Andes to Amazon

Janruary 19, 2007

This month has been extremely different than the other six. Currently I sit in a small town called Los Andes, Chile. I will explain how we got here by and by. I am really sick of cities, towns, and anywhere else that is not the backcountry. We have spent way too much of our time, money, and sanity in the metropolitan centers of South America and I can not begin to explain how great it is to be back in the mountains at last. So often by Ecuadorians, Peruvians, and now Chileans we are asked why? What in god's name would posses two gringos to walk across the mountains? Afterall, wouldn't it be so much easier to travel on the roads, near the coast? Well, the walking would be easier surely, the problem is that we would be without the feeling that the mountains bring. The instant that we return to the mountains a calm comes over me. I can actually feel the stress leave. Deia says she can almost visibly see the change too. I am at home in the mountains, very little bothers me there. I can overcome anything, I am who I want to be here. This is not the case in cities. It is entirely too easy for me to get caught up in an atmosphere of rushing, of a lack of trust, of having to look over your shoulder because you never know who could be around the next corner. People aren't as friendly, I am not as friendly. Lima brought out the worst in all of these things. I will return to Lima by and by.

We began where we last left off in La Union, climbing to the incredible ruins of Huanuco Viejo. The site, which is considered the most important archelogical site outside of Cusco (home of Machu Picchu) was actually as impressive as the hype lead us to believe it would be. Thousands of houses, and three impressive central plazas are what is left of a once thriving city. Our drunken guide that insisted on showing them to us made the ruins all the more interesting. As we camped outside the ruins, we would again have visitors. I have a recording this time that you can check out on our movie

page ( http://southam.smugmug.com). We would spend our next several days, avoiding the rain as best as we could, which was really not at all, and meeting some of the more interesting people of our walk. Zenobia was the only of her neighborhood who believed that we would not bite and was brave enough to come and have a conversation with us. Explaining that we must excuse her friends as they hadn't exactly seen other hikers before, she insisted on bringing us fresh milk from one of her 100 cattle along with eggs and potatoes (by the way, never backpack with eggs). Knowing full well that we were headed all too soon to Lima to have a New Year's celebration, but more importantly to have Deia's knees looked at, we took in every site, all the while hoping that they wouldn't be our last for a long while. Arriving at the Cordillera Huayhuash was something special. Not only would it mark the end of our time in the Blanca, but we would now get to see the fabled site of climber Joe Simpson's "Touching the Void," oh yeah, and some of the most outrageous mountains in the world. We only could hope that the news from Lima would bring us back to the hike soon.

We descended from the views of the 23,000 ft . peaks to the coast and after only six hours found ourselves in the heart of the biggest shit-hole we have been yet. I was entirely too excited to get a good hamburger I must say. We would spend New Year's Eve on an incredible beach. For those of you who don't know what a Caldera is, it is what every child draws when you ask them to draw a volcano. Well, it is the top of it anyway. The beach we were on was a Caldera that was half on land, and half at sea. Special thanks to Juan, a friend of Deia's from her time in England for getting us in. Along with ten or so new friends, and an equal number of resolutions, one of which was to finish walking the continent of South America, we danced ourselves into the new year, at least while we weren't chasing the crabs on the beach. This was the best part of Lima. The next week or so brought visits to the doctor, yes for knees, and additionally for an incident with a cat that could have been avoided. Don't worry, no rabies here. The news was good and too many days after our arrival, we were climbing back to Huaraz.

During our visit to the coast which is currently experiencing a beautiful summer, the already awful rains decided to get worse in the mountains. Realizing that we have a lot of months to go and that continuing south from the Huayhuash would mean that we would walk through the rainy season and into the snowy winter, we began looking at other options. Santiago is 48 hours south by bus and about 6-8 months on foot. The weather is perfect this time of year and walking north seems all too natural for me after the AT. In addition, arriving in Huaraz six months from now will mean that we are able to fully enjoy some of the greatest parts of our hike. The decision really made itself. So after going inward at The Way Inn, it was back to Lima and Chilebound.

So as I said, we are currently in a small town in Chile. We have hiked the last four days through a dream. The treatment of the land here is vastly different than in the north, while walking through the endless valleys, I actually have felt like I am in nature. The language is extremely different, but nonetheless, we are able to tell that the people are infinitely kind. We have seen more wildlife in four days than in the previous six months (exception of the jungle of course). The weather is sunny and the days much much longer, as it stays light until close to 10pm. We will walk the length of the Appalachian Trail back to Huaraz and then come back to Santiago to walk six months or so through Patagonia still having Tierra del Fuego as our ultimate goal. We are moving around 25km a day and will need to maintain this average to get north in time to beat next year's rains. Chile is far more remote that its northern neighbors, so the updates may not be quite as frequent. This is no excuse for you to avoid writing us. Please keep the emails coming.

