I love crossing into a new country. It's always a shock to see how different life is on the other side of that imaginary but oh-so-real line that defines the border. This time, it was crossing from Peru into Brasil and the differences are pretty major.
We made the crossing by boat -- taking a speed boat 10 hours down-river from Iquitos to the cities of Leticia, Columbia and Tabatinga, Brasil. The ride down was cramped and uneventful, but quite pretty all the same. From the windows of the boat, and at our few stops along the way, we saw an unending series of small communities along the side of the river. All the houses seemed to have roofs of palm-thatch and stilted, wooden floors. Very few had any walls to speak of. We arrived in Tabatinga in the early evening, and learned that a boat was leaving the next day for Manaus. Perfect.
Things on this side of the border are, indeed, different. The most immediate and obvious difference is, of course, the language. Portuguese. It's close enough to Spanish that it's no problem to read written Portuguese, but everything is pronounced totally differently, making it quite difficult to understand anything spoken or to speak. It's exciting to be in a place where the language is different, but frustrating as well. I'm once again having to communicate in gestures rather than words, and can't follow up a smile with any sort of conversation. It's become clear to me how important it is to speak the language of the place you're visiting -- it just makes it a totally different experience. Time to learn Portuguese.
There are a number of other differences on this side of the border as well. It's somewhat difficult to compare the people, as I don't feel like I can communicate well here, but everyone so far has been incredibly friendly. When we arrived in Tabatinga, for example, we didn't have any Reais (banks were closed, and the Brazilian ATMs didn't like American cards), so the girl running our hotel lent us money and then joined us for dinner. The life in Amazonas seems very different, based on what we could see from our next boat. All the communities on this side of the border were higher up, away from the water. Rather than thatched roofs they had tin or zinc or some form of metal, painted walls usually, etc.. They had electricity, water, and telephone service. In short, the government had invested a lot of money in the Amazonas region to bring the small communities more into the modern life. Food is different, of course. Lots of good fruit juices, and again all manner of things I don't recognize nor know the name of. But so far, all tasty.
Back to the boat. We went down the night before to check it out and claim hammock space (On the boat, everyone sleeps in hammocks). I had my doubts about how it would be to sleep in a hammock for three nights, but figured it couldn't be too bad. Looking at my mom's face as we got on the boat, it became obvious that she had her doubts as well. We decided that we'd try it anyway, and figured that we could make it work. Strung up our hammocks to save some space, then back to a real bed to sleep.
The next day when we arrived, the boat had filled up. Where before there had been one row of hammocks, there were now three. Excitement mixed with new doubts as I saw my mother's reaction to the news hammocks in her personal space. Well, we thought, we'll just have to make it work. And work it did. Quite comfortably. For three and half days we chugged downstream, watching the jungle slip by on either side of the river. It was a relaxing time -- reading, enjoying the view, and having a beer or two with friends from the boat made the time go by quickly. From the boat we got only glimpses into the lives of people living in amazonas. Frequently, we'd slow or stop to meet a canoe full of fruit to sell or to drop someone off. At one point, we stopped and loaded a person on a gurney onto the boat -- a two day ride to the hospital in Manaus.
It was good to finally get into the city, and to get off the boat, but it was somewhat difficult to leave behind the comfort and ease of a life with no difficulties or responsibilities for the bustle of a city. Especially one in which you don't really speak the language...
But, as always, the new has its charms to lure you away from the old. Exploring Manaus has been fun. Did some shopping. Saw an old Charlie Chaplin movie in one of the plaças last night. Silent films are wonderfully portable. Saw a nice sunset over the port, and watched the coming and going of many, many boats for a while. Tomorrow we fly to Brasilia for a day, and then on to São Paulo. Looking forward to seeing more of Brasil.
This entry should also have been posted about a week ago, just before leaving Iquitos....
This time I'm sitting next to my mother in an internet cafe in Iquitos, a city in the Peruvian jungle. The walls, both inside and outside, of the cafe are purple and covered with little signs, and AC/DC is blaring from the computer at the front desk, making me long for the Maná that was playing there before. It's warm and humid, but the breeze from the fans feels great.
We entered the cafe through a small door, about 4 feet high, cut into the big door used to lock the cafe up at night. The cafe is half-closed, like any other businesses here seem to be, on account of a nation-wide strike here. Political unrest and unhappiness seems to be a part of life anywhere in the world right now, and it's interesting to see how different places deal with it.
