Ausangate

Ausangate.
In three days it was the adventure of a lifetime.

Prologue: I think I told this story already but it is the true beginning of this trip. Elana, our housemate Chris, and I came home one evening, arms full of groceries, chatting and laughing. Let ourselves into the apartment and started unpacking our things, when suddenly a distinct noise of something dropping and rolling down stairs emanated from the upstairs of the apartment. Chris had just finished telling us about how he experienced the identical situation in Bariloche, Argentina, when he came upon some thieves robbing his apartment, so we looked at each other and backed towards the door, slamming it behind us. We scurried out to the street asking each other what to do. Should we go back in and check it out? Seemed foolhardy if someone or someones were actually in there and especially if armed. We could wait a while and hope they left, but who knows when that would be and wed run the risk again of surprising them if we came home too early. The best course of action, Lony and I agreed, would be to walk down the street to the hostel whose common area was always filled with Israelis waiting for an adventure to come up, and get a group to come clear the house with us. Safety in numbers, and especially numbers of recently retired well-trained soldiers. So we walked over and explained the situation to the group who happened to be sitting there. They thought it hilarious and donned health-worker face masks and sunglasses as they burst into our apartment clearing each room with their fingers folded into guns. No one was here and everything looked untouched. We found out later that the water supply in the city was turned off that night as often happens in Peru, and the air in the pipes was clanging and gurgling to produce that noise. Or it was the ghost which clearly lives here, whichever you find more plausible. Well, if youve ever tried to get a big group of Israelis to do anything, let alone leave, youll understand why they ended up staying and hanging out for hours. We had had plans that night, forget about it, and poor Chris kept trying to get in a word through the din of everyone yelling over each other and laughing, and eventually he just left. The group immediately felt like family and invited us on their treks to Macchu Pichu and Ausangate (Lony went on both, I could only afford time for the latter). So from a little noise in the house we ended up meeting our newest addition to our family, and having an amazing experience.

Day 1: It was evident from the outset that whatever we had been told about this trip was just a whim; no one really knew what was going on, but for $40 for 3 days, it had to be worth it. We started all at the Israeli hostel where we caught cabs to the bus station on the other side of town ($1 for the cab). Station is an exaggeration. Its a sign-less place where the bus for Ausangate is known to pull over around a certain time. Vendors come and push their colorful and strange-smelling wares near the nearby abandoned lot/junkyard where you wait. The bus was a public one and included in our trip price (another $1), which apparently was the first-class fare meaning we had seats for the 4hr ride. Others presumably paid less to stand. With our backpacks and sleeping bags, went family's entire possessions as they moved to a new region, and we settled in with lots of giggling and anticipation to look at the people and eat the bananas just purchased outside. The bus wound up and up out of Cusco and into the arid surrounding region. The flat colors of the dusty land, cactuses and hungry dogs were punctuated by the bright rainbow colors that the people wore. Intricately beaded with mirrors and ribbons, with wide hats to protect them from the merciless sun, the brown, weathered faces and dust-colored feet in old sandals contrasted starkly with our white young faces and tan, black and white REI camping clothes.

We landed in a small village with a market along the street, as we waited for the next leg of the trip (of which none of us had information). We were treated by the locals with wariness, sometimes interest, and maybe some animosity for our expensive things and desire to photograph them as curiosities in their home environment. Some found us entertaining, mostly children, who ran along behind us just wanting to touch us or have their photo taken. But to me it seemed that most were just tired from trying to scratch our a living, and felt nothing towards us at all. We were too far removed from their experience to touch it.

Next leg was in the open bed of a cargo truck in which we rattled up the pebbly track through yellow fields of grasses for over an hour. Everyone laughed and jokes and sang traditional Israeli songs from the Kibbutzim and the Army, breaking occasionally into American Pop so we could join in. Talk with a mixture of Hebrew and English with some Spanish thrown in occasionally with the effect of me never knowing what language I was listening to or speaking, just understanding without recognizing. The air was cool and crisp and you could feel the altitude slightly in your head and lungs. Towering white mountains sat against the blue blue sky and the golden fields, and the energy was all friendship and positivity as we rumbled along.

When the truck finally stopped, it was still unclear where we were staying. We put on our packs and walked over the rolling hillside behind our guide. Rivulets of glacial water flowed freely through the tall yellow grasses, and the long light of the sunset lit up everything, including the 20,000+ft Ausangate. It looked as if we were tiny creatures weaving our way through an undulating golden sea. Our home that night was a "refugio," a refuge, which turned out to be the grain and potato storage shack of a family. The family spoke only Quechua, so we had no means to communicate except our guide for whom Spanish was clearly his second language (No, he didnt speak English, I didnt even say that before because it went without saying). The children were so dirty it was shocking, with snot stuck firmly on their faces and then caked in the surrounding dust and they seemed to be eternally sick, with wet coughs but wearing sandals in the increasing cold mountain night. We tried to talk with them and shared ouur oreos when they werent working by carrying heavy water jugs up from the stream or keeping house or bringing in the chickens for the night, and even though they looked at us with wonder, they seemed to appreciate being babied.

