Click to Download MOBI ebook file (2.1Mb)

"You cut like a girl, Rrrrrambeta!"
I roll my eyes and continue swinging the machete....like a little girl.
"RRRRRRRRambeta!" he taunts again with a smile.
"Yeah, yeah. Anyway, shouldn't it be Ramba?" I point out, hoping to inflict some damage, "RambO being the masculine...Or maybe even Rambita, for Little Girly Rambo?"
"I suppose," he says waving my comments away like another pestilent mosquito. "But...I like Rrrrambeta."

This was Charlie. Remonstrating against my efforts with the machete to cut through another stubborn bush on our return from a fruitless quest in search of Inca ruins. Charlie was all squares; square legs, square torso, square shoulders, square head, like a Lego man. I swing again, swearing the blade was blunt whilst also wondering if perhaps Charlie's Indiana Jones-like hat concealed a little yellow lump, reminding me that earlier he was calling me 'Indiana Jones Jr. the Third', for some other derogatory purpose no doubt, though what it was I'm not sure I know.



"Anyway, " I say stopping for a breather, "it wasn't me who landed us in the very midst of the one place we began by saying we should avoid at absolutely all costs. Remember? You called it the, uhhh....the...what did you call it again?"
"The **** Fest."
"Indeed. The **** Fest. And yet, here I am cutting our way through it."
"Be quiet Rambeta." he says turning to sun his face.

I do as bid, and swing and swing. The two dogs, Attenborough and Shackleton sit besides Charlie conversely patient and nonplussed, though likewise sunning their faces. Eventually we four escape 'The Fest', though my trousers now resemble a pair of colourless maypoles. Back at the car then and we drive back to Charlie's tourist lodge which sits on the very edge of Peru's Sierra Nevada, a prime location nestled between Peru's highest peak Huascaran and arguably it's most beautiful, Huandoy; a pointed slate of rippled cream, missing only a cherry.





Shackleton and Nick
(with a wet leg after 'the Shack' pulled me in the river!)


The next day I walked the trail to Huandoy's glacier and was sitting there trying to muster the saliva to consume some of Peru's balsa-bread, when a group of Indian males pop over the top of the glacier looking like they'd well and truly lost their corn crop. They bound down in their wellies and inform me that the ice has just avalanched and one of their friend's, as well as a few donkeys, are buried in the ice. The man stares, waiting it seems for me to provide some grains of wisdom, whilst the others dab something from small nail-varnish sized wooden vials into their cheeks, revealing brown stumps of teeth.

However, I have but breadcrumbs, and seeing this, the group begin to disperse, climbing back up the glacier to continue their search in their leathery felt hats and thick woollen sweaters full of holes. One turns back to me as he goes and asks,

"Do you have one of them cameras?"
"Eh?"
"You know....lets you look inside the ice."
I think for a moment before realising...."Ohhhh, a thermal camera! No, sorry. Just my bread and bananas."
"Oh." He says looking downcast.

When I walk up around the glacier I find the search abandoned, the group sitting on the banks chewing stalks of grass. Beyond them the mountain rescue team have arrived and are likewise sitting amongst the boulders eating sandwiches and a youth who was crying without restraint a moment ago, is now happily tapping his foot along to the music, a video to which is being filmed on top of the ice.....and, on top of the still cooling bodies....




"Hey gringo, you want to dance?"
"You call that dancing?"
"DAN-CING." she says in English, assuming I didn't understand or to prove her prowess in front of others.
"Urgh, No, thanks." I say, I can't dance, I never know what to do with my face, my facial repertoire consisting mainly of mocking and derogatory expressions.

Whilst I experiment with my facial muscles, I notice the singer's have tensed and taken on a glacial chill - I'll have to learn that one - and she projects this iciness adeptly through rapid speech. I'm not to sure what she says, but the certainty is that it was bad. Everyone, but me of course, is laughing now. I give a thin smile, shoulder my bag, and leave.

From Charlie's the road sweeps downhill, through sweet smelling eucalyptus and a fairly sour smelling pack of dogs with crazy glassy eyes and an appetite for things that move, down and down to the town of Yungay.

