Ausangate

Martha, while sweeping the kitchen floor, has suggested it is about time I got on with this blog.  Luckily for you, however, it is now so long ago that I can hardly remember what happened, so this entry may be more photographic than others.

Ausangate is a big mountain (6380m) between Cusco and Lake Titicaca.  It is quite often visible from Cusco, almost 100 km away, and was sacred to the Incas.  We were first interested in it when we heard a boast that on it are the highest mountain lodges in the world. We also met a muscular American girl who said it was some of the best trekking she had ever done.  She was off to teach in New Delhi so we bought her OS map off her.

We were a little nervous about the trip.  Would the boys manage two passes over 5000m?  Would they manage the long days?  Would there be enough to eat?  Juan Carlos, from the agency which runs the lodges, was reassuring.  A man would follow us round with two horses in case any of us should conk out.  The days were long on paper but if you walked fast from lodge to lodge it would only take a couple of hours each day. (This was a big exaggeration as it turned out.)  There would be bread, pasta, cooked lunches, don’t worry.  He issued us with duffle bags for our kit.  These would be carried by llamas.  He also mentioned that two Peruvian travel agents from Italy would be coming with us.

Our guide was to be Jeremy who appeared the next day, glued to his iPhone and dressed head-to-toe in North Face mountain clothing (lest we should forget he was really a mountain guide?).  Juan Carlos told us we were lucky to have him as he was very knowledgeable.  Another Juan Carlos, a very engaging, gregarious man, was to come with us as cook, with an assistant of course.  With the two llama drivers and the horseman we would be troop of ten.

On the way to the mountain, we stopped for a picnic lunch in a grove of eucalyptus trees by a river where there were torrent ducks at work.  I was intrigued to find out what a picnic was, as the alternative was a ‘box lunch’.  It turned out to be a proper sit-down hot lunch at a picnic table with a table cloth.  With it we were served mate de coca and to our surprise, Titus started glugging it down - with a bit of sugar to ease its passage.

About four miles before the first lodge we got out of the mini bus to walk.  The path went through a dramatic gorge and then emerged into beautiful alpaca and llama pasture, with little streams running through it.   But at over 4000m it was chilly and we were very glad to find, when we arrived, that a woodburner had been lit in the lodge. We were also all issued with moccasin type slippers made from alpaca hides.  These were very warm and furry, and the boys could not quite believe they would be ours to keep.

At this point I should explain that the lodges are all run by the communities for the communities.  Each one has a local caretaker and all the maids – and in future all the guides – are from the local villages.   The lodges themselves are quite stylish and have about ten bedrooms.  Each room has its own bathroom and there is hot water in the afternoons (when you arrive). Apart from the wood burner there is no heat and it’s damned cold, though hot water bottles are delivered to the beds after supper and there are plenty of blankets.

Later that evening our co-guests arrived – Alex and Axel.  They were not Peruvians from Italy but Italians from Lima.  They marched straight up to us to introduce themselves – in English – and turned out to be utterly charming for the whole trip.  Alex was doing the trek for the fourth time.  Axel, his junior partner in their travel agency, was on his first visit. With us they spoke English but they also managed to have a good rapport with each other in Italian and with Jeremy in Spanish, which was quite a relief for us.

I won’t give you a blow-by-blow account of the trek - I cannot remember the exact sequence of events anyway.  What we do remember is that it was a trek with a wonderful sense of drama.  An hour or so into the second day one started seeing the snowy peak of Ausangate and for the next two days we were walking round its base.  The route led us through vast pastures where alpaca and llama herders grazed their flocks then up into barren, rocky ground where there were turquoise lakes, back down into pasture and then up again into some of the most geologically stunning country I have seen.

The boys were completely different in their attitudes to the walking.  Zu, with his long legs exaggerated by his black tights, seemed to walk without noticing altitude or distance.  He had brought a football with him and when we arrived at each lodge after seven or eight hours walking would get it out and go and kick around with the men.  He was constantly on the lookout for raptors and spotted the only two condors we saw.  By a lake he found the prints of an Andean cat which, we are told, is the second rarest cat in the world. He also combed the ground for feathers and was rewarded with a caracara feather on the last day.

