer.
It turned out the snow-capped mountains I’d seen were the eastern edge of the Colca Canyon, and we soon found ourselves in another controlled fall to the small township below. We stopped at a modest sized restaurant where we were unloaded and herded in. A number of other similar tours were also eating there, and we noticed a number of them drinking mate de coca. I wasn’t the only one to experience the effects of the highland pass, it seemed.
After lunch, everyone from our bus was dropped at their respective accommodation, and then in the late afternoon we were collected again and taken to the nearby hot springs. Everyone except me got in. I was still not 100% sure my bowels were firm enough to risk getting in the water, and so hovered around the edge, taking the occasional photograph of the valley walls. We’d arrived at the baths reasonably early, to the extent the pools were occupied mostly by locals. There were a number of foreigners spread among the various bathhouses, but the large open-air pool at the end was quite empty.
Within an hour or so though, the numbers of Europeans, Americans and Australians streaming into the area started to remind me of the Mortlake pool in summer—crowded. The musicians employed to entertain the crowd switched from playing Andean folk music to competent instrumental covers of cheesy western songs like the Celine Dion thing from Titanic. By the time everyone in our group emerged from the baths, it was dark, and cold. The car park nearby was full of small buses from the various tours in town, and they almost all looked the same.
In the evening, we were again collected from our hotels, and taken to a local theatre restaurant, where we got a modest meal and a display of numerous folk dances. I guessed what was likely to happen after the dances were given their first ‘official’ demonstration, and so made sure I had a seat as close to the wall, and as far away from the dancing area as possible. Sure enough, once the dances had been performed, the dancers did their best to coerce members of the audience to join in the ‘fun’. They tried to lure me out, but I made sure I didn’t move, and they gave up and moved on to the next victim.
In the morning, we were going to be visiting Cruz del Condor, a key point in my originally planned odyssey through Latin America. With the early departure planned, none of us were interested in staying up late. I went to bed thinking about the Pachamama, and wondering how I’d handle crossing El Mirador de los Andes again on the way back to Arequipa.