Mancorà (Special Guest Writer: Scott) featuring Sick Boy and the Truck (8/28-9/1)

Mancora was essentially the exact same thing as Montanita (see earlier blog entry where Hayley wasn´t too lazy to explain the subleties of a cocaine-fueled South American beach party town, as I currently am).  The only significant difference was that Mancora looked like it had been planted on top of a large-scale strip mining operation.  Sitting charmingly amidst a barren `Hills Have Eyes`-type landscape, Mancora is recognized by Planet as `Peru`s worst-kept secret`.

We spent the first night at a dumb hostel where the owner kept tricking us into thinking that there was either a public computer or a kitchen that we could use.  After we agreed to stay there, she coyly revealed that there was a restaurant upstairs, and that we could ask them if we could use their kitchen.  Sneaky.  The public computer issue is still a mystery.

The next day, as Hayley began her food-poisoning-induced coma prompted by the previous night´s disgusting soup of chicken feet and fish eyes served at a discreet menu-restuarant located in the back of a t-shirt shop, I searched the town for an alternate hostel that absolutely had a kitchen and internet.  We had already discovered that the result of being Peru`s worst-kept-secret was inflated food prices on everything that wasn`t ceviche (or cebiche; the town was divided on how to spell it`s primary food).  Consequently, we needed a kitchen (we would later find out that the town didn´t sell anything that you could cook... like pasta, or food). 

I finally found a hostel recommended to us by Planet, a bit removed from the main Pan-American drag.  Although it was a little farther from the beach, it did have both a kitchen and two free computers.  I was sold.  I walked back to the dumb hostel, summoned Hayley from her stupor, tried to avoid the other hostel owner on the way out (unsuccessfully), and carried our stinky packs the quarter mile down the road to the Posada hostel, where we were let in by the Eegore-like housekeeper slash nightwatchman slash hayley-hand-and-face-kisser (I can`t figure out how to make an actual slash, sorry).

On the way to the hostel I was approached by several cocaine-vendors disguised as rickshaw drivers, who would walk up to me, say `taxi taxi` and then, without waiting for a response, offer `weed weed` or `cocccccaaaaaiiinnee` in their most convincing spanglish accent with apprarently no regard for the cops a mere ten feet away.  

Anyway, the reason to go to Mancora is to surf, and when we arrived at the beach after checking into the hostel I was supremely dissappointed; Lake Tahoe has more waves than what we were greeted with.  After several conversations with local surfing lumaries (including a Peruvian man who owned a surf shop and had lived in Burlingame for 20 years working as a painter), I was convinced that the much-anticipated swell that would generate waves would indeed generate waves.  After all, their information was from the internet.

We spent that day doing something, then returned to the hostel to find that there was someone else sharing our dorm room with us.  This was noteworthy because we had been unable to find dorm-style rooms for a couple weeks, and Hayley and I had been getting mild cabin-fever sharing the same room with exclusively one another.  Our new companion was a stinky, lemur-like kid from Belgium who spoke French, was relatively uninteresting, and always traveled with a German guy who Hayley was absolutely convinced had the voice of a woman. 

That night, in our attempt to avoid interacting with the stinker and the the squeaker, we practiced spanish.  It would be the first and last time we would ever do this.

The next day, the waves started to pick up, and I went down to the beach to rent a surfboard.  I rented an eight-foot funboard (thicker, with more foam than a typical epoxy-based board) in the morning, and paddled out to the small point-break style waves.  The problem with a point-break is that there is really only room for one surfer on each wave, and the heirarchy of who has priority on each wave is determined by seniority and localism, although ignorance of surfing etiquette also helps get waves.  Anyway, I sat squarely at the bottom of the seniority and ignorance heirarchy, and consequently had a difficult time edging my way into the line-up.  I caught a few waves, and was amazed to find that the slow, perfectly curling lefts were incredibly easy to ride.

