One of the most wonderful things about this walk is its unpredictability.  This nomadic push north keeps me forever in contact with new and unknown people and places.  Each morning I wake up I can be sure that at some point in the day I’m going to meet some person who’s smile, words, missing teeth, style of dress, job, stance, or stare will be different, however minutely, from any I have ever seen before.  I know that I will walk through, past, over, under, around, or near some rock formation, river, valley, desert, city, or village that seems much the same as others I’ve seen, but that, if I take the time to appreciate it, shows me how truly unique it is, makes me wonder how I could have thought “hmm, that’s just like such and such a place” when it’s so obvious that it is a miracle (in the secular sense) of originality.

My friend Marieke has recently walked for over 20 days with me.  I never expected that I’d be strolling along with a Dutch person through the mountains of Perú…unpredictability.  We knocked off over 530km in those days, and every day brought us something amazingly new and intense. 

We walked through white limestone valleys carved into art-deco shapes by wind and water…amazing to think that all of that stone is made up of the gazillions of tiny calcium exoskeletons of marine plankton that went through staggering numbers of generations, each death adding one more particle to these future mountains we so blithely walked through.

We were joined, for the first week or so, by the Mantaro River, its nonstop chatter and roar, its late afternoon glitters, sudden drops and lazy curves.

On our fifth day out, we turned a corner and were met by a post-industrial apocolyptic vision of “progress”.  Three black man-made mountains of slag sat to our right, growing, being fed by huge buckets of waste running along modified ski lift lines from a Metal refinery a mile up the road.  The refinery itself, a seething, belching, screeching mass of tangled pipes and tubes, the whole thing bigger than a small city, seemed to always rest in shadows, even under the direct sun.  The main chimney of the plant stood like a claim stake stabbed into this part of the world by hell itself, its veil of fetid smoke wavering like a flag.  Everything was covered in a fine grit, the old part of town felt like standing in a dying person’s room; sickly-sweet stale air.

We gladly climbed out of that valley, left the Mantaro and the limestone mountains behind, came to a high plain, running along at 13,000 feet.  The cold mornings and nights, the sharp sun at midday, the wind changing quarters like the hands on a giant clock, these things were new to us, fresh…unpredictable.

Then we came to Lago Junín, a shallow alpine lake taking its last gasp in the geological scheme of things.  We realized that for the last couple days we’d been walking on what had once been the bed of that same lake in its more robust, optimistic days.  From the tops of the few hills we climbed, we could see the ancient contours of the lake wrapped like a ghost around what was left, reedy and marsh-like.  Dozens of different species of migrating birds clattered and honked on its waters as we skirted its southern side.  Did they still carry in their genetic memories images of the ancient lake, of millions of avians and other animals taking food and refuge from its bays and inlets, its depths, do they lament the impending loss of it all with their quiet pebble-eyes, their long-legged hours-long vigils of its shores?

The sunsets there were hemmed in by veils of rain in the distance, dramatized by the gunmetal blue turned gray turned pink, turned golden gone violent orange clouds.

West of the lake, we took a shortcut that actually worked (like I said, unpredictable!), reaching the top of a hill at sunset, looking down into a new valley, shocked to see our old friend the Mantaro River gliding along, all quicksilver through the shadowed valley.  We were even more stunned, though, to see on the other side of the river a vast forest of tortured basalt rocks.  During the next two days we walked through that labyrinth of pillars and twisted stone figures created by an ancient lava flow being carved to pieces by glaciers, running water, rain and wind.  If you dropped someone into the middle of that landscape, they might spend a lifetime trying to find they’re way out. 

And then came the hard part, the long climb up to 4,800 meters, over 15,800 feet.  Breathing went from being something you were conscious of too downright difficult.  (I just can’t imagine how people can reach 8,000 meters without oxygen…amazing).  We passed right through the heart of giant mining operation (the only reason the road exists at all is because of this mine), the hustle and bustle of hundreds of people coming too and from the mine itself, the big trucks of ore, the surreal refinery, the giant containment ponds full to the rim with slag and dangerous chemicals…it’s hard to believe that any company could actually make a profit off a mine, with all the overhead that goes into it.