Titus, for whom problems are never merely physical but also emotional, managed it all but needed a great deal of coaxing, flattering and cajoling on the climbs to the passes.  Sometimes our cajoling would backfire.  “Come on, T” we might say “not many eight year olds have been to over 5000m.”  Half an hour later he would sit down on a rock and complain “How can I be expected to walk up here when I am only eight years old?”  In the end distraction was the best answer.  I would tell (both of them) long detective stories or Martha would feed his endless interest in the world and tell him about reptiles or geology or something.  On the downhills, of course, he needed no encouragement and would suddenly feel all bouncy again.

Titus and Zu building cairn at 5150m

Martha and I coped quite well, though the need to stop continually to put on or take off children’s hats, gloves, coats and scarves, or to do up their laces or find them a snack made the walk far more exhausting than it would have been otherwise.  I also found myself somewhat short of breath for telling stories as we approached the high passes.

It was not long before we began to resent our guide.  To do him justice, he had a sore throat but even so one got the impression that he would always rather be in Cuzco playing with his iPad.  He didn’t volunteer much information to us but when we asked his replies were rather short and gracelessly given.  He would wait for us rather grumpily so we always felt we were holding him up.  He seemed rather machista with Martha and would not credit her with any experience or knowledge worth having.  And he didn’t want us to deviate at all from the route.  Once, when we decided to nip up and have a look at the view from a ridge, he started blathering about how it was our responsibility, even though there was quite obviously no danger.  Only by the fire, or at the dinner table, in the evenings did he cheer up.  I would much rather have been guided by Grimaldo, the man with the horses, who was always 20 metres behind us anyway, though I might have had to persuade him not to play his radio the whole way.

All the other people were delightful.  Juan Carlos the cook and his assistant would pass us every day and rush ahead to cook and erect the lunch tent.  We would also be overtaken by the llamas carrying our bags.  They were rather stylishly adorned with pink tassels on their ears, making them very picturesque.  We would also be overtaken by Nieves, chief maid and waitress, with her two apprentices.  Nieves, like the llamas, seemed to have a good eye for a photo opportunity and would play up to it.

In terms of drama, the fourth day of walking stands out.  The route took us over three passes and with each one spectacular new views were revealed.  The mountains took on amazing shapes and colours – reds, greys and browns – as the geology changed.  At times there was virtually no vegetation and we found ourselves walking through virtual desert.  The camera batteries worked hard.

On the last day we had to climb over a small pass then descend 1000m to the road.  It was a beautiful walk interrupted by a weaving display in a small hamlet.  We felt obliged to buy something and Zu walked away with yet another iPod cover while we bought hats for the present drawer at home.  We found the lunch tent about quarter a mile from the road and had an excellent stir-fried rice.  We then asked if Zu and Titus could ride the last few hundred metres on the horses that were still with us.  They got on but were quickly taken off: the horses were too frisky. 

And some more pictures we like...

Nieves with her two apprentices

Geology lesson with Titus

'The Jungle'

This was a trip undertaken with Martha’s sisters Hermione (Mani), over from England, and Jo, over from Zambia with her husband Robin.

Manu is a national park in the Peruvian part of the Amazon basin.

It was a chaotic beginning.  The evening before we left our guide, Herbert, came with his wife at 8 pm to talk us through the trip and tell us what we needed to bring (though we were leaving at 6.30 the following morning).  He asked for our shoe sizes so the company could provide wellies.  Irritatingly we had been out that afternoon and bought seven pairs at great inconvenience and some expense.  He said we would need a torch each but we only had three.  

He talked through the trip and somehow didn’t make it sound very appealing.  We’d be stopping for two nights at a lodge in the cloudforest where, he said, we could go for a walk along the road to see what birds we could find.  There might be ‘some trucks’ passing.  We all had visions of enormous trucks roaring past on a dirt road. Describing the jungle part he said it would be very hot, humid and full of biting insects.  I suppose we knew this but we rather hoped there would be some redeeming features.