I went back out in the afternoon after the tide had come in, trading my board for a smaller six foot six funboard.  It was hell of fun.  My surfing confidence had returned and I was able to catch something like ten waves, getting 20 second rides and even making a few little turns.  The beach setup itself was somewhat daunting by this time, as the rocky point that created the waves´ shape was now covered by two to four feet of water.  Consequently, I had to move my location from directly next to the rocky point, to actually hovering over the point as the waves broke over the shallow rocks.  It was so shallow that at times when I was sitting on my board waiting for waves my feet would touch the rocks underneath.  Luckily I never crashed...

Sick Boy

By the way, Hayley was sick this whole time; her Mancora blog entry heavily features a hostel bed and the inside of her eyelids...

Other interesting things about Mancora:

-One morning as I was walking into town to buy a cake (I found a decent cake shop - not what I had become accustomed to in Ecuador, but cake nonetheless), I heard a loud screetching sound on the freeway overpass above me.  I glanced up, and saw a flat-bed truck carrying dozens of tanks of gas careening along the overpass.  Attributing the screetching to the roadwork that was being done on that section of the overpass, I continued walking up the dirt road to the freeway that I would follow into town, lost in thought.  

When I was about 15 feet from the freeway, I looked up again to see the truck swerve towards me and slam directly into the front wall of the Cocopelli Hostel bordering the freeway 20 feet to the right of where I was standing.  The front of the truck was solidly planted in the wall of the hostel as the driver got out dazed but unharmed.  I walked up to the freeway and looked at the guard rail from where the truck had come.  It was scratched and mangled, and I realized that, had the guard rail broken, the truck would have plummeted from the overpass to the exact place where I had been walking.  As a crowd of Peruanos gathered around the wreckage (there was apparently no need to be concerned that the tanks of gas and the crushed truck would react with eachother), and speculations about whether the driver had fallen asleep or the brakes had gone out were offered, I solemnly considered this chilling reminder of my own mortality.

-Walking down the main drag of Mancora one afternoon, Hayley and I noticed a familiar face on a semi-familiar body walking towards us.  After some scrutiny, we realized that it was Mike, the kid who had been punched in the face in Cuenca, Ecuador (see Hayley´s entry).  As he neared us, flanked by two pretty Peruvian girls and looking tan and confident, we realized that he too had seen us, and was trying not to acknowledge us.  It was a particularly startling coincidence to see this kid, as he had told us that he was headed north through Ecuador (having already been in Peru) while we were on a southern trajectory from Ecuador.  Nonetheless, there he was.  

As our continual eye contact forced him to acknowledge us, he offered a casaul Ïmagine seeing you guys again¨as he continued past us into his new cool-kid persona.  Confounded by this snubbing, Hayley and I finally realized that the face-punch he had received weeks before had completely removed his prominent mole, and that this had triggered an entire personity renovation. He was tan, stronger, cooler, and completely uninterested in interacting with anyone who had know him in his pre-punch mole days.

-We also spotted Dorf, the Australian surf-bum whom we had met in Montanita and jokingly suggested must also be its Peruvian sister-city.  Casually strolling down the Pan-American highway in search of the perfect wave, I wouldn´t be surprised if Dorf still thought he was in Montanita.

-One day as Hayley and I were enjoying a pleasant ceviche lunch on the waterfront promenade overlooking the main beach, a small gollum-like Peruvian man sat down in the empty seat at our table.  Having already consumed a few beers, we were entirely receptive to his company and welcomed him to our gathering.  After a few lame attempts at convincing us to kitesurf, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded-up piece of white paper.  Furtively glancing around, he held the paper next to me my leg below the white plastic table, and unfolded it to reveal several rocks of crack.  ¨50 soles¨ he suggested jovially, to which I equally jovially declined.  

He continued sitting with us for several minutes, talking about crack rocks, surfing, kitesurfing, and the state of the world (which we had recently been lectured about from an older Ecuadorian man at the very same lunch - a lecture that covered everything from the treatment of the indigneous peoples of Canada to class inequalities in Peru), until a Serbian killer who coldly wouldn´t bely the fact that he spoke spanish scared the gollum back into seclusion.  When we asked the Serbian killer spoke if he spoke english, he responded with any equally-severe face that he did not.