The homestead was a wall of stones stacked on top of each other and easily broken surrounding three mud shacks with packed dirt as the floor and straw thatch on the roof. It insulated poorly, but was better than sleeping outside, and with twelve of us like sardines in the storage space, it heated up slight to a refreshing 45 degrees. Of the other two areas, one was tiny and for extra food storage when summer comes (its winter here, remember), and the other was for the family to live. From my count it was grandma and grandpa, mother and father, and four children who slept in the two beds in the shack. On the floor lived a colony of twenty or so squeaking guinea pigs, all ages, for food on holidays, two abused and dreadlocked dogs and a number of chickens and roosters. The firepit over which everything was cooked bellowed smoke into the hut (no place for it to escape but the door). They hopefully made a lot of money from our huge group and they served us the local (vegetarian) food of potatoes, rice, onions, and spices, in a variety of forms, with the occasional egg mixed with flour to make it go further for protein. Lots of coca tea and the morning, tough bread bought in bulk at the market the week before, and a delicious fresh rhubarb jam which we put on everything to make it palatable. There was also an endless amount of fresh popcorn, since corn is a staple here, which made our hut cosy and fun as we zipped up our sleeping bags and played uno by the light of a naked bulb (electricity!).

At night, the stars were endless. At 14000 feet, the milky way was prominent and stardust was strewn across the sky. The sheer number of stars was truly like the grains of sand on a beach, and though there was no moon, towering Ausangate glistened in the starlight. The only was you could tell the horizon from the heavens was by the blackness of the land against the brilliance of the sky.

Day 2: It was cold that night, and though everyone wore all their layers, it was challenging to keep warm enough to sleep. I awoke around 5:30 to hushed Quechua and the clanging of the jugs as the children brought in water from the backyard. There was silence other than this. No birds, no bugs, no water, no wind. Mountain silence. The white ranges all around us were lit pink at this time of morning, and the previously golden fields were a muted grey in deference. Like every day here it seems, it dawned dazzelingly bright and cold. Breakfast and back through the fields to round up enough horses for the group. These were small horses for the most part, a Peruvian breed with square noses and mule-like tails, made for trekking at these high altitudes. They were well-fed on the infinite grasses, but for the most part resentful of being loaded up with gear and people, and were always feisty and ornery in the mornings.

The gear was minimal. All but one had rudimentary saddles (that one had clothes tied in the shape of a saddle), but there was no bridle or bit, just ropes tied around the horses face, and the stirrups were narrow home-made cages which didnt fit our big boots. We had a mix or riders and non-riders in the group but they didnt bother matching horses to people, and within ten minutes, two of the horses took off across the field, dumping their riders in the process. Elana and I were on two sleepy white horses and, being riders, volunteered to take the wild ones. There was no walking on these horses. And the ropes were more to hold onto than to really stop them when they took off. So Elana and I and two of our friends spent the day at full gallops, faster than the wind, running over the rolling tundra and leaping small streams, through herd of wild alpaca and beneath the ever-present white peaks and mountain lakes. Since no one died, it was a blast. But it did walk that fine line much of the time. The whole day was riding, laughing, feeling like we were flying while trying to keep the horse under control, and gazing at the mountainous horizon. It was cold but sunny and the work of riding kept us warm.

The last leg we hiked, as it was too steep to ride, descending from the tundra through furry cactuses, boulders and rocks left by the glacier, and into signs of human habitation again, walls of stacked stones and occasional mud huts with little boys shepherding their sheep. This was Aguas Termales. A town of about 20 or so sprung up around the natural hotsprings there. We were so ready. Arriving at sunset, when the temperature was fast dropping from a cool 50 degrees (55+ in the sun) to the low 30s, we jumped into our swimsuits and the 100+ degree water, and watched the sun dip below the horizon, campfires light up, and the stars burst through the night sky. Ausangate stood right over us, an arresting sight, and no one could tear their eyes from the mountain.

Dinner was pasta and sauce, but we were all too tired to really eat. We stayed in another refuge this night, but it was an upgrade. We were on the second floor up a tall rickety ladder, but it had floorboards and thin mattresses which kept out the cold, and the kitchen was below us so some heat came through the floor as well. With that and our exhaustion and the lack of electricity by which to play cards, we all spent 10 minutes marveling at the shooting stars before going straight to bed.

Day 3: I slept like a baby. Up at 6am, a few friends and I scurried through the 30 degree morning, put on our damp bathing suits and spent the first daylight hours in our steaming bath watching the sun creep over the mountain range, lighting the jagged edges one by one. We were warm after this and leisurely got into our 5 layers, ate a full if not delicious breakfast, and started for home on horseback. Both horses and people were calm this morning, after expending all our energy the day before, and rode down into the countryside just enjoying the views. The last leg we walked, sometimes laughing together, sometimes lapsing into comfortable silence, back into the colorful town where we caught the bus home. Everyone slept the whole way.