CHAPTER 24
On the Peru map, the road inland from the PanAmerican highway at Casma towards Huaraz looks fairly straight and short. Comparing the distance between this route and the alternative of driving south till Pativilca and then back north to Huaraz, it should have saved us over 300 miles of driving. Never mind that our route was a thin white line (paved secondary road), and the main, much longer route was a thick red line (main highway) on our Peru map. Up until now, this map had proven itself to be horribly inaccurate as to the actual road conditions, and at times, their “main highways” were little more than dirt tracks, while in other locations, there were big modern 3-lane expressways that were not even marked on the map. Considering all of this, all we could safely assume was that there was a road leading from Casma to Huaraz, and that distance wise, it was the obvious choice to take. Well, you know what they say about assuming…
Not only was it not a paved road, in some places it wasn’t even a road! For the most part, the single lane mud track we had foolishly picked wound itself along the bottom of a narrow valley, crossing the river over rickety wooden bridges, and at a handful of locations fording the river was necessary. This was contrasted though, by long stretches where massive construction projects were under way to widen the track into a navigable 2-lane road. After five hours of tedious driving, it was hard to appreciate the delays this construction brought to our trip, but the necessity was all too apparent: given the incredibly untrodden feel of this remote mountain road, there were dozens, dare I say, hundreds of vehicles, mostly huge freight trucks, trying to negotiate this muddy path, in both directions! Every time two trucks came head on, one would have to stop or even back up, to find a pulloff wide enough to allow the other truck to pass. With a long line of many trucks, and us, behind them, this was a tricky maneuver. The reading on our GPS indicated that we were a mere 30 kilometers from Huaraz, yet when we stopped to ask one of the construction workers how much longer it would take us, his answer seemed impossible- 6 more hours?!?! I could walk 30 kms in 6 hours. He must be confused… But then came the uphill. It turns out that at this particular part of the Andes mountains, there are actually two mountain ranges- the Cordillera Blanca, and the Cordillera Negra- the later happened to be between us and our destination.
The 30 kms shown on the GPS turned into a grueling 100 some kilometers of tight switchbacks, so closely packed that they were shown as a straight line on our map and GPS, laced across the face of the nearly vertical Cordillera Negra. We finally found a place to camp at the top of the pass of the road, and were rewarded for the tedious drive by an unmatched view of the snowcapped Cordillera Blanca towering over the village of Huaraz. We were alone and happy in this remote alpine field, but the sense of being duped by our maps was still lingering. We liked the site so much that we stayed another night before heading down into the town, and I spent the afternoon drafting a pointed letter of disgust and frustration to the lazy cartographer whose complete and utter incompetence was a constant thorn in my side. I haven’t sent it yet, because I am waiting to see how many more times these awful maps steer us in the wrong direction, so I can add those grievances to the letter as well.
When we finally arrived in Huaraz, we got right to work on the reason we had come all this way. The Cordillera Blanca supposedly contains some of the best hiking in all of Peru. It is lacking the ancient ruins of the famed Inca Trail to Machupicchu, but it makes up for this with the rugged beauty of the surrounding mountains and also a complete lack of tourists- something the Inca Trail will never be able to claim. After a few stops at the local guide shops, we had a nice topo map and a plan for a 3 day hike up a seldom visited valley on the eastern side of the Cordillera. We had learned that this hike had an amazing cul-de-sac of 20,000 foot peaks at its end, with a bunch of pristine glacial lakes to camp by. It also happened to enter the park at a location without a ranger station, so there would be no park fee- score one for the good guys! With our hike details worked out, we spent a few days buying supplies and seeing what Huaraz had to offer: some thermal pools that were rather a letdown (don’t waste your time, go to Baños, Ecuador!), and a cave that contains the earliest found evidence of human occupation in Peru- over 14,000 years old! The novelty of this fact was short lived though, the cave pretty much just smelled like urine and was covered in graffiti from the hooligan teenagers that undoubtedly go up there to drink and cause ruckus.