-Although there weren´t many cheap food options in the bourgeois town, we did discover the magical papa rellenos (filled potatoes) that street vendors would sell for 1Sol (about 35 cents) each.  Filled with chicken and splayed open to be topped with your choice of lettuce, onions, tomotoes, ketchup, mustard, mayonaise, or aji (hot sauce), these delicacies provided the cornestone of my diet for the next week.

-As we attempted to leave Mancora, we found ourselves the victims of a second Peruvian scam after being in the country for less than a week.  After questioning the various bus agencies in search of the cheapest ticket to the moutains of Huaraz, we found one that offered cama seats (fully-reclining  - cama means bed) for 20 Soles less than its competitors.  We immediately purchased the tickets for this great offer, and returned to the hostel to pack our things.  

As we boarded the bus, we were shooed to the upper level where the semi-cama seats were located, and were told that we did not in fact have tickets for the cama beds.  We had paid the exact same price that every other agency had offered for the same product, tricked into buying it from the Flores lady by her scummy false-advertising.  

Thus, we began nursing our healthy grudge against Peru, as visions of Ecuador danced through our heads and four-day-old parasites danced through Hayley´s intestines...

¨The most dangerous border crossing in South America¨ (8/27-8/28)

There are several ways of crossing the border from Ecuador into Peru, most of which can be accessed via Loja. When we arrived at the bus station, we were presented with two options: (1) we could take a bus directly to Piura, a town several hours south of the border and slightly inland; or (2) we could take a different bus to the coastal border crossing at Huaquillas, take a taxi across the border, and catch another bus on the other side.

Option 1 meant the bus would wait for us to take care of our border paperwork, but it would put us a few hours south of where we were headed (Mancora, a small surfing and party town), and we`d need to backtrack. Option 2, according to our guidebook, is considered ¨the most dangerous border crossing in South America,¨ due to the likelihood of encountering ¨shady business¨ in the Peruvian border town of Aguas Verdes.

We took the (cheaper) 6 hour bus to Huaquillas, determined to avoid Aguas Verdes.

About five minutes before the bus stopped in Huaquillas, a closer look at Mr. Planet told us that Huaquillas and Aguas Verdes are actually the same city. And so we arrived, after dark, with no lodging and no real plan, in this incredibly dangerous city.

The employee at the first hostal we entered told us that all the hostals were full in the city that night, except for one (how he knew this, I have no idea). When we asked if there were a special event going on, he told us that there was a party in the city, which would last until September 8th. It was August 27th.

We checked in, got some food, and fretted about the next day`s border crossing. However, the first part, which involved taking a taxi to the northern part of the city and getting our Ecuadorian exit stamp, then taking a taxi to the southern part of the city and walking across a bridge into the Peruvian part of town, went smoothly. It was only after we´d gotten a colectivo (shared taxi, only this one wasn´t shared), gotten our Peruvian entry stamp, and were being driven along a desolate road to Tumbes, that we got into trouble.

There were two guys about Scott´s age who were driving the car (ok, only one of them was driving), and up to that point, they´d been amiable and chatty, and Scott and I were having fun practicing our Spanish. However, that all changed rather abruptly when the one in the passenger seat turned to face us and - with  practiced nonchalance - informed us they´d be expectingt $20 per person as payment. This, of course, came after Scott and I had agreed to the $1.50 per person, which Mr. Planet had told us to expect. In fact, the book said something along the lines of ¨the crossing should cross $1.50 in a colectivo, beware of overcharging.¨ And here we were, being overcharged.

I was angry. And somehow, to the great surprise of everyone in the car, my Spanish skills increased commensurately with my anger. I told him paying $20 per person was ridiculous. I told him that in the book we had been warned about dangers such as these. I told him we´d agreed on a price, and that now he was backing out of a contract we´d already entered into. To his argument that gas prices were high, I actually told him it was his own problem, and he should have thought of that before agreeing to $1.50, to which he responded bitingly that if he´d known we´d be such terrible passengers, they wouldn´t have taken us in the first place.