Before I can continue south I have to pop into my favourite little restaurant, run by a sad looking widow, who today looks particularly despondent; the hired help hasn't arrived and her son I see, is sitting incapacitated with a broken foot which he rests upon a chair.

It took several visits to the restaurant before the suspicion faded or even a word was spoken to me. Not so now, smiles all round and invited to sit with the son next to the table-sized plasma television showing a psychedelic Latino cartoon, upon which all eyes are fixed, despite the clientele being mostly fifty years older than the target audience.

We chat for a while, in which time the invalided son discovers that English people speak English and so he goes on a well-meant channel hopping spree in search of English programs, or the Olympics. All eyes move simultaneously to me, narrowing as they do so making me sweat more than my hot soup. Luckily no English TV is found and peace resumes when the crazy coloured Latino blob returns shouting on the screen. But no sooner and all eyes are on the move again, mine included, this time to a pretty girl walking by, parting the crowd, her long ink-dark hair flowing behind in her wake, leaving behind an invisible but almost tangible something. She catches us looking and smiles towards us....before slicing her finger sharply across her throat.

"I guess that means NO, then!"

But, I like her already.


************************************************** ******************************





Blackadder III

Screaming. I'm finding it hard to see. My spectacles jump on the bridge of my nose make the road too bounce like a jumping film-strip.
A rut. Must be more than 35kmh. A rock. In first gear. Oop, Jesus. A curdling scream. Can't keep this up. BRRRRRAAArrrrrrmmnnnn agrees Rodney, with a descending engine note....like a chainsaw dropped into water. NO! COME ON! COME ON! NO! NO! NO! No chance mate. My head drops with the rev counter. I could curse the machine, but it's pointless and I just give my most inexorable Blackadder face, Rodney will feel much worse I'm sure.

I slip from the saddle and start pushing.




I reach my destination eventually, Laguna Llaca and at the end of the rough trail I find, unsurprisingly, a taxi and a minibus, as well as a lone park guard. The guard stares up to the snowy peaks wistfully, a thick silvery stubble on his small round face as if he's been staring up for several days, and amongst the stubble too a feint but happy smile. He likes it here. There is an air of calm about him and, as if he were expecting me, turns his smile to me and says, "You want to camp?"

"Urgh....Yeah, if I can."
"You can camp here on the grass if you like." he says sweeping his hand across it before returning it with the other behind his back.

He's far from being a wizard, his woollen hat not quite in keeping for that. But he looks....he looks like....well, how does he look? If I stuck a light-sabre in his hand I dare say he'd look quite a lot like that little Yoda fella in a woolly hat....just not green.

Very poetic.

Alas. I suppose if I read more mythic tales I'd be able to conjure up some magical comparison, but as I think they're full of well, myth (LIES I TELL YOU!) I'll have to stick to my (photon) guns and go with the green fella.

"Umm," I say pondering, weighing up the grounds, thinking I've got a good face for this one. I'm not thrilled about the view, the car park, the refuge and the outhouse, especially having made such an effort to arrive, optimistically I had my hopes set on actually seeing the lake. I tell him as much, but he informs me that it's not permitted to camp at the lake. However, after a friendly chat, and a devilishly tricky light-sabre battle, he tells me that "okay, you can camp at the lake"....now just to lug all my gear up and over the tidal defences. I trot off, duffel in one hand, tent, water, stove and food in the other, on my way grabbing a gift of toasted maize kernels from someone else I'd been chatting to, then dash up the steep loose dirt before being reminded quite forcefully, that no, one doesn't dash at 4500m. Well at least I don't. Crawling over the lip of the bank, legs kicking in the dirt, dribbling a bit, dragging and pushing the now dusty bags I heave myself up to look around, finding before me my favourite spot in all the Andes. What a place! A formidable lake, which runs straight to the very edge of the thick blue glacier leading up to the huge razor sharp ridge of rippled snow and the pointed peak, Ranrapalca, at 6162m. I get a few quick pictures of the tent as the sun sets but, with a paralysingly cold wind blowing cunningly straight up my shirt and out through my sleeves, taking all my warmth with it. I am forced to jump into the tent, and then the sleeping bag, where the wind tries it's best to jump in too.