Now, I should state that this was primarily organised as a bird-watching trip and our guide was a twitching guide.   So, first stop out of Cuzco the following morning was a lake about half an hour away and before breakfast was even settled in our tummies we were all training our binoculars at coots, ducks, egrets etc. Titus and I wondered what on earth we had let ourselves in for.  Two hours later we were driven in our little white mini-bus from the lake to Pisac, where we managed to find some torches.  At Pisac we left the tarmac road and drove for two hours over to Paucartambo, a lovely little colonial town known for its four-day festival in June, and for the hundreds of varieties of potato grown locally.   There we enjoyed the flowers, the market and the public loos which were remarkably clean. 

From here the road ascended to a pass, Acjanaca, at 3,500 metres, where the descent into the cloudforest would begin.  As we approached we could see the moisture-laden clouds rolling up from the Amazon basin.  Not wanting to get wet, we stopped a mile or two before the pass and had a picnic lunch.  Two Puna Hawks (also known as Variable Hawks) kept us company.

From the pass the road switchbacked down the mountainside.  We were now in thick vegetation.  It was a single track road with a vertiginous drop into the valley, and it often crossed the debris from landslides.  Occasionally there were little shrines to mark the fate of unfortunate predecessors and on the downhill side the views out of the windows were often quite stirring.  Passing places were few but luckily there was little traffic – perhaps a lorry every half hour or so.  However, this may have led our driver, Guillermo, into a false sense of security.  Coming round a corner in the late afternoon we were all alarmed to see a bus coming rather quickly towards us.  Our driver swerved to the side – the slope side - and skidded to a halt, just missing the bus. We were right on the edge and it was immediately evident that we were a little stuck in some soft ground and leaning gently out into the drop.  Herbert and I managed to get out on the slope side but it was a little too loose for comfort.  The driver suggested that we should all move to the back of the van to put some weight over the back axle but feeling that the van was unstable, and might be slipping further, the others all scrambled over the luggage and out of the back door. The bus had stopped just up the hill and the Peruvians all now had a fun time extracting our little van with a tow rope while we watched, wondering how close we had come to having our own little shrine put on that bend. 

We were relieved to get to the Cock-of-the-Rock Lodge, and in time for tea. But although much anticipated, it was perhaps a little disappointing – hemmed in by the slopes and the vegetation I found it a little gloomy.  It wasn’t helped by its lighting; even when the generator was on there was not enough light to read a book.  But its bird life was wonderful.  There were six or so species of hummingbirds visiting the feeders and the various shrubs, imported for their nectar-rich flowers.
And there were quetzals, tanagers, tyrants....I have no idea how many different species we saw in our two nights there.  Almost all were seen on our walks along the road – there was nowhere else to go but there was virtually no traffic.  Herbert excelled - he turned out to be the perfect guide; patient with the children, informative, fun and relaxed.

One of the things twitchers do at this lodge is get up early and creep into a hide by a lek (an area where the birds display) and try to spot the Cock of the Rock strutting his stuff.  Luckily we spotted the ridiculous bird from the road and didn’t need to do the dawn start.  Zu and Robin got the best pictures.  This is Zu’s.

Another excitement there was seeing Brown Capuchins and White Capuchins which are enticed into the ‘eco lodge’ with large helpings of free bananas. An agouti also came along for a meal. On the second night the boys also spotted a bamboo rat going round in circles under the solar-powered lights that lit the path to the cabins.  It was giving birth but sadly the first one that popped out was abandoned and then eaten by ants.

Titus, whose interest in birds was waning, kept himself entertained on the walks by picking giant fern leaves and then using them in little dances, or as an apron or skirt.  He loved the shapes and textures of the leaves.  He also whittled the bark off a stick with a penknife that we had given him for working so hard for his piano Grade 1.

After leaving Cock-of-the-Rock we headed down out of the cloud forest and hills to the jungle proper.  We had no more close shaves but did manage to get stuck once on the debris of a new landslide.  The Peruvians extracted us by jacking up one wheel and putting stones under it, while a passing 4X4 pulled us with a rope.  It must have been agonising for Robin who has spent his life dealing with such problems and probably would have had us free in a much shorter time (and wouldn’t got us stuck in the first place).  As we left another van was stuck and the pick-up was trying to extract it. Further down the road, as we emerged from the hills, we stopped to see a (legal) coca plantation, which was made more interesting by the number of army ants marching up and down the path.  Fearing that the packed lunches were going to be challenging for the children we stopped to buy bananas in Pilcopata, the only town of any size.  It was totally unnecessary: the packed lunches were excellent and were wolfed down by all.