At the top, we snapped a couple pics and then started heading down toward the Pacific.  The view from this altitude was incredible.  The naked mountains sat frozen in every shade of red and brown.  Jewel-like lagoons lay below us.   Huge herds of alpaca grazed on the weak grasses in the valleys.  The only sounds were the wind, our feet crunching on gravel, and the occasional mining truck passing by us. 

And we went down and down, finding an apple orchard late in the evening that afforded us a hiding place from the road.  The next 3 days rolled out in the same leg-busting descent, the ecosystems changing with the loss of elevation until finally on the day before we reached the coast, all vegetation disappeared, leaving a completely barren desert pushing in on the narrow river valley through which we walked.  It was such a vivid display of how important water is to almost everything on the planet.  Within 100 feet of the Chancay River, cactii, trees, shrubs, reeds and grass flourished…and beyond that, as if scraped clean by some cosmic brillo pad, pure, unadulterated desert…not a plant to be found.  That last evening before reaching the sea, marieke and I watched a dense fog creep up and over the hills ahead of us, like a stealthy hunter.  Before long we were blanketed in that mist even as we set up our tent in yet another apple orchard…the stony ground, the orchard and the sea-laden fog made me feel like I was in some Old World locale…greece, the coast of france, or maybe spain.  I’d been so long in the Andes, that the salty humidity of the coast appeared to me as something entirely foreign and exotic, something that just couldn’t exist in Perú, of all places. 

Reaching the coast was anti-climactic to say the least.  During Peru’s winter, the entire Pacific shore is shrouded in hazy clouds and morning and evening fogs.  It was impossible to see the ocean, and the barrent desert around us was made even more lonely-seeming by the flat-gray light that seemed to come from no direct source. 

I’d been daydreaming about leaving the mountains for a long time now.  I’d spent the vast majority of my trip so far tucked into the foothills, valleys and peaks of the Andes and was tired of all of the literal ups and downs, of the cold, of the altitude.  I’d pictured camping along the coast, sleeping to the rhythm of waves, waking up to salt-tang in the wind, watching the sun drown itself day after day on the western horizon.  As so often happens, though, the reality came way short of the dream.  Marieke and I found ourselves in a gray and brown chamber of cloud and sand, the ocean usually out of view.  And when we could see it, it was from a couple miles away, the waves crashing seemed cartoon-like and mute.  The only change in the lifeless landscape came when we’d pass the huge chicken farms set up out here.  Desert chickens…dry but tasty.  I guess they put them up out here because you don’t have to worry about significant changes in temperature, no one’s going to bitch about the pervasive sour chicken-shit smell, and you can set up huge, sprawling tents to house the birds without having to worry about clearing land…23,000 birds to a tent, usually about 20 tents per complex.  Yeah, they eat alot of chicken’s around here.

We reached a little coastal town called Barranca three days later and met up with my great Colombian friend, Daniel, who had come up from Buenos Aires to spend about 20 days filming our walk to make a documentary.

Daniel is finishing up his masters right now in documentary filmmaking.  A couple years ago, when I was down in Buenos Aires, we’d talked about getting together so he could film some of the walk, the people met, the places visited, etc. to see if he could put a little documentary together about it.  Suddenly, after so long, he was here, his camera humming from the start.

Marieke headed back to Lima to resolve some problems with her flight home to Holland and Dani and I talked about our route.  After only three days spent on the coast I’d been dreaming of for so long, I was already sick of it.  Mountains might be hard and unforgiving places to walk, but at the very least the offer a constantly changing display of textures, colors and climates…this stretch of seashore on the other hand, was like one big eraser smudge.  The decision, therefore, wasn’t hard to make, and we started the next day for the Andes, the city of Huaraz, and the famed Cordillera Blanca, or White Mountains, the highest, most dramatic section of the Peruvian Andes. 