We arrived in Tumbes at a bitter stalemate. For the better part of 30 minutes, the four of us sat, enduring periods of silence alternating with heated debate between the passenger and me, while Scott and the driver waited uncomfortably. Finally, Scott jumped in, and suggested a compromise, which, eventually, was taken. However, it didn´t exactly leave us with the best first impression of Peru.

We arrived later that day in Mancora (after having to be fingerprinted to ride the bus...), which is almost exactly the same place as Montañita.

Loja, Zamora, y Parque Nacional Podocarpus (8/23-8/27)

We flagged down a cheap bus on the side of the road at Cajas after 45 minutes of Categories (Things That Smell Bad - lasted the whole 45 minutes), heading for Cuenca. As a general aside, our driver on that bus was the least hell-bent and suicidal of any driver we´ve had in this country. Such a relief.

We spent a few hours in Cuenca taking care of some business (ahem, ahem - Sappy Birday), then took off for Loja, the first town we´d visited that was not necessarily on the Gringo Trail. The general idea was to check out the Parque Nacional Podocarpus, which, by Mr. Planet´s description, should have absolutely beat the pants off of Cajas (as you can probably guess, and as we probably should have guessed, Mr. Planet was wrong again).

Our bus driver from Cuenca to Loja, a ride that took about 5 hours, was perhaps the most hell-bent, suicidal driver we´ve had yet. It was the first time I could´t sleep on a bus, since it was necessary at all time to have two firmly planted feet, so that you didn´t go careening off into the aisle. At one point, Scott tried to play jello with me, and if he hadn´t changed his mind and grabbed me at the last second, I would´ve gone face-first into a large, shoe-less woman´s stomach.

Loja

Upon arrival in Loja, we took our strained nerves to the internet cafe in the bus station, in order to look up cheap hostels. This may have been the low point of the trip so far. I was peeved, because I thought we should just listen to Mr. Planet´s hostel advice, and because there was nowhere for me to stand with my pack in the internet cafe. Plus, I hate bus stations, because I constantly feel like I am being robbed by people brushing against me (last summer, when Scott and I slept in a bus station in Alicante, Spain, we saw a man rob a drunkard by cleverly cutting his entire rear pocket off while he was sleeping, then pretending to sleep right next to the man. Our attempts to expose the situation were futile). Scott was annoyed because the internet was slow, and because I was annoyed, and we both already hated this town, and because it was dark already, and because there shouldn´t be tattoo parlors next to internet cafes in bus stations.

We eventually got over ourselves when the google search ¨cheap hostels Loja¨ returned no relevant results, and just took a taxi to one of Mr. Planet´s hostels in the heart of the city. Right on schedule, we were ravenous, so we threw our bags down and dashed out into the street, looking for food. It was fairly late, and we almost settled for eating Kono Pizza, when a kind sangria-drinking fellow told us where we could get a cheap merienda.

It was the best merienda I have ever eaten. The soup was full of choclo (corn) and queso. The rice was sticky and warm. The chicken was marinated, juicy on the inside. There was a salad (!). The beans had enough sauce, so that you could mix all the rice into it. The juice was parcha-flavored. The beer was cheap. We asked when they opened in the morning, and went back for an early almuerzo.

The strange thing was, this incredible restaurant, called Vallto´s, was located at the back end of a strip mall - in fact, the entire street (and city, for that matter!) seemed to be made up of minimalls, stretching back into dark recesses. It was a strange place, and in my mind, not a place I would return to, but for the delicious food.

Zamora

The following day, feeling as though we needed a day without much transit or hiking, but with much rest and reading, we took off for the small jungle town of Zamora, which is of note because it is both ¨Land of the Birds and Waterfalls,¨ and also home to the world`s largest watch. We dropped about 3,000 m of altitude, arriving in the early afternoon. In trying to find a map of the city, we were given a ride in the pickup bed of a police truck to the tourist agency (which actually didn´t have any maps of the city, just a guy who really liked shaking hands).

