July 11 2015

Santa Cruz Trek Day 4

The Final Day

The last day of our hike is here!

I emerged from the tent to clear blue skies and three freshly deposited cow turds. Folks I will say this up front…if you have problems will animal manure this is not you hike. I’ve said the necessary so let’s move on.

 Sylvia is ready to go on and fight shy of this place, as they say in Texas.

On the other hand if you love hikes with staggering views in plenty than no hike could be better, and we had them every day of this hike…this one not accepted. Sylvia, feeling an intense desire to be in the land where toilets were porcelain bowls that flush and hair driers are available, was very keen to get going. Some people! Our guide Freddie informed us that there would be no detours this day…there was only one way to go, and that was down. The estimated we would be finished by about noon. Which of course did not mean being home by any means, we were still a good two hour plus drive from Huaraz which is not exactly Malibu Colony…

Who wants to do some more hiking? This guy!

Right away the downhill go intense. The valet of the Santa Cruise River quickly narrowed and became a gorge, through which the river tumbled in a seemingly endless series of cataracts. We were going down fast but the river was really plunging. The trail wound along the leftmost edge of this canyon…the views above constricted until we could no longer see white capped mountains, just the rugged sides of the rock towering above us, and the wedge of sky overhead. Speaking of sky some weather had moved in behind us from the high peaks and it looked, for a while, like rain might overtake us. But ahead was clear blue and that was the way we were going. The rain, if there was any, never did catch up.

This was a step, at times ridiculously steep, trail. Every time we passed somebody (or some heavily laden mule) laboring up I felt sorry for them. I was not happy to be walking down this slope on my Herman Munster-John Kerry like knobby knees, but I am sure glad we did not come UP this way. The incline seemed never ending. Good choice by the guides to go THIS way. Most itineraries do the opposite.

And the slide zones were crossed…every quarter mile or so another one, some older with moss covering boulders and others seemingly having happened overnight. Some of these were gravel, others sand. There were some dicey bits her particularly when the trail went around blind corners, but we kept moving without mishap. I did stumble a few times. Sadly, pictures of me shuffling downward are not available here (even if I was stupid enough to post them) because there were taken by Sylvia with her Iphone. I am sure she will post a profusion of them eventually.

We hiked a good two hours like this, and while it was hard on the knees, one good think about going down is, you go fast. Sometimes the river ran right beside us, and sometimes it was two hundred or more feet below us. Always it seemed to be running away.

The valley becomes a gorge, above. Below, me posing as I rest my knees on the steep trail. 

And then around the bend the valley opened up and there beyond lay the destination…Cashapampa, a dot on the map of the Andes but it was where we needed to go. We steadily watched it approach with mixed feelings. I was tired and ready to be done and go ice up my knees, but I also wished to be back in those mountains for one more day…would another day with the Alpamayo, with Santa Cruz, and with gleaming Huascarin be so bad? But it was not to be, civilization lay ahead. Sylvia’s feeling were shall we say less mixed. She was also missing the views but what she really wanted was a view of a real bathroom.

Soon enough we were there. We passed through a livestock gate that led under the town’s aqueduct, which we then walked beside for a while. We were now back in farm country and on each side of us were fields of potatoes, wheat and Quinoa. Soon we saw a shrine up ahead of it and to the right a Ranger Station. Here it was at last! Cashapampa, the end of the trail.

Most people actually begin the hike here and go in the opposite direction, and so there is a sign here, outlining the hole hike. Sylvia and I posed with it. Dear it we saw another sign, this one not official…it read, “Stay here drink beer.” This was a statement dear to my own heart, but I was not quite ready for a Cusquena yet…once we were back in Huaraz, then I would indulge.

We reached the bottom of the hill where there was a friendly store. The guides did in fact sit down for a well-earned beer while we had cold water and, to my great astonishment, an ice cold Coke. (Coca Cola is not rare even in the Andes, but what they usually call cold is what I might generously term luke warm.)

Sylvia also made another finding…There was a toilet! True it was out back in the middle of a field behind a construction site, and like many Andean toilet it was curiously lacking a seat, but still it was an extravagance compared to what we had been seeing. Sylva pronounced this the greatest crapper ever.

After this was out of the way Oswaldo our tour arranger showed up with the car. Me, Sylvia, Freddie and Edwin piled in for the journey out. This road was not quite as steep or precipitous as the one inbound but…it was still pretty damned nerve wracking. There was a lot more traffic on this road, and all of it seemed to pass us just as the car turned into a blind corner, or in a narrow stretch between adobe walls where seemingly just one car could pass. Peruvian drivers have an unusual method of dealing with these situations. Both drivers simple continue heading straight for one another. At the last minute, somehow both cars miss, and both drivers continue on without any visible reaction. 

At one point, we had to back up and let a gigantic ten wheel truck go by. As the truck slid past just a hair’s breadth from the window I saw, incongruously, that the driver had stenciled one of those family logos you see on minivans to the side of the truck…daddy, mommy, kids, dog cat.

Oswaldo skillfully had us down to blacktop in about an hour and then it was yet another hour to Huaraz…stopping for ice cream along the way. I can only express tremendous gratitude to him, and to Freddie our guide, to Edwin our cook, to our mule driver Ariero and to Sylvia, above all, for putting up with this. How many women who are not exactly dedicated hikers would have parted with running water and bathroom facilities for most of four days? But even she agreed the views were worth it.

This sort of trekking is not for everyone – though in my opinion, anyone who is reasonably healthy could do it. The challenges and obstacles are mental as much as physical. Travelling in Peru is exhausting and takes a great deal of patience, and sometimes things do go wrong, but the rewards are obvious. We did what we set out to do…we hiked in the second highest mountain range on earth. It was everything I ever wanted to do. And I did it with the person I love most.

What ending could have been better?

(And yes the hot water in the hotel worked for a change.)