It took us a week to get to Huaraz, 210km total, 30km a day, and a summit topping out at 4,200 meters.  Along the way we met a huge array of interesting, sad, wacky, tragic, and inspiring people, and passed by tons of beautiful sights…the trip confirmed my grudging addiction to the mountains and all they offer.

On the second day out, Daniel’s left big toe, which had gotten infected on his bus trip up to Peru, was swollen, filled with pus, and an angry red color.  We stopped at a little health clinic in a sleepy town of about 100 people.  It just so happened that a doctor was there making his weekly rounds of the region.  As I chatted outside with a group of mothers being educated on the benefits of breast feeding (Breast milk: it’s free and good for your kids!), Daniel was being told by the doctor that his big toenail was going to have to come off as the infection was harboring underneath it.

I went in at that point.  I watched the doctor shove an oversized needle (was he shooting up a toe or a friggin’ horse?) into Dani’s digit…four of them to numb up the whole thing.  Then he grabbed his toenail with a glorified pair of pliers (I turned away at this point…hell, I almost cry when I have a hangnail) and fooled Dani into thinking that he was still probing the toe when he was actually rolling (yes, rolling, like he was shaping a cylinder out of aluminum or something) Dani’s nail right off of him  (while I wasn’t looking I was filming it, so I saw the action later on)…and before either of us knew it, the doctor was waving the thing in front of us with a triumphant smile on his face.  Dani couldn’t walk with me the rest of the day, but was back on the road the next day like a true champion. 

We ambled along for the next couple days until we got to the beginning of the long climb to the summit of the mountains separating us from the valley that holds Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca.  Dani suffered a bit from the altitudes, and to add insult to his nail injury, two huge blisters formed on the balls of his feet, making every step agonizing.

Near the top of the climb, at more than 13,000 feet, on the fourth day out, during a stretch of seemingly endless switchbacks, we came across a group of small children waving at passing cars, begging for the drivers to throw them a piece of bread or an orange, maybe a half-eaten sandwich.

They were dressed in ragged, torn clothing.  They’re faces were scarred and chafed by wind and sunburn.  Snot flowed from their noses and thick fluid from their eyes.  None of them were older than 8 years old. 

They walked beside us as we doled out some sweets to them and to my surprise, surrounded my cart and began pushing it up the steep road, laughing the whole way.  It was so obvious to Dani and me that they weren’t only physically hungry, they were starved for positive attention, as well.  We laughed and joked as we all pushed the cart up the hill, the kids with huge grins on their faces, some having to hold their over-large, or irreparably torn pants from falling down. 

Dani filmed us all the while, and then I noticed that he put down his camera and walked a ways up the road.  He told me later that he couldn’t hold back tears of frustration and helplessness as he watched these kids revel in our brief visit, even as the gold and copper-laden trucks of a nearby multi-national mine roared by, carrying the precious cargo and the resulting profits out of the very country that so obviously needed every cent of it just to maintain a fragile dignity.

The kids walked almost a bit more than a half mile with us.  but just as suddenly as they  had come upon us, they left, jogging in a straight, easy line down a shortcut through the switchbacks, to their windblown mud homes.  My heart broke as I watched each one disappear.  They’re futures will hold no such shortcuts, no easy routes to safety and warmth.

After a cold night at altitude and a couple more long days full of interesting conversations with locals, pouring rain, hailstorms, and the ever-pain of Dani’s blisters, we reached the touristy mountain town of Huaraz, surrounded by the immense peaks of the Cordillera Blanca. 

We met up with marieke again, spent a couple days chilling in a cool hostel and a mountain lodge, and as if pulled by a gentle tractor beam, the three of us laced up the ol’ dogs and hit the road once again, blisters healed, bellies full, and eager to see what this unpredictable walk would bring us next.