Spot the tent


Settled in, all clothes on, woolly hat tied tight around my ears and my hands wrapped around my steaming tea, I let out a sigh of relaxation, alone at last....Then, outside, something. A whistle. People, and the whistle tells me they want my attention.

Bugger.

I wonder if I can just wait in my tent, maybe they'll get tired and leave. Or freeze to death. But I know they're just intrigued, and I don't want piles of frozen corpses in my sunrise photos, and I mustn't be nasty and so I start unzipping myself from my feathery sarcophagus. Outside, two men, carved from wood and dressed in fatigues; Peruvian Commandos. Their handshakes are like a couple of nutcrackers and I tuck my cold cracked hands in my armpits and step from foot to foot as we chat, though these two tree trunks stand rigid, little effected by the cold despite their measly fatigues. They tell me that as well as not getting cold they don't get paid either, just free room and board, but one can understand the perks...and the peaks. They tell me that they just came over "that" pointing to the lethal blade of ice that bridges the two formidable peaks at the far end of the lake, surely over 5600m, 59 Commandos, with 30kg packs, and the Captain is 50 years old. Jungle though, they maintain, is far worse. I bid them good night, open the icy tent flap and get into my now chilly sleeping bag.

By morning the tent is thick with ice and the sleeping bag damp with cold breath. Once the sun is up I head off around the lake towards the morning's target; the glacier. Approaching it through boulders, pools and chunks of melting ice I can make out the glacier's jagged translucent blue flakes, curved humps and hollows, arches, tunnels, caves and overhangs. But when I arrive at it's edge, it's not the sight so much as the cacophony; dripping water, hissing sand, dropping dust, tumbling boulders and beneath it all the generator-like hum of a huge thrust of water, flowing somewhere below. The roof of the glacier is hidden below a layer of dirt and mountain debris like moon dust. Rocks teeter high up on the brink of the glacier or jut out of the ice face in rows like jaw lines of teeth.





I sit there for an age, next to a huge overhang of ice, watching the mountain move and wondering what might happen if that overhang should fall into the lake....I move to higher ground to a solitary mound of fine sand in the midst of the boulders and from my new vantage point I notice a large hole, which, under closer inspection, I see is an ice cave. Still, it could fall any minute, a horrid death, premature I feel, alone for certain. No, a beastly demise. I return to my hump. I watch the opening, enticing me to enter, watching the ice drip and drip, as my mind it ticks and ticks. I go back to the cave. As I get near a large pile of debris, rock and sand falls with a nasty clatter. Mmm, perhaps not. Back to the hump. But then I decide I can't be a coward, if I'm really quick, once inside I will be safe.....from rocks at least. I dash in before I have chance to change my mind and find myself standing on a layer of the finest sparkling white sand, beneath a low ceiling of bright bubbly blue waves of ice. I give it a punch, solid as rock, a fact confirmed in that glacial ice is actually a metamorphic rock.

I walk to the end of the blue tube and look back over the lake, back to my hump and stand in wonderment! What a treat. What more can one person want. What else is there. A solitary man, in a tube of ice. But before the tube was no longer a tube I nipped out, back to my hump.






************************************************** ****************************

I crane my neck back. My throat burns like searing bacon. Up above a pair of black dots separated by one red dot. Each time I look to them, they are no more ahead of me but make the summit seem so much farther, they hardly seem to be moving. But I suppose that means that likewise, I'm not moving either. But my God, it's steep, and loose. All I see is the black and white of dust and stones, like trying to climb bird-shit on a window pane. The heavy pack pulls me backwards, and its straps cut into my shoulder like shiny-sharp cheese-graters. I swing my head round and down, more coloured dots below, they're not catching me at least....is anyone moving? A chunk of the Siula glacier tumbles down the face turning to dust before hitting the creamy lake below, my camp spot from last night. And I smile, what a spot it was. I twist my head back to the trail, which splits in two here, but my head is heavy like water. Or vinegar. Pickled. I just can't decide which to take, though they rejoin each other in several meters. I just look from one to the other. Spot the difference. Seems awfully complicated. Then I hear something. Blast and darn it! The girl has caught me up, and now the summit is even farther. She looks up to me in anguish, a face not unlike Joe Simpson's on the cover of "This game of Ghosts." Funny, he's the reason I'm here.





