We drove yesterday from Pisac to Ocotongo and took four hours to drive 70 miles. Pathetic, right?
That’s why it was an all day affair crawling up to 13,750 feet and back down to 11,900 on the other side where we camped. Along the way we stopped a few times for photos, to walk and water Rusty, and to cool the van down. Downhill in some ways was worse as I had to hold back 9400 pounds of GANNET2 in first and second gears to try to prevent overheating brakes. It was a slow grind despite the absolutely perfect road surface and very little traffic.
Most of these photos are from Layne as you might imagine my concentration was focused on the van and the road. You know how the Bible speaks of separating the wheat from the chaff? This is the Andean version of that ancient art:
Hollywood is everywhere:
Stark beauty under cloudy skies. 13,000 feet of altitude breaks no records for us but the road was incredibly technical getting up there. It just went on and on and on winding back and forth and we rarely saw 30 mph.
There was a Mirador ( scenic overlook) on the way down which turned out to be a Llama Park. All too often South Americans build something and do a nice job and then forget to maintain it ( or pocket the money set aside for upkeep).
When Rusty first set eyes in llamas (yam-ahs) in Southern Colombia he went nuts growling and lunging at these weird apparitions. Layne put him in a leash as a precaution and I held him to prevent him lunging.
They hung around for a while staring at each other then they wandered off and Heat there and stared. Rusty has grown so much more self confident in this journey. He meets street dogs and he owns them. In Mexico in 2023 they routinely terrified him.
In Tierra Del Fuego in Chile he spotted a guanaco near our wild camp and he took off blinding like a puppy across the grass. The guanaco bounded ahead and played with him leading him far out of sight across the low rolling hills. He came back ten minutes later panting madly still none the wiser about these bizarre otherworldly creatures.
In Argentina a Patagonian Rhea (or ñandu, a type of ostrich, walked past the van. The only ostrich he had seen was at Robert Is Here in Florida City where we stopped for smoothies and that freaked him out. In Patagonia he was just curious. Florida City:
I cannot imagine car loads of English speakers show up here but there’s your narrative. They all also noted a German researcher has studied llamas and thinks they make excellent therapy animals for humans with emotional issues as they are intelligent and empathetic ( the llamas not the humans).
I’d love to see one of these delicately stepping down the corridors of a hospital…not in my lifetime I doubt.
Onwards to our selected iOverlander listed campsite at a hostal located in a valley between the two mountain peaks we have to cross to get to Brazil; one is done the higher one is to come.
This Quechua woman is cooking in a traditional oven, below, made by piling up rocks and dirt into a long low pizza oven type of thing. They fill it with the yellow straw like grass you see everywhere and pile twigs on top to make forcing this arid region. Slow food par excellence.
We passed one woman offering some food from one of these but she was on a straight section of road (there was one!) but I couldn’t turn around as the road is lined with deep cement ditches. If we see one today, what we hope is our last day in the mountains I will stop anywhere to get a taste. Very annoying as they rarely advertise ahead on the road that they have food for sale roadside.
Life in the mountains. Huayucos is what they call them in this region. I first came across the term in Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel Death In The Andes recommended by a reader and a powerful story it is too, not for the faint of heart.
And here it is in real life:
We easily found the Phallcha Hostal (which means gentian, a red flowering plant in Quechua) with an easy entrance off the highway and a large parking area, annd anrrived ant around two in the afternoon and I was quite ready to stop. We all basically passed out for a couple of hours and when I woke up I finished Death in the Andes, the story of a small village with a ghastly secret tucked away in a mining area of the Andes in Peru. The action takes place during the Shining Path years of political murder and Vargas Llosa’s story is violent and beautifully done. I knew a reporter from Florida who was murdered by Sendero Luminoso so I found the narrative quite intimate and informative on several levels.
Happier thoughts: cook’s night off and she deserved it after a day of dry hacking coughing at altitude and photography and cold gray skies.
Alcohol is not for me at this altitude. We enjoyed hot water and coca tea with dinner. I slept like a log, Layne less so.
There were half a dozen Spaniards led by a large man with a beard ( my brother he said - but he’s more handsome his loyal wife said) and they had just come in an expedition truck and a van like ours from Manaus in Brazil so they had lots of tips.
I would love to travel with them as they are hilarious and full of life.
They told us the roads in northern Brazil are terrible, full of potholes and BR319 through the jungle is boring as it’s lined only with trees and it’s dusty and filled with trucks and motorcycles. Sounds divine and only 500 miles long…Then a young lady took off her shoe:
It’s made from rubber tapped from trees and processed at a rubber plantation. Just across the border in Brazil. It’s organic and modern and they export all over Europe and we are going to stop by to see rubber tapping in the manner I have only ever read about. I hope they have shoes in my size as these are better than Crocs: blasphemy.
We left them to dinner and went to bed on a night that promised freezing temperatures. Tomorrow you may read about us in the tropics I hope.