We spent the afternoon with Pilseners (I´m really going to miss that beer!) in the central square, watching some young hooligans scoot around on BMX bikes, and accidentally befriending a number of bold 5-year-olds (one of them very astutely told Scott that he must like the color red - he was sunburned and wearing a red hat. She also complimented his flip-flops, saying they were ¨hermosos¨).

We found some good, cheap food, and then - against the normal trend - I bought a cake. However, Scott´s cakes are almost always disappointingly dry and stale, while I had recognized this cake as the famous dulce de tres leches, which some of my high school friends will remember from a cooking video for our sophomore year Spanish class. This type of cake, which I believe originate in Mexico, is made spongy, then doused in a mixture of whole, condensed, and powdered milk, for a result that is moist, springy, and incredibly rich.

I went to bed early while Scott took over the hostel´s TV, and the next morning, after some perfunctory grocery shopping, we headed to El Parque Nacional Podocarpus with high expectations.

Parque Nacional Podocarpus

The park is apparently named for the only conifer that exists in this part of the country (still no idea which tree it was). To access the park, it is necessary to hike a short, jungle-y trail past the parking lot, which winds pleasantly along the Rio Bombuscaro. Butterflies alight everywhere, in stunning colors, but it was definitely hot and humid. We arrived at the park headquarters, a small bungalow with a tiny office, two unoccupied rooms, and a kitchen, and paid our $2 entry and $2 camping fees. The incredibly (and, later, oppressively) cheerful park ranger told us we could camp anywhere, that we could use the kitchen, and indicated extensively the few trails. We took a picture of the map mural, for later reference.

The first trail we took was about 5 minutes long, and dropped us on the banks of the Bombuscaro. We ate a simple lunch of avocado sandwiches, bananas, and cookies, then jumped in (literally, off a 10-foot rock). It was freeeeezing, and the current was strong, but we found a lovely rock for sunning, Scott found some other places to jump in, and I explored up the far bank towards some rapids. After that, we tried a second trail, which ended up taking about 20 minutes. So we went for a third, which was 10 minutes and took us to a fairly impressive waterfall. From there, we decided to tackle the Mirador (Lookout) Trail, which we´d been warned against, given the late hour.

On the map, La Mirador was a perfectly straight line, 85 minutes out, 85 minutes back. In reality, that translated into an incredibly straight hike up a narrow ridge. And when I say up, I mean up. Like the trail at Cajas, we used our hands half the time, and paused frequently, as the trail offered no respite from the ascent. We started the trail at 5pm, thinking we´d reach the top by 6pm, then make it back to camp by sunset, around 6:30pm. At 5:45pm, we were still climbing. What´s worse, because of the dense tree cover on the ridge, we had no real way of knowing what sort of progress we were making. As the light grew lower, we started thinking of the snakes, pumas, and other creatures who might become more active at the close of the day. I had to force Scott to turn around at 6:10pm, and we literally ran down the mountain. Well, Scott ran...I mostly fell down the mountain.

We were starving, thirsty, and had destroyed all the cartilege in our knees by the time we got back to camp. There was no light in the kitchen, so our entire dinner preparation was done at the mercy of our headlamps. This wouldn´t have been a problem, except that we weren´t alone. Three Argentinians and a half-Ecuadorian girl from Toronto worked around us, sharing the one propane stovetop and cooking a several-course meal that made our meager rice-and-avocadoes look positively paltry in comparison.

Eventually, they warmed up to us and our (my) blinding headlamps, and even shared their mate with us (Argentinian tea-like beverage, which is shared by passing it after each person has consumed one cup´s worth of mate). I think they thought it was funny, also, that we made about 10 cups of plain white rice, and had to eat the rest for breakfast (with banana and sugar, but still).