We wanted to get an early start the day of our hike, so we drove to the little village at the trailhead the night before. When I say little, I am guessing that no more than 30 people live there, so our arrival was quite an event. A nice shop owner, let’s call her Cecilia (sorry Cecilia, if you are reading this, I can’t remember your real name) let us park in front of her store for the night, and her whole family soon showed up to gawk at the crazy gringos with their transformer truck. She promised to watch our vehicle while we were gone, and then offered to guide us up the trail for the first couple miles because she said she was headed that way in the morning. It is hard to turn down such plentiful generosity, even though with our local topo map and GPS, I was confident in our route. We said “Sure, we would love for you to show us the way”. She replied “Bueno! We should be ready to leave by 5 am.” Kacey and I looked at each other, and then at our watches that read 11:30 pm, and then back at each other- this wasn’t quite the early start we had in mind! We figured that we could take a nap on the trail if we were tired later, so we swallowed our objections and gave her a big “Perfecto! Muchas Gracias!”
The morning was cold and a thick fog shortened our view to a dozen feet, not that it would have mattered- it was pitch black. I locked up the truck and hefted my huge pack on to my back. We had spent less than half an hour packing our bags the night before, and maybe it was because we hadn’t eaten dinner, or maybe because we were exhausted and couldn’t think straight, but somehow both of our packs were stuffed to bursting with food and equipment. Wasn’t this just supposed to be a 3 day hike? What in the H is so heavy in here? I wanted to open my pack and see if I could ditch a few things, but our amiable shop keeper showed up promptly at 5. We followed Cecilia out of the village plaza and the trail immediately became a steep up hill. It was a good thing we had gone with her though, the path wound its way through a maze of livestock pastures surrounded by low rock walls, past small groups of crumbling huts where the inhabitants looked out on us curiously, and there were hundreds of off shoots to the trail, leading who knows where. By the time Cecilia turned to us and said that the rest of the trail was straight and easy to follow up the valley, two hours had passed. We thanked her for leading us this far and asked her what her business was up here so far from her store? She gave a wry smile and told us that she had only wanted to make sure we didn’t get lost and that she was headed back to her shop now. “What?!? We thought you were coming up here anyway?!” There weren’t enough words we could say to thank her for her generosity, but all she said was to come back by and see her on the way down. Incredible! We couldn’t believe it. Meeting people like this is what really makes travelling worthwhile.
The rest of the day was spent trudging up a seemingly endless vertical path. After 10 hours our legs gave out, so we set up the tent in a grassy clearing and took a nice long nap. Another 3 hours brought us to the pristine glacial “lakes” we had been waiting for. Another cursed lazy cartographer! The nice big lake we had chosen to camp by was actually a small pond surrounded by a whole field of mushy, swampy, ground. The field was full of cows and sheep, being tended by a poor old native couple who lived in a tiny rock hut nearby. Seeing that this was supposed to be the national park, we were a little bewildered by the fact that they had apparently taken ownership of the land, but they were more than happy to let us stake our tent by their swampy mud puddle. Truth be told, they were probably here long before the national park was, and now we knew why there was no ranger station and no entrance fee for this trail. Once again, we would be sharing our campsite with livestock.
The view was incredible. The end of the valley was ringed by jagged snow covered peaks. During the short periods that the sun shown, it was intense on the bright ice of the glaciers that fingered their way down between the peaks. Every couple of hours, the warmth of the sun would quickly deteriorate as dark clouds gathered over the mountains and within minutes we would be in the middle of a black tempest bringing sheets of sleet and hail. We would retreat into our small tent and read our books or take a nap, but most of all, we would eat. It turns out that during our late night packing escapade, the one that had provided us with obscenely full and heavy backpacks, we had unconsciously stuffed away enough food for 4 or 5 people for probably a week’s worth of very healthy camping. I am a little embarrassed by this complete oversight because I have quite a bit of experience hiking and camping, and could normally pack my bag with the best of them- I blame most of this folly on being starving at the time of packing: just like you should never shop at the grocery store on an empty stomach, this rule apparently carries over to packing as well. The fortunate windfall of this rooky packing mistake was hours of glutinous face stuffing which corresponded well with our weather imposed tent arrest.
When the time came to leave, we had only made a small dent in our food reserves, so we decided to get rid of our rations another way. In a not-so-unselfish train of thought, we graciously delivered the remainder of our fresh tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and fruit, canned beans and corn, a bag of fresh bread, a pound of flour and two pounds of pasta to the doorstep of the old peasants who had herded their cattle past our tent for the last 3 days. They were more than happy to receive it, and we were more than happy to have feather light backpacks for the return hike down the valley.
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