I had spent the past week wandering around, blissfully unaware that there was going to be a strike. There was graffiti for it on the walls, but not all that much, and none of it registered with me until our taxi driver mentioned it, and my mom told me that she had read about it before leaving the states. "Huh," I thought, looking around, reading the walls. "Fuera Toledo. Paro 14 de Julio." I guess I should have seen it. (Toledo is the amazingly unpopular president of Peru. His approval ratings have been in the single digits since January, and this strike is largely to show disapproval.)
Things really seemed to begin on the night of the 13th. Coming back to our hostel we ran into a big crowd of people gathering in front of one of the workers syndicates. Most of the people were carrying meter-long sticks, and now and then a glass bottle would fly out of the crowd and shatter on the street. We joined a few scattered onlookers on one of the side streets, and watched as they chanted and shouted anti-toledo slogans that we only half understood. After a short while they marched off toward the central plaza, and we went to bed wondering what tomorrow might bring.
When we woke up and walked out of the hostel it was obvious that today was different. The city was quiet. No taxis. No motorcycles. Only a few people strolling along, and now and then the sound of kids playing. Broken glass in the intersections, and the occasional remnants of a burned tire, were almost the only sign of what had gone on the night before. After breakfast, walked down to the market. The streets are full of kids playing football, but the market was quiet. Here and there people were selling things, but generally it was closed. Felt very eerie to walk around. Iquitos doesn't seem like the kind of city where there should be peace and quiet.
...
In the afternoon, more people seemed to be out. There was a huge march along the plaza -- lots of people from all sorts of different groups protesting. Very peaceful. Families marching, mothers with babies, old and young, men and women alike.
As the day wore on, the city became louder and louder, as more and more taxis went back to work, restaurants opened up, and people became to come out again. After dark, the city began to take on it's usual character...
This should have been posted about a week ago, along with one or two other entries. Indeed, I wrote most of the entry then, but forgot to post it. In that way, it's similar to the large stack of postcards that I have been carying with me for weeks now, waiting to put stamps and addresses on them.
Coming to the jungle after spending a month in the sierra was shocking. My flight got in just as the sun was setting, and I was greeted by a wall of thick, moist air and a beautiful red sky over a wall of green vegetation. Caught a mototaxi (a motorcycle with a bench seat on the back) into town, then wandered around watching bits of a football game at each bar I passed. Iquitos is a loud city, but a friendly one. There are virtually no cars, but the streets are full of motorcycles and mototaxis. It's warm, and all the buildings are open to the outside, with music (usually something from Tropical 2004) pouring out of each store. My first interactions with the people here were incredibly positive -- very friendly, and interested in talking.
The next morning, I walked past the main plaza down to the river and took in my first glimpse of it during the daylight. It was pretty -- shimmering water reflecting the morning sun, lots of boats of all sizes coming and going, and little islands of floating green lilies and other vegetation. "Oh," I thought after a little while, "I'm looking at the Amazon. Wow!" Water -- the rivers -- are a major part of life here. Boats still seem novel to me, so I find it interesting to see them as such a basic part of life.
The jungle is so different from the mountains. The market is filled with fish and tropical fruit, along with the usual selection of beef, chicken, spices, and so on. There is a big aisle of traditional medicine -- different barks and plants from throughout the jungle, each with a different look and aroma, as well as bottles and jars of shamanic potions and other drinks. Fascinating. The food is different as well. Everything in the market seems to be packaged in a banana leaf and tied shut -- no telling what's inside.
The next day I met my mom at the airport. Wonderful to see her again after so long. She'd had a great trip up that point, visiting Cuzco, Machu Pichu and the sacred valley, and it was great to see her so excited. Spent the next day catching up and deciding what we were going to do, and decided to spend some time in the jungle around Iquitos.
We went to one of the jungle lodges a few hours upriver for a few days. Was great to get away from the city, into less-inhabited jungle. It was a good feeling just to be moving on the river, on the way up to the lodge. Everything in brown and green -- the water and the banks brown, merging into a wall of green vegetation in different shades on the side of the river. All along the river were cleared fields with thatched-roofed houses, fruit trees, and a large collection of children playing. The variety of boats that we saw -- from simple dugout canoe, to oil boats, to long, covered boats just packed with people -- was amazing.