We also bonded over the several mice who lived in the bungalow, whom the Argentinians had named, respectively, ¨Coco¨ and ¨Coco´s Mother,¨ (assuming there were only two of them, which I highly doubt), as well as the ubiquitous funny, huge cucarachas with little camoflauge eyes on their wingtips. Did I mention that Scott and I decided to forgo our tent, and instead actually slept in this pest-infested bungalow? Lots of sounds that night...

In the morning, we went on one more hike, the longest of them all, which loosely followed the Bombuscero into the heart of the jungle. At first, it was a normal trail. Then we had to jump a few small cascades. Then a few huge fallen trees. Finally, we were trekking along an essentially unmarked patch of jungle, Scott leading the way with a stick to ward off spiders (there were lots), looking down to avoid stepping on snakes, and halting every 10 minutes or so to assess whether or not we´d passed the point of stupidity yet. A few times, we heard large, crashing animals nearby (pumas?), to which I responded with singing and rather obnoxious clapping. We finally turned around on what was perhaps the most disappointing hike ever.

Podocarpus to Zamora, Zamora to Loja again, the bus station to our favorite restaurant - which had somehow plummetted in quality since our last visit, two days before. Bummer. We gave the restaurant one more try in the morning, and I received almost-raw, fatty pig-skin with the hairs sticking out prominently as my main course (see left). We decided Loja had lost its one redeeming quality, although we did spend a fun night drinking canelazo (a hot, cinnamon-y, alcoholic drink we´d searched for since Quito, and finally tried in our last hours in Cuenca) at the Tiku Bar, and watching 90s music videos (mostly Metallica and hip hop).

And that was our last night in Ecuador!

Parque Nacional Cajas (8/21-8/23)

The pivotal decision that put Cajas in contention for my favorite National Park of all time (huge claim, I am aware), was the fact that Scott finally convinced me it would be a good idea to carry a frying pan with us on our journeys.

But first we had to get there. From Cuenca, getting to Cajas means buying an $8.00 ticket for the 3-hour trip to Guayaquil, then getting off after 45 minutes (on the side of the road, naturally) at Cajas. Mr. Planet, however, told us there was a cheaper way...Following the ever-incorrect advice of the book, we decided to take a taxi to the Ricardo Darque parada at Av. de las Americas and Calle Victor Ambato, where we would be able to catch the direct Occidental bus to Cajas for $1.50. We stopped a taxi, and gave him our destination. Blank look. So we asked in a cell phone shop. Another blank look, a phone call to a friend for our benefit. We were told to take bus #20 or #16. The bus driver on #20 gave us a blank look, and dropped us at Av. de las Americas. Just at that moment, a bus bearing the destination placard ¨Cajas¨ zoomed by in the opposite direction. We walked down Av. de las Americas, with our heavy packs, asking in every store about the parada, or about the cross street, with mixed responses. Clearly no one knew what we were talking about (we´ve gotten the impression most of the places we ask about are fictional), but their responses differed in how long it took them to make something plausible up, since they really wanted to be helpful.

We walked down the Av. de las Americas, and spent quite some time grilling a woman in a gas station convenience store about how to get to Cajas, but everyone just kept telling us to take the Guayaquil bus. At one point, we saw a bus with the placards ¨Cajas¨ and ¨Guayaquil,¨ but when I hailed it and told the man we were going to Cajas, he shook his head forlornly and the bus drove away with no explanation.

We were getting frustrated. One of the gas station attendants (all of whom now had a vested interest in getting us to Cajas, or at least out of their station) called us over to a van that was filling up. When pressed, the man told us he was driving a group to Guayaquil at 3pm, and if he had room after he picked them up, he could drive us to Cajas for $4 each. He indicated a corner for us to meet him in 20 minutes.

But while we were sitting on that very corner, an Occidental bus coming from Cajas stopped on the other side of the road! They informed us that, should we wait exactly where we were, our bus would come by at 4pm. So, we bought some cheesy rolls, warmed them in the gas station microwave, bedecked them with the gas station condiments, and had a relaxed lunch, waiting for our bus.

