Brotherly Love

It's been just over a week since my brother David came down for a visit, and we have been busy boys.  David had about a month long list of trips he hoped to accomplish in his two weeks in Peru, but we separated the wheat from the chaff and came up with a few excellent choices.  

I had biked down to Urubamba from Chinchero along an amazing trail and thought that would be a good trip for us.  David saw that there was also a road down from Huaracondo and we opted for this route instead.  It was, indeed, a road (as opposed to a trail) but it was completely devoid of other travelers.  It was pretty special to descend 3000 feet in solitude through this canyon from the chilly highlands down into the sacred valley. 

Right as we exited the dirt road and hit the pavement David's slow leak on his front tire turned into a less slow leak, and I got to patching it.  As the bike parts were sprawled on the edge of the road a taxi slowed down and offered us a ride to Urubamba.  He turned out to be a cab driver we had seen in Cusco that morning.  It was a good thing he drove us because the ride would have been another hour on a really dangerous road full of crazy drivers whisking panicked tourists to trains and planes for which they were probably late.  

 

David came down with a bit of stomach pain and fever and so was out of the picture for Sunday's planned hike up the mountain valley of Chicon.  I caught a cab up about a 1000 feet and then hiked right up the valley towards the summit.  I made it to around 3900 meters where I found a huge expanse of flat grassland surrounded by 2000 foot cliffs on three sides.  It was an amazing sight.  I shared the space with a herd of cows.  I had obviously found an amazing place, but there was no way to get out of this valley on foot.  After a few minutes I turned around to head down.  At the first little town I came to I spied a moto-taxi parked outside a bar.  I was marching into town with ten minutes to go in the first half of the World Cup final game.  The cab driver was inside, glued to the television.  He said he'd give me a ride but it would have to be on the back of his motorcycle -- it was quicker and he'd get back to the game faster that way.  We got back into town in time to catch the second half and get some fresh trout for lunch.

I worked during the week and Dave and I made our plans for trip number two.  I had always wanted to walk to the town of Lares, and looked at a bunch of different routes to get there.  Looking at the outdated Peruvian Geological Survey maps it appeared there was a road delivering us to a location quite high up into a key valley.  As it turned out that road had been abandoned in the mid 1980's and we were left off 4 hours from our chosen campsite.  This was a bit of a problem since we were first getting there at 1pm.  So much for the alpine start.  We pulled into a camp at 5 pm just as the sun was setting.

It was a cold night.  It had snowed the night before and the air was still frigid with it.  We estimate the temperature was around 15˚ F on Saturday night.  Cuddled into our down bags in our little shelter we were cozy, but didn't dare venture out in the middle of the night.  

The valley we were walking through was populated with a most extraordinary stand of Kéuña trees.  Species of these trees are found throughout the South American continent but are most notable for their ability to grow at altitudes up to 5300 meters (17,500 feet).  Much of the Kéuña trees were felled during the time of the conquest to fuel smelters and to be used in construction.  It was wonderful to see such a healthy forest here with trees that were large enough to have easily predated the arrival of the Spanish.

After our chilly night we decided to try and get up to a series of lakes that led to the pass to Lares.  David stayed behind at the first lake while I sped ahead to get a view of the area above.  Rising out of the first lake was the complicated and imposing face of Puma Huanqa, a diminutive 5300 meters in height but still an immense presence keeping watch over the landscape. 

As I continued up I ran into a fresh layer of snow, very rare for this time of year.  It had coated the land above 4200 meters the day before and made for spectacular scenery.  The final pass (4600 meters) can be seen at the top of these switchbacks.  

At 4400 meters I found this beautiful flower, tucked into a crevice in a rock. 

There is a single house on the flat land below the first lake.  It is a makeshift store and corral, supplied by the horses that continually pass by either with trekking groups or on their way to pick one up.  The couple who live there are named Mario and Barbara.  Mario was happy to see us and we sat and visited for a while over some potatoes that he boiled for us to share with him.  I asked him why he had six dogs and without a moment's hesitation he answered "Pumas."  

Later, while David slept by the big lake, I crept up behind him and gave my best imitation of a Puma growl.  David levitated, turning in mid air to throw his water bottle at me.  He missed me by inches and I am sure that if I were a puma I would have turned tail and gotten the hell out of there.  That is if I weren't laughing so hard.

One of the saddest things I saw on this trip was the quantity of trash tucked behind rocks and clogging both the trail and streams.  The ethic of land stewardship in rural Peru is not congruent with the west's current thinking on land conservation, to put it bluntly.  And to be fair, the valley we were walking through has been populated, cultivated and worked for thousands of years by humans.  The difference is that the economy has shifted from subsistence to tourism, and with tourists comes trash.  There has always been trash, but for millenia it was decomposable.  It is a real crisis here  and I would like to help educate the locals about low impact camping practices and help clean up the mess.  They have to understand that aside from fouling such a beautiful place, tourists (the main source of income) will stop coming if they keep filling the valley with garbage. 

We descended nearly 5000 feet from the snow down to the Urubamba River valley in three grueling hours.  Amazingly we grabbed a cab right away and were in Cusco an hour later.  It's quite ironic that the land surrounding the snowy peaks is far more moist and lush than the warm lowlands along the river.  It's a bit like upisde-down-world.  But as long as those glaciers keep providing moisture, the Kéuña forests will thrive and maintain this alpine zone as a vibrant and moist habitat for all manner of living things.  A fact that is hard to believe at such a high altitude. 

I hope to return to the Lares trail in the near future.  I'd like to do so with signage in multiple languages explaining the "pack it in, pack it out" ethic, and a team of horses to carry out the evidence of all those who came before.