The lodge itself was up one of the tributaries of the amazon, a smaller, black-water river. We saw a huge number of different birds on the trip, with names that I could never keep straight, as well a collection of different animals. Highlights for me were seeing one of the smaller communities on the river near the lodge, with about 100 residents, seeing a bunch of different frogs one night, and seeing the river dolphins the next morning. Pictures soon to follow, but net is slow here in Iquitos so it may be a little while.
I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Huaraz, Peru right now, after having finished the second, and final, outing of my time in the Cordillera Blanca. The keyboard here is, in a way, representative of Huaraz. That is to say, it-s an American keyboard, and not a Latin one.
Huaraz itself is a strange mix of heavily touristed city and Peruvian mountain town. Our second day here, we went into a place called the California Cafe -- it was straight out of Boulder, with a dead concert playing softly in the background; a menu of breakfasts, cafe foods, coffee, and chai; a nice library; and "Boulder people", discussing climbing and hiking with the same tone that you find in Boulder. It was really strange, and made it very easy to forget that I was in Peru. However, in the same street you can find children selling toasted peanuts or offering to shine your shoes. Walking a little way out of town, you find adobe houses, dirt roads, and the usual collection of dogs, chickens, pigs, etc.. Downtown, the streets are lined with stores selling and renting mountaineering equipment, and agencies to take you into the mountains, but nestled amongst them are the usual collection of restaurant selling 1/4 chicken for $1.50, and so on. It-sa weird mixture.
The highlight t of the time here has been the time spent outside of the city, however. McKenzie and I did two different trips, both about a week long, in the Cordillera Blanca. It-s an amazing range of mountains -- very different from anything I-ve ever seen anywhere else. The mountains are, in a word, big. Tall, steep, snow-covered peaks dominate the view from deep, narrow valleys (or quebradas) full of grazing cattle, horses, and donkeys. In the more popular locations, trains of burros loaded with gear and fields dotted with tents are common sights.
Our first hike took us up Quebrada Quillcayhuanca, over a pass, and back out Quebrada Cojup (quechua names). In Huaraz, we caught a cab to a nearby town ("How much to LLupa?" "S./50" "That's expensive -- we were told it should be 12" "Oh. Okay, 15?") and began the hike. Walking through populated areas, there was no shortage of people willing to offer directions or advice, many demanding a piece of candy in exchange.
The first goal was a trip up to Laguna Churup -- one of many turquoise alpine lakes. The trail up was steep and tiring, as we got used to the altitude and walking with packs on our backs, and we stopped just short of the lake to camp the first night. The next morning a steep scramble over rock brought us to the lake, where we were lucky enough to see the sun peek through the clouds for a few minutes. The lake was beautiful, at the foot of Nev. Churup, an imposing, glacier-covered mass, but a cold wind encouraged us to descend and put our packs back on.
We hiked down from the lake, and made our way into our first quebrada. Like one of the boys had warned us, there were "lots of burros, horses, and cows" in the valley. The bottom was flat, green, and a few hundred meters wide. The walls on the side were steep rock, ascending to the base of mountains that remained out of sight. At the end of the valley, mountains once again filled the view.
After a day and a half of hiking up the valley, we started to ascend the side of the valley, to a pass below one of the smaller mountains of the Cordillera, Huapi. Getting to the base of Huapi, which we were considering climbing, was a humbling experience. Although one of the smaller and easier mountains in the Cordillera, it was still BIG. Climbing up to the ridge near the mountain to get a look at it was difficult work for our unacclimatized bodies, and ended with a 20m scramble up rock to a narrow, sandy ledge that left both of us shaken and nervous. "I don't want to climb that mountain." "Okay." There was no further discussion. The next day we had a lazy morning in camp, then hiked over the pass (16,500') and down into the next valley, and out the next day.
Back in Huaraz we went out for dinner, drinks, and dancing with a couple people -- a woman and her guide -- that we met on the trail the last day. It was a good time, but in the end it cost us an extra day of recovery in Huaraz. The next day was spent sleeping off hangovers, and then going to see "Monsoon Wedding" at a small cafe that also shows movies. Comfortable cafe, good hot chocolate, good movie.
The next day we developed our plan for the next outing. We decided that if we wanted to climb anything, we should bite the bullet and hire a guide. We decided that Pisco would be a good goal -- a good next step for both of us. It also linked together nicely with a hike up quebrada santa cruz, which would allow us to see another part of the cordillera and allow us to stop at the alpamayo base camp to see the "most beautiful mountain in the world" (exactly who it is that gets to make these absolute judgments of aesthetics I don't know).