Parque Nacional Cajas

We arrived at Cajas around 5pm, just as the late afternoon sunshine was illuminating the placid waters of the myriad high altitude lakes. The landscape was barren, sparse, with craggy pinnacles of rock pushing up through dry grasses and glittering waters. We paid our $2 entry fee and $4 camping fee, then set out around the nearest lake to find a camping spot (where we built a fire and made tea! with our dinner of avocado and tuna sandwiches).

Diary excerpt, morning after our first night camping:
¨Sitting in the incredibly cold, early, can I call it sunshine? The paramo lake and its surrounding monolithic, mossy rocks are gently hemmed in by the clouds, which filter the cold rays and strain away their heat.
We chose to camp on a tiny, loamy ¨island,¨ thinking the soft, contiguous plants would cushion our weawry bodies for sleep. What we didn´t factor in was thatby exerting constant pressure on the near-saturated ground, we´d force the cold groundwater up and out - into our tarp, our sleeping bags, and our socks.
We´re wet. It´s cold and foggy. But the loam was an incredibly comfortable bed...Trying to make a fire with the wet wood now, reflections of mountains in glassy lake.¨

That day, while the sun remained veiled throughout, we both got sunburned again. We laid our sleeping bags out to dry and stashed our packs in a ¨stash spot¨ behind a rock off the trail. We went on two hikes, the first of which was estimated at 5 hours, and which took us a little over 2. It started in this strange, silvery forest of trees that are invisible until you walk right up to them; their trunks like sunset-colored madrones, flaky and deliciously snakelike, slithering past one another slyly, their leaves as grey and drear as elven cloaks. The rest of the hike was filled with long gullies and slowly unfolding views of rolling hills and glittering, shallow lakes, all decorated with alien plants - spiky artichoke bushes with razor edges, strange, cold bushes that caught the light through the clouds, delicate cactus-like bursts of strange, rounded flowers. We meandered, losing the trail and following others briefly, jumping over sudden brooks that spent half their lengths dipping beneath loamy land bridges.

The second hike, Cumbre del Cerro San Luis, which came after a nap around 1:30pm, took us longer, because it was extreme. Above the lake where we were camping rose a giant of a mountain, shooting straight up something like 1,500 feet, all granite faces and tufts of rough grass that sliced our hands when we grabbed it wrong. There were no switchbacks. It was the kind of trail it would be inconceivable to have on any map, yet there it was on the glossy trail map we received at the entrance. It was also the kind of trail where in certain places we found ourselves climbing up mud faces, looking for hand- and footholds, and praying that those sharp grasses would hold out. Completely exhausting, completely worth the 360-degree panoramic lookout on the highest summit.





That night, we camped on a much drier patch of ground. We collected firewood, stoked our fire well, and used our pan to cook the following:

-tuna sandwiches (with ahí, or pepper sauce, of course)
-rice with avocadoes (this took about an hour and a half, but was completely worth it)
-fried bananas with caramel sauce
-tea!

We also took advantage of our water purification gear to drink some of that high-altitude water, and it was always crisp, fresh, and bitingly delicious.

That night, sleeping in the open (we didn´t pitch our tent either night, since we´d been told there was little chance of rain), I woke around 3am and thought it was morning - the clouds had gone and the moon was bright. It was only a quarter moon, but it shed such light that I could see when Scott woke up a few moments later, and we laughed at the cold brightness.

In the morning, I awoke to frost everywhere - my sleeping bag, our packs, our firewood - and no Scott. But the clouds and fog were gone, and I could see the boiling sun starting to illuminate peaks on the far side of the lake. I sat for maybe 30 minutes, meditating in the morning chill, watching the sun thaw the day, until it thawed me.

The city felt loud and impersonal after the solace of Cajas.

[Note: I´m reading Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac right now, which definitely played a role in how I was feeling at Cajas...we recently traded in Edward Abbey´s The Monkey Wrench Gang for Jack London´s White Fang, to continue on the wilderness/journey mindset]