Hike to Lares with Canadian friends 20-24 setiembre

Hike  from  Ollantaytambo  to Lares  with Canadian friends       jueves 20 de setiembre –lunes 24 de setiembre

On the 20th, I take a bus into the Valle Sagrada, to meet Paul and Mary Anne, and Paul’s daughter, Julia, who is working for a school for disabled kids in the small town of Urubamba. Julia has seemingly lived all over the world, and has been here for two years and I know it will be hard for her to leave. Her Spanish is fluid, although with a bit of an English accent, but there is a lyrical quality to it which makes it very pleasant to listen to. I meet Paul and Mary Anne in the small town square, next to the main church, and, after picking up some wine (Peruano and Argentinian, both of which are not cheap but quite good,  we head to Julia’s house where the four of us make a really delicious meal consisting of a salad, spaghetti, and I cannot remember what else, just that it was very good. One of Julia’s roommates arrives, a Peruano whose English is pretty good, and he is amusing in a macho kind of way. 

We discuss plans for the next day and then walk to a nearby hotel where friends of Paul and Mary Anne, an older but very energetic couple who have traveled with them, are staying, and where Julia’s boyfriend, Alberto, works. After playing a bit of pool and ping pong on some very wonky tables,  I head off to my hostal. (I had been invited to stay, but did not realize it until too late and had already moved in and paid for a room not far away.)  In the morning, we head off to Ollantaytambo, a town with very impressive ruins on two mountainsides high above town, and a well-established tourist trade due to the train station in town which takes people to Aguas Calientes, just below Machu Picchu. We have a late breakfast there and then head off on foot, on a small dirt track along the Rio Patacancha which leads us up through several small, traditional villages to the village of Patacancha. The weather is pleasant, and the company is enjoyable, and the scenery is of mountain slopes, much of it terraced for small scale agriculture, some of it irrigated. Irrigation, which is common in the Andes, is accomplished by putting an inlet pipe in a mountain stream uphill from the target field so that gravity powers the rotating sprayer in the field.

We cross paths with local people who are moving animals (mostly sheep and llamas, but also horses and pigs). Chickens are ubiquitous. When we see women, with children or not, they are invariably working as they walk. Either spinning yarn, with a hand-held spindle, or actually knitting.

We also see many places where there are adobe bricks drying in the sun, or awaiting building projects. They are made of clay and straw, with a little water, placed briefly in a wooden mould, and then laid on the ground in the sun for 2 days on each side to dry. They are solid, and are the main construction material in rural areas. For mortar, they use damp clay. Where people have more time and money, the bricks walls are plastered over. (Two coats according to Paul, one thin to seal and one thick to face the elements. They do seem solid and warm, and I am considering trying this out back in Canada.  We also see a family who has just finished ploughing a field with two oxen, which is the norm in the mountains here: wooden implements (the plough) and animals for extra power (carrying, ploughing, etc.) Paul and I help them drag the plough up onto the road which is above the field.

                                                     Paul with an adobe brick mould

                                  On the road to Patacancha. This woman is knitting as she walks.

We spend the night with a local family in Patacancha who have a couple of outbuildings (with one light each which do not work as the electricity for the village is out for the evening and then on but just barely), but they are comfortable. The family, and most of the vllagers are dressed in traditional clothing: sandals, shawls and ponchos, and traditional colourful hats that have a an open bowl on top: attractive but do not look particularly effective but what do I know? The senora cooks us supper with boiled potato appetizers, a soup with a potato base and containing potatoes, and a main course which was good but I cannot remember what it was. All in all, according to Julia, there were 5 varieties of potatoes in the meal. There are several thousand varieties grown in Peru, which is where potato cultivation originated. Some of them are frozen and dried, and kept for months like that, and the colours vary a great deal from black to white to red. I love potatoes! Two things I missed in my 6 years in northern Ontario were wine (dry communities) and potatoes (expensive to buy because of their weight and therefore the air freight cost). Julia asks the family to find us a guide for the next day as we are to cross a high pass (4200 m) and descend into the village of Lares, and she is not sure of the way.

They have a dog which stays near the door and waits to be invited in. I am friendly to it and it takes that as an invitation but it is soon shooed out. There is also a lamb that is only a few days old and has been rejected by its mother that the family is hand-rearing  and which also comes into the house. The house consists of one room which is a combination kitchen/dining room, with a bathroom (with flush toilet) in the adjoining room reached from outside. Upstairs are the bedrooms accessed from outside. For the night, a small flock of sheep are herded into a small fenced enclosure. I later learn that they did this mostly to keep the sheep from eating a large spread of potatoes that are laid out to dry.

This lamb`s ewe has abandoned her and so she is being raised by the family

 

                       One of the huts we stayed in in Paticancha. Note the adobe construction.

             Our Patacancha hostess. This is typical dress in this region of the Andes in rural areas. They hike the mountain trails daily  in these sandals.

After supper, the lady of the house and another woman bring out some of their handiwork: a nearly completed hand woven poncho, hand woven belts and shawls. Paul and Mary Anne purchase some things including the almost finished poncho which Julia will arrange to pick up  from the family later. Their weaving is beautiful and it is an unbelievably pain-staking process.