The weather on this hike was not as nice -- lots of clouds, and a bit of snow and rain here and there. Luckily, we were able to see most of the mountains through a few cloudless hours each day. The hike itself was generally easy and relaxing, after having put in the acclimatization work on the first hike. The mountains were, again, incredible, but this is a story best told by pictures. The valley was much more crowded, and were were frequently being passed by trains of burros carrying climbing gear, or supplies for other trekkers, along with groups of other hikers and once (memorably) a large group of Japanese tourists on an organized tour.
We finished our trek, and after a harrowing bus ride down a long set of narrow switchbacks characterized by the smell of burning} clutch as the driver repeatedly backed up to get around the turns, met our guide at the starting point for the Pisco climb. An easy day's hike took us to the base camp, where we should have had a nice view of Pisco. However, the weather was such that part way up to the camp, McKenzie asked our guide, "And, where's Pisco?" The skyline was pure white, with thick clouds rather than mountains being the defining feature. As we made our way up to camp the intermittent rain turned to hail and then to snow flurries. Ideal climbing weather, we joked. I hoped it would get better, and I tried to keep my suspicions that it wouldn't to myself.
We went to bed that night with the clouds still thick overhead, calculating how to make three days worth of food last four four. When we awoke at 10 minutes to one, however, the sky was clear and the moon was shining bright above us. The excitement of leaving for a climb made it easy to crawl out of a warm sleeping bag and prepare a quick, but hot, breakfast of potatoes and coffee. As we walked toward the mountain, crossing a large moraine by light of head lamps, the moon set, leaving us with a crisp sky full of the now-familiar stars of the southern hemisphere. The frost on the rocks glittered in the light of the head lamps. After several hours of walking, we arrived at the foot of the glacier. I was glad for the rest as we stopped to take out the rope and put on our gloves, harnesses, and crampons before getting onto the ice.
We started walking up the mountain, over a well defined trail that had been trodden by others before us this morning. At the base of the mountain there was several inches of unconsolidated snow, on top of a layer of much harder snow. I was grateful for the trail, especially moving in the dark. After an hour of walking, the sun began to rise, offering us an amazing view of a large portion of the cordillera in the first reddish rays of daylight. As we climbed, the sky behind the mountains turned from the first grays of dawn to brilliant reds and pinks and then to a deep, clear blue. If much of mountaineering is slogging and hard work, it is these moments that make it all worth it.
We soon caught up with the group that had been breaking trail for us -- a group of four Catalonians and their guide -- when we arrived at the base of a 160' wall of ice. The original route up the mountain had gone around the wall, and up a gentler section, but crossed a snow bridge that had collapsed some weeks ago. The collapse made the climb more technical than we had initially planned, but it provided a good challenge and made the climb much more interesting. While we were working on getting up the wall, a third group of people -- three climbers from the basque country -- passed us effortlessly.
As we continued up, having spent much more time on the steep section than we had planned, the snow deepened and the clouds closed in. The last hour of the climb was a long, hard push through a foot of unconsolidated snow. Visibility continued to drop as we climbed, and when we finally arrived at the summit, there was nothing to see but an expanse of white. However, the view of the sunrise from the ridge was more than enough to leave us satisfied. We found the other two groups at the summit, everyone tired but happy and sharing congratulations. The other groups each took out flags and took pictures with them, which made me feel like we were at a real summit. After a brief rest, some hot tea from the thermos, and a snack of chocolate and cookies we began our descent.
Three hours hiking saw us to the bottom of the ice, and another three hours to our base camp. Exhausted but content, we shared a thermos full of hot chocolate and made pizza after pizza before heading off to a much-needed night of sleep.
Back in Huaraz now, the climb is quickly turning into nothing more than a pleasant memory. A slight soreness in my legs and forearms is the only reminder of all the work that went into the climb. Looking out at the mountains, under the clear blue sky, I feel rejuvinated and ready to go out again. However, this is not to be -- different adventures wait.
In a few days, we will head back to Lima. McKenzie will go home, and I'll fly or take a boat to Iquitos, in the jungle. There, I'll meet up with my mother to share a jungle adventure, going down the Amazon river to Manus, in Brazil. It will be hard to leave the Cordillera Blanca behind -- there are still too many things I want to do here. This is a place to return to, on a different trip, to spend a season hiking and climbing.