I shake my head in mock mirroring anguish and laugh. "Steep, no?" I ask.

I've picked up this silly habit. In Spanish 'no' is said like a verbal question mark, one can put it on the end of just about any sentence, and one can even say "Si, no?" See?

She let's out another groan, looking down at her feet like they were some Chinese appliances, so oddly disappointing.

"You know," she says as we move off, "we have a name in my country for people like you?"
"Oh yeah. It's not the same as in my country is it?"
"I don't think so....We say," she pauses, forced to take gulp of air, "We say that you're stronger than vinegar."

Another fork in the trail it seems, does she mean I have an acid personality or that my strength is about 6 on the ph.scale? I can't figure it with my pickled egg head, vinegar on the brain, so I just ask, "What's it mean?"
"I don't know. It's just what we say." So, I'm stronger than vinegar.





Looking back on a fine camp, besides the second lake.


We reach the top together, though we've left the best mountains behind and the view over is actually a little disappointing. It's one of the few points about Huayhuash, the main range is small and as well the main trail far from them, often out of view. It necessitates therefore that one walks the lesser, more difficult trails, like this one, though the rewards are great.

Sat on the top, a half dozen other walkers, the red and black dots finally reached. As well, two children, locals selling cola from a plastic paint bucket. They'd passed by my tent in the morning, despite the trail being a few hundred yards away.

"You want a coke?" asks the boy.
"No thanks." I reply, finally removing my pack, damp with sweat. "I saw you this morning, no?"
"Yep."
"Here then," I hand them a pack of biscuits, "you must be hungry."
"Thanks!"
"No worries."
"That bag is very heavy!" he says.
"It is today! I thought it would be lighter after four days and I would be stronger, but it seems to weigh more and I'm weaker! How are the biscuits, good, no?"
"Mmmm." they both say with happy grins.
"What are your names?"
"Fausto." says he.
"Margarita."
"I'm Nee-ko-laas."

Someone else asks how old they are, Fausto is ten and his sister is only five.

I don't really feel hungry, though I must be and force down a bag of peanuts whilst chatting to the others, telling them of the fine spots they have to come, as they're heading north. After a while, I heave up my pack onto tender shoulders and start downhill, Fausto and Margarita decide to join me, and this in itself is one of the other benefits of trekking in Huayhuash, the locals. Whilst Huascaran is a National Park, Huayhuash is a community owned park. The downside is that the "communities" all require you to pay, and it gets expensive, to the point that almost everyone you meet asks if you've paid, "What, again!" and I was a bit tired of "communities" of two huts asking me pay for a camp spot next to a lake surrounded with turds and toilet paper. They'll tell you the money is for security. Which of course means you are paying the thieves.





Fuasto and Margarita selling colas at the top..


Luckily Fausto and Margarita didn't want paying, or maybe they were just after more chocolate biscuits, but I don't think so. In the valley I meet their mother, a lovely lady in a floppy felt hat fetching cow pats for the stove. She seems impressed I deduced what they were for, though she wasn't impressed with her son and she gives Fausto a good clack for not selling the last coke to a group now on the summit. "Israelis." he says pulling a face out of my library, adding, "they're really dirty!"

The two children invite me to camp at their house, but with mum saying little to that effect and me being absolutely dog tired, I continue on down the valley to the lake, though Fausto and Margarita cling desperately on!

"Do you sell coke everyday?" I ask Fausto.
"No, only on the weekend."
"So what do you do with the money you make?"
"We buy more coke!" he says as if it were obvious.
"Oh, right, of course. Well, what do you do the rest of the week?"
"We have school."
"Where's that?"