I do not sleep at all. In the morning, after a breakfast of instant coffee, bread and eggs, the guide arrives. His name is Mateo, a local farmer and family man of in his late 20s, who is very friendly. I walk with him on and off as does Julia, and I practice my Spanish, and learn about his life and concerns. The mountain scenery is beautiful and we encounter families herding sheep and llamas, and small huts that they use when up here. We learn that the animals are herded down lower and into shelters for birthing as they would not survive up here in the winter. We are on the lookout for alpacas as well as llamas. They are very similar but we do not see any on this trip. We see sheep foraging in a harvested potato field, digging with their feet for leftover potatoes. When I ask Mateo about the fallow fields, he says that in the mountains the fields are only used once every 5 years and are left fallow in between to recover.

Shortly before arriving at the high pass of the day, we arrive at a small alpine lake where there are some black birds lounging about. According to Mateo, there are a lot of fish in the lake which could explain the birds’ presence. As we climbed toward the pass, we could see below us the tents of a guided group. Seemed unusual that the tent is still up as it is now close to 11 AM.

After crossing the pass and on our way down the other side, we encounter 6 or 7 small animals in two groups. They have a high-pitched call and live among the rocks like pikas in Canada. They have ears a little shorter than snowshoe hares and a fairly long bushy tail. They are fairly common rodents called viscachas, a relative of the chinchilla. They are hunted and eaten like snowshoe hares are in Canada. I later watch a film about them which points out among other things that they are threatened by global warming. As glaciers melt (the snow line in the Andes has moved up a long way over the last century, and is now getting up to 5500 meters or so), the year round source of water required to nourish the alpine plants that the viscachas live on, is drying up.

                                                   Viscacha: notice the camouflage colours.

                     Lots of llamas grazing on the mountain slopes. They do belong to someone.

 We get down to a village more or less down in the river valley at around lunchtime. It seems very disorganized compared to other villages, and we see pigs here and there rooting in the grassy areas. We had heard that there would be a festival going on but it is not happening today. We purchase some fruit and bread from one of the only little stores we can find. Here we pay and say goodbye to Mateo, who returns to Patacancha at twice the speed we have been traveling. The dog that has been traveling with us to this point, continues with us, and along the way, a woman informs me that the dog is from Lares. We continue along a dirt track to Lares. On the outskirts of town, we encounter a Hot springs and decide that this would be a nice way to finish the day. We make a decision to take a ‘shortcut’ down which turns out to be more like climbing down a muddy cliff, but we make it down. The hot pools feel very nice on the body and we spent a good half hour soaking. As we head off, it begins to rain but fortunately not too heavily, and within an hour, we arrive in the town proper. We find a room in a questionable hostal in Lares, the better of two places we visit, and then go looking for supper. Although there are about four restaurants here, only one is open. It is crowded and over-priced but the food is good and filling. After supper, we spend a bit of time watching a school troupe of dancers practicing for an upcoming festival both in the evening and in the following morning. Several musicians that we had seen in the restaurant are accompanying them. The music is good and the dancers vary from excellent to barely there at all.

In the morning we decide to attend a Sunday mass at one of the two local churches after establishing that it will be later than we are first told. While waiting, we try to find breakfast. Easier said than done. After asking around and being pointed at other places, one lady relents and reluctantly agrees to serve us some coffee. She also runs a gas station and we realize that we are sitting next to drums filled with gasoline. To fill up vehicles, the woman pumps gas from a drum into a pail, and then takes this to a vehicle and pours the gas in using a funnel. After, we do make it back to the church and do sit through a mass. Julia is asked to do one of the readings and she does an excellent job, much better than the local boy who does the other reading. It is over soon enough and the others have a chat with the priest who is from Belgium, while I wander around the local tiny market which has now been set up. Shortly thereafter, we take a bus back to Urubamba, where I have a chance to see the rural school where Julia works. For me, the interesting thing is that they raise chickens, a few sheep, and some vegetables, which gives the school some food and some money as well as gives the children some life skills. There is one student who lives there even on weekends, who is severely mentally challenged. I watch him in the yard, and see his unusual style with which he plays by himself. It cannot be easy for him.

We have supper in a restaurant in Urubamba, which serves crazily large portions of meat and vegetables. The heap is so big that it is hard to get at anything but that which is on top. I eat the meat and little else. It is kind of gross. Paul and Mary Anne sensibly share a meal. We spend the night at Julia’s.

Monday, I say goodbye to Julia, who will meet Paul and Mary Anne in Cusco the next morning to see them off by plane, and we take a bus back to Cusco. I have a reservation for a hiking trip to Machu Picchu leaving early  the following morning. In Cusco, we split up and I head to a different hostal than where I had been staying. It is very nice and also has a restaurant. This hostal, called Hotel Niños, was started up by a Dutch woman who is using it to fund an orphanage for street kids. I arrive from the bus on foot about 8:30 AM. I tell them I have a reservation and that I am very tired and is there a way that I can get into my room soon (again I have slept little)? I am told that I will have to wait for an hour. I wait in the courtyard and am served some coca tea. I read and wait and wait… After an hour and a half, I ask and am told it won’t be much longer. After another half hour, it definitely won’t be much longer. After three hours, I get angry, and I know I cannot do this in Spanish. I ask the desk clerk if he speaks English which he does. I give him a piece of my mind. Miraculously I have my room in five minutes. And I sleep.

Later, I run a few errands. I also find Monica, a woman who gives great massages and get a massage. It feels wonderful. We meet back for supper at a vegetarian restaurant after Paul and I go out for a beer and a chat, while the others attend a traditional dance presentation. The vegetarian food is excellent, and then it is time to say goodbye. It was a nice change to be with good friends from home.