At the tiny village of Atalaya we reached the Alto Madre de Dios river and transferred to our long boat, a lovely moment. For a moment we felt like real adventurers but we then saw the very un-macho life jackets we were expected to wear.  We went up river about half a mile to eat our lunch and then whizzed twenty minutes down to our next lodge.  The river here is fast-flowing and has plenty of rapids, which made it all quite entertaining.  After being stuck in the bottom of valleys and under trees, it was glorious to be in a wide-open space and see the sky.  While we were going along it was also deliciously cool. We were accompanied by Lloyd who had been our cook at Cock-Of-the-Rock and Paul, who was doing to be manager of the camp in the reserve we were heading to.  Our boatmen were Wilson, in charge of the outboard, and Juan who acted as lookout and operated a big pole when we were landing.

Amazonia Lodge, where we stayed that night, was a run-down old estancia with some charm but not much comfort. Without the motion of the boat we really began to feel the heat here and as soon as we arrived the boys went to splash water over themselves at the clothes-washing tub.  They ended up inside it for half an hour. 

This lodge too had planted for hummingbirds and we saw two or three new species. Before dusk we went for a walk to see what was about.  I am afraid I remember only a cayman and some hoatzin which are apparently disgusting to eat.  On this walk Titus picked some more giant leaves.  But he cut his hand on a long grass, then the next leaf was found to be covered with mites after he had put it on his head, and when he sat down on a log he was given a fierce bite on the hand by a large ant.  “I hate the jungle.  I can’t touch anything or go anywhere” he wailed with some justification. In the night, without fans or air conditioning we sweltered under our mosquito nets.  It was not difficult to get up for a before dawn breakfast and departure.

We had questioned why we needed to get up so early if it was only seven hours to the next camp – ‘Manu Tented Camp’ inside the reserve.  We did not get a clear answer so stopped asking.  It was a wonderful day.  In the first few hours we had to shoot lots of mild rapids.  This was good fun but not alarming.  Once we got stuck on some shoals but the men without lifejackets jumped into the water and managed to free us.  Early on we saw a Tayra, a sort of stoat-come-otter, and a pair of Roseate Spoonbills (on a rare excursion from the Pantanal) on the sandbanks.  Macaws and Roadside Hawks became commonplace.  Then suddenly Juan spotted a herd of White-Lipped Peccaries about to swim the river.  Despite our presence they charged into the water and we were able to go quite close to them as they swam – in fact we had to tell the boatman to back off for fear of panicking them and splitting the herd.

   

After three or four hours we suddenly turned left into the Manu river – a muddy, lazy river with no rapids.  Shortly after, we checked into the Park Rangers’ station.  The men there seemed glad to see us – it was early in the season and they had been twiddling their thumbs for a few days.  There was a good wildlife display and the boys enjoyed the facts about the Anaconda and the photos of the jaguars that had been spotted. It was desperately hot when we got off the boat so we were glad to get going again.  By the mid afternoon the sun was low enough in the sky to get under our awning.  Fearing sunburn, we had to keep swapping with the boys to keep them in the shade as the river twisted and turned its way north.  It was a good lesson in what a circuitous route it took.

We arrived at Manu Tented Camp about an hour before dark and it was immediately apparent why we had had to arrive early: the camp had not been occupied for some months and was not in the least bit ready for visitors. There were dead cockroaches and rubbish on the floor of the dining area and the kitchen, and the jungle had started to encroach along the paths and around the little lodges.  It was, as Jo put it, the low point of the trip.  Herbert, suitably embarrassed, suggested we go for a jungle walk while the men – the two boatmen, Lloyd the cook and Paul the manager – spruced  things up a bit.  “No” said Robin firmly “I think what we need is a cup of tea.”  They got the gas cooker going and while the kettle boiled we all set to work, sweeping floors and carrying up bags from the boat.  The ‘men’ cleared the paths with machetes and tried to get the rooms habitable.  Wilson the boatman was seen carrying the water pump down towards the river and was heard trying to get it going.  After tea Robin went to help him with a torch – luckily so because Wilson had failed to get the pump going properly because he could not see the switches in the gloom. An hour or two later we were playing cards and drinking warm beer (we tried cooling it in the river) by candlelight while Lloyd cooked supper.  (Chicken.  It almost always is in Peru). 