I can tell you it is in the same place as my motorbike, which I will not reach until tomorrow afternoon!

As we go we spot some huge white beast farther down in the valley, in the fraction of a second before it spotted us, I thought we'd stumbled upon a very lost polar bear, then spotting us, it turned it's huge white rump and scarpered in polar bear like fashion. Fausto maintained it was a fox - some effing fox - that likes ripping tents open in the night in search of chocolate biscuits. I told him that it wasn't very funny. He said it wasn't very funny either.





A Polar Bear in the Andes


Fausto's back at the tent in the morning and we have a nice chat. I wonder if I'll go back one day, when I'm older, and find Fausto in the same hut, walking up the mountain to sell cokes....he'll have his work cut out with his current work scheme, he'd have millions of cokes by then......one day perhaps.

I continued to meet people that day in Huayhuash on my return to the motorcycle, and didn't walk alone for any of it. First Fausto, then a man whose name or photo I didn't get and all I remember are his horse's pointed feet for they were without shoes. Then, Rosa and Jorsten. She too was out collecting dried cow pats, and her red cheeked nephew was helping, he wanted to one day be a pilot, he looked a bit 'Biggles' in his woolly hat. Then two girls who asked me why my feet were soaking wet,

"Because I crossed the river there." I say exhausted,
"We normally take our shoes off, otherwise it's very cold." they say with infinite wisdom. But I was too tired and now wondered if I'd regret this laziness later on the bike. The two girls go on to ask with lovely intrigue the names of all my family members, then all their ages,

"My great grandmother was 100 years old!" I tell them.
"My auntie is the oldest in the village." she confers with her sister, "She's 48 I think."

Then it's the sheep herder who asks what happens if a black person and a white person has children.
"Pint of guniess!"
"Eh?"
"Oh...half and half. You know, black legs, white body. That sort of thing"

He seems a bit confused, it's just not funny, "Not really," I say, "you just hope he has a black penis....."





Rosa, Jorsten-Biggles and cow pats



************************************************** ****************************

I see my first grey cloud in Peru, a large solitary one, beneath which reside the bleak mining towns on the road that runs to Junin. Here, in the market, murdered meats hang bleeding, the blood runs in the grooves between the tiles mixing with water which drips from the suffocated fish and plucked chickens glare with Monet screams. Herbs wither, bread dries, vegetables and fruit soften into palpable rot and amongst it all the vendors who sit gloomily surrounded by or beached on their produce, their self-made prison, counting down days perhaps, until they can escape, to wither and die. Between it all a small space for feet, where piss and roam the dogs. Flies are the pigs in proverbial and real, shit.





Bit of snout anybody?


It's not all bad of course! Here in particular I'm lucky to see the indigenous mountain dwellers day-tripping to the low lands to sell and to buy. The women wear the usual firm felt hats, but decorated with rather ludicrous amounts of tinsel, of all colours though non that match the rest of their attire, turquoise leggings, yellow cardigans and pleated 'crepe paper' skirts. Somehow, as ever, they pull it off and look fantastic! It's a friendly place too, and encouraging calls of 'gringo' come from all sides offering sugar cane juice, chicharron (pork rinds), or jellies with custard, or otherwise tugged by the elbow to inspect a cloth laid out on the floor neatly arranged upon which are broccoli, peppers and oranges, and so nice is she that it's hard to resist buying a little something.





Easy on the tinsel love.


Camp is beautiful, the men and women - wrapped up against the cold, skin puffy, smooth and red like wax - return late with a their fattened herds of sheep and lamas. They're back again early the next morning after the bitterly cold night and I'm glad to find the road heading downhill, beyond the high barren pampas, down through wild valleys of black mountains and blue lakes and, warmer now, the women sit in the sun spinning and weaving wool. Farther down, the valley is neatly cordoned by stone walls, probably home to one of Peru's 2000 potato varieties. A lovely solitary route leads to a HEP plant, beyond which the weaving black valley changes to the warmer pastel shades of a deep desert canyon. Roads fork off left and right and I can only hope that I’m on the right path to my destination, as recommended to me by a friendly local Peruano; the coffee district of Villa Rica. But the confirmation signs are soon there, neat wooden frames supporting plump green avocados, which they call “palta” in Peru, and later the neat rows of musty sweet smelling coffee. It wasn’t Villa Rica I had reached though, it was Oxopampa.