That night we had the most terrific downpour – Jo reckoned a couple of inches at least.  Most of us dozed happily through it but Robin, after years of training in the bush, started to worry about the boat being swamped, not only by the rain but by the rising river.  He woke Wilson and Juan and, not being possessed of much Spanish, did a big mime about bailing out the boat, repeating the word ‘bot’ but without making himself understood.  When he went to look at the ‘bot’, it was fine; the awning had prevented too much rain from getting in. There was much laughter about this in the morning. Most of us survived the night without too many mosquito bites, though I think Zu started to accumulate a few.

The following day we set off early, by boat and then on foot, to try to see the Giant River Otters on a big oxbow lake.  Arriving at the pontoon we found that the rains had managed to swamp the catamaran we were supposed to paddle about in; it was completely submerged.  Twenty minutes of hard bailing, however, and we were paddling off.

It was by no means certain we would see any otters since the lake is about 9km long. However, it was almost as though the otters had been primed that we were coming and after a brief paddle we were able to sit and watch five or six of them for a good half hour.  They seemed remarkably relaxed, swimming round a fallen tree, catching fish, scrunching them while swimming on their backs.  It was all quite delightful.  We took the boat back to the pontoon where a young English couple were waiting with their guide for their turn.  Luckily the otters were still performing when they rowed out.

Other than otters, we had spectacular monkey sightings in the reserve – Capuchins, Spider Monkeys, Brown Woolly Monkeys, Howlers and, best of all, Emperor Tamarins.    The Howlers occasionally made a great racket in the early mornings and afternoons - an extraordinary sound.

From Manu Tented Camp we all set off, quite gratefully, down the river towards Boca Manu, a small town on the confluence of the Madre de Dios and the Manu.  I say ‘all’ because cook Lloyd and camp manager-to-be Paul also came.  Paul said he was going to Cuzco just to do a first aid course before returning, but we heard this week that he did not go back to take up his post.  We couldn’t help noticing that not much clearing up was done before we went and the rubbish was left out.

From Boca Manu, a sleepy jungle village where they make boats out the ‘cedar’ wood, we headed on to Manu Wildlife Centre.  This was very swish, with electricity, lovely cabins and an amazingly big and cool wooden-floored bar and dining room.  Luxury at last.  At one end five hammocks were slung in a row.  The boys used them for great swinging games, to the embarrassment of their parents, and inevitably there were some big crumps.

The highlights of this camp were a walk to a very airy forest platform (40 m up) built round an enormous tree and a night walk on the way back where we saw a lovely tarantula emerging from its tree-root hole.  On our way out to the road we stopped at a macaw clay lick.  While the macaws amassed we had to play cards (Uno) with the boys to stop them stomping up and down the hide and scaring all the birds off.  In the end we saw masses of parrots but the macaws never came to the lick; this was blamed on a solitary vulture which was patrolling in the area.

We said goodbye to our boatmen at a small port on the Madre de Dios. From here we took two rather hot taxis to a river where we were ferried across in long boats.  At the other side a van was waiting to take us to Puerto Maldonado. On the way we saw some of the desecration of the jungle by the illegal gold miners.  Herbert said they destroy one hectare of jungle to get one kilo of gold from the silt underneath.  When they move on, only sand is left.

Puerto Maldonado feels like a frontier town but is surprisingly large.  Jo and Robin, who are starting to import motorbikes into Zambia, were very encouraged to see the town’s transport is dominated by motorbikes and rickshaws.  You can even hail a motorbike taxi.  While there the boys splashed in the hotel’s tiny pool – delicious relief from the heat at last – and we went out for one of those rather indulgent post-expedition dinners.

We flew back up to Cuzco the next day.  One of the reasons for flying was to see the jungle from the air. Unfortunately it was raining hard that day and we saw very little until we were over the highlands.

Back in Cuzco, we heard – to our great excitement – that the tracks of one of the uncontacted tribes had been found a few days after we left.  They were discovered on the far shore of the lagoon where we had been watching the otters.  Col. Fawcett’s grandchildren?  Perhaps someone should mount an expedition....

Finally...