Oxopampa, my favourite town in Peru


The first thing that I notice about Oxopampa is that it is clean. The street is spotless and wide and lined with neatly trimmed and thick, rich, green grass. A woman is sweeping this grass. No tooting horns at the traffic lights. On every corner a pair of rubbish bins, one of which for recyclables. Houses have grass gardens which are otherwise unseen in much of Latin America and the clapboard houses and shops look like old-time America, especially with their Peruvian banners fluttering on the porches. The main square has a church of stained wood that looks like a barn. Shops accept Visa.





Fitting a new tire in Oxopampa's clean street

Despite trying in all the cities and bigger towns I’ve visited for spare-parts, I am certain that this is the place that I will find them. And I do. New wheel and steering bearings, a new front tire, oil change (I also greased the side-stand Adam) and no trip to a parts shop is complete without another box of….tire patches!

Chatting with the locals it seems they all have two things in common; they are happy and they are riding old Honda 250cc Bajas. “The new Hondas," they tell me, "are crap. Made in China.” Quite right, and the old 250s still hold their price costing only a little less than a brand new, made in China Honda 250. Another guy does have a Chinese branded bike, which is currently having new piston rings installed, "it's the law!" he says, with reference to Chinese reliability.

A popular route for weekenders from Lima is to a village near Oxopampa, Pozuzo. Limons, as I call them, are possibly weekending from further afield, Mars perhaps. They arrive in exploratory probing clans in two, three or four 4x4s. Debouching en masse, photographing every angle, posing with smiles copied from the latest billboard, before grabbing bottles of Inka Cola, armfuls of ice-cream, and bags of toasted maize kernals to fuel the sitting and smiling, or the boredom, and then – still ignoring me, waiting patiently - jumping back in the convoy and flooring the accelerator pedal. I must follow behind in a thick cloud of dust. At a viewpoint I get to talk to them, they ask some funny questions between mouthfuls of food, “Shoh…” chew, chew, “what boike are uh roidin?”
“You mean the one I’m sitting on?”
“Yohhh.”

I look up and notice that from the pickup someone is filming me. He asks me to give him a peace sign. I think about giving him the finger. Luckily though, with them buying more snacks, and taking photos of themselves holding snacks, I’m able to sneak off before them and have a cloud free ride….and what a ride! Through the Yanachaga canyon, passing some spectacular waterfalls on the way, that carve out through sandstone and pass right by my shoulder…





On my way to Pozuzo...! :-O


The trail is smooth and fast all the way to the village of Prussia, where I pass signs for Schmidt Alberge, and Herr Schlaksig, and Frau Bruste and soon arrive in Pozuzo (How's your German dad?). Born in 1859 when a group of 300 Tyrolese and Germans finally arrived after a two year slog from home, Pozuzo is the only German Tyrolese settlement in the world, and a lucky find for me as I only came to watch some Independence day moto-x having seen a poster in Oxopama. I have so much fun looking at the architecture, houses with tiles, kitchens with cupboards! toilets with seats, and the menus with wienerschnitzel, that I end up skipping the moto-x. I was hoping to blend in here, and was even asked if I was German by Limons, but the general theme continued and most people smirked at me and I was still far outnumbered by mixtos. Then I started to notice the bad side of things, stray dogs humping and the nice, previously German homes now falling into disrepair under their new owners, peeling paint and piling up junk. So, before I see too much more I head out hoping to maintain my positive view of Pozuzo, and it was a magic little palce, and anyway, I was all too happy to head back, towards my favourite town in Peru, Oxopampa.





Hans Kohels house


I nip through Villa Rica, with a short stop to buy up some of their fine organic coffee on my way to Satipo, which lies out towards the jungle. From here I would head back inland up on what looks to be a fine day's ride, judging by the map at least, which shows the trail rising up from Satipo, only several hundred meters above sea level to above 4500m, and back down again to come out at Concepcion, near the city of Huancayo.

A barrier across the trail and a woman runs over, just to sell me oranges, followed by two men holding antique rifles, they look more like man-sized wooden toy stencils.

“Why the guns?” I ask, buying some oranges.
“Ah, sometimes there are robbers, bad men.”
“Oh, those guys…is it safe to camp?”
“Oh yeah, perfectly safe here.”
“Umm, okay.”
“Just be careful of tigers!”
“OK, I’ll make sure to leave an orange outside the tent!”
"What for?"
"So he'll eat the orange! And not my stash of biscuits!"

I find camp overlooking the village of Mariposa at an old mine, and new rubbish dump….and the local recreational and procreational spot for the village youth who turn up on their motos at night….so sadly little chance of tigers.







The Lost World

From the lower reaches here, lush green and as well the burning brown of smouldering forests making way for crops of yams, and as I progress up the fabulous valley, gaining altitude all the while, the green changes to silvery green and then thickens out to jungle green where every tree and plant seems unique with not an inch to spare between them and I feel like I’m in Conan Doyle’s Lost World with this thick forest rising up steeply to high ridges. I imagine some tribe hidden upon these ridges, watching this solitary red dot progress up the valley, before imaging myself looking down on myself from way up there, where perhaps feet have never been. Twisting up and up along the trail, eventually the trees stop, abruptly like leaving tunnel. Then bare black and white mountains amongst cold damp air where grows asparagus in season, fat feathery heads being chopped from thin stalks and stuffed into sacks by the whole family, filling the road with a green waste of leaves and stalks. I’m freezing cold when I make it down to Concepcion and stock up and head out after a long chat with the friendly shop owner, and having spotted a tall crucifix on my descent decide to ride back a little and try to reach it. With a few dead ends and a bit of pushing up the final meters I make it! Another great spot, overlooking the town and its cloister.





Huancayo, the city near Concepcion, was one long strip of shity (opposed to city) and I passed through quickly continuing on towards Huancavelica and, save an interesting bridge which led to a small lively market where I watched a witch doctor taking pulses and dispensing green potions from Pepsi bottles, the road was dull, and Huancavelica too. Beyond Huancavelica though the dirt trail breathes life to myself and to the mountains, which glow iridescent; blood, blood red and deep, deep fiery orange in the setting sun. I glimpse a mountain that, from the road at least, somewhat resembles Arizona, USA's "The Wave". I try to reach it for camp, passing a returning herd of lamas laden with sacks of potatoes -and pink ribbons - the herders are invisible beneath thick wrapped layers of clothing, but I can't seem to find a way to the Wave, and before it's too late I set up at a small lake, certainly no hardship, a great spot.





Pure silence


Here, even my pen sounds loud scraping on the paper, but not as loud and terrifying as the sound of ducks landing on the lake! I tried to remember if I'd ever really heard this sound before, that of wings cutting and beating the air - not the sound of beating wings - a spectral ghostly noise that tore me from drifting into sleep with a jolt. When I do fall asleep it is fitful and full of disturbed thoughts, though simple every day thoughts, bananas, brake pads, her, water, fuel, tomorrow, words and sentences from the pages before bed or ones I seem to be writing that drone on and on in nonsensical monologues. Roll over, groan, check time, 1am, roll over, where's your hat, check time, 2:42am, roll over, the hat is hurting my ears, what's the time? 3:02am. When will morning finally come? Then it comes, too soon. And the ducks are gone. Tired and heavy, like I'm being squashed, and cold, but warmed at least by the thought that tonight I'll be in Paracas at the coast, though I wonder what I'll find, I have only brief cuttings of a conversation I'd had with a local who recommended I go there, "...should go.....Paracas....compass....Pisco.....south."

__________________
Tales from the Saddle Website
Facebook FanPage for TftS