February 20, 2007

We have certainly picked up the pace this last section. Every day has become more about hiking and covering distance, which I suppose is a good thing since we have several thousand miles left to walk. As of our last update, we were still without a GPS. Now, we are most definitely with one. I'm not sure what we were thinking before. That's not true: we were enchanted with the idea of navigating through all of the Andes with a map (or 104 of them) and compass. How romantic. But alas, score another one for technology; the device has certainly sped things along and saved us many hours of aggravation. It is not fun to take a route that looks perfectly tame on the map only to find it impassible and necessitating a dreaded turn-around after the good part of a day struggling up it. This previously frequent occurrence has not happened since the acquisition of the unit. Also a brilliant feature of our high-tech new machine: an alarm. Although this is against the will and moral sense of both Gregg and I, it has gained us a good hour and a half more of daylight, and thus hiking, each day. However, even with these changes, we have found time to hang out in a fig tree with a few nine-year-olds, slow-roast some brats over a campfire, interview gauchos, and fend off an excessively territorial turkey (they can be much larger and more aggressive than one would ever think). Another big lesson from this last month: when on a thru-hike, never underestimate the importance of shoes in a single piece.

We began, actually, in Santiago, having returned for better maps, and though we didn't know it yet, a GPS. I was robbed there, unfortunately. I don't want to deter anyone from international travel or further the fear of South America as dangerous by saying so, however. In fact, the reason I was robbed is because Santiago is such a nice city that I let my guard down a little too much, I suppose. I lost my camera (friggin' tragic), our passports, money, cards, contacts of many new Peruvian friends, a Melanzana shirt, my headlamp, and so on. We hoped the stinker who did it liked to backpack for all the little accouterments he got. I could have been more careful for sure, but it really did suck. On the upside, it was nice to have less weight hiking for the past month, and my replacement camera is digital, which means I don't have to wait until I get home and get a job to afford printing the rest of my pictures. Moral: unfortunately, there are a few people in the world that will do mean things, and for them, you must be aware at all times. So after replacing a few essentials, it was back to the beauty and security of the hills.

Our most direct route north would take us far up into the mountains, where we would cross into Argentina over a pass and then cross back into Chile a few days later. Because of the layout of the mountains and the roads and trails in and out, this was the first time in the trip where we knew that if a ridge was impassible in the fourth or firth day, we would run out of food if we had to turn around. We wouldn't run out for long enough to be unsafe, but definitely long enough to need a very, very big meal by the time we reached a resupply point again. Our route looked solid but challenging on both the maps and the GPS. We took off with a cautious confidence and excitement. We soon found ourselves in high, open valleys with peaks of incredible color rising all around us. Only a few goatherds live their high, solitary lives there, in small stone houses. Most of our interactions with them were politely curt. They seemed curious enough to ask what we were doing, but not wowed by it, as many of our other campesino friends to the north have been. They seemed the kind of people that very little would phase. I am impressed by them and how they live. I think it's interesting that solitude makes people quieter rather than having them soak up human interaction when it becomes available.

Our crossing of the border was refreshing. Borders are nicer when they are defined by natural features, like watersheds, but the idea of a line separating people and rules and culture is odd. Where we crossed into Argentina, the idea of a line of separation became almost absurd. Nothing changed, no one was there, no forms were filled out; we simply kept walking across the continuous land. A large, two-sided metal pylon marked the line, reading "Argentina" on the Argentina side and "Chile" on the Chile side. How and why the sign was carried there was not so unlike Chile's other great mystery, Easter Island. Anthropologists in the future will have fun with this one, too.

It turned out that our most questionable passes, though decent climbs, had footpaths/goat-trails over them, and thus, with their switchbacks, weren't nearly as steep to get up as the topo lines had indicated. Some of the excitement was lost, but it made for a smoother, quicker journey with no less beauty. Our crossing back into Chile was similarly uneventful, and we finished the day with a 26+ mile total, much of the last part, unfortunately, on a dirt mining road.

After a resupply and a shoe swap, due to some unruly soles, we met the Álvarez family. The whole lot of them, including aunts and cousins and grandparents, took us in for the night and much of the next day, feeding us a couple of lovely meals and lots of fruit. The kiddos gave us a great tour of the home and surrounding area, with a great tree-climb as the highlight. All this just minutes after saying how much we missed the family interactions we had more of in Ecuador and Peru. The gods apparently heard and Chile answered.

For the last week, we walked through desert, only crossing several streams the whole time. Lots of cacti, lots of plants with thorns, lots of sun, and still, mountains. Just about once a day or two, we would cross a valley that was devoted to vineyards. It was a fine sight, even though somewhat artificial, to get to the top of a ridge after only seeing rock, sand and spikey plants for a long time and view an enormous valley completely filled with lush greenness. Not to mention the snacking that would soon ensue. They didn't mind. We later learned from our friend Hector, who works with one of the big companies, that the grape industry in Chile does what it can to have a small environmental impact. I had been wondering what all the effects were, and though I don't know for sure if the effort is a result of real caring on their part or business image, Hector brought it up, so it's good to know an executive in the industry has long-term impact on his brain.

We spent a fair amount of time on our final ridge top before descending into the last of the valleys for this section. It was a pretty cool feeling to look south and see where we had just lived and walked through over the past week, and to look north and see the mountains that will be home for the next week as we keep going. We do take a fair amount of time calculating and planning our route, but after all that, really, we just go. And it really is pretty special to look out at a view-ful of earth and valley and know that you can and will walk over the whole of it and start to get to know it on a level that most can't conceive of. I fall more in love with our planet and what's on it every day, and that comes from knowing it. Go for a hike if you're able and haven't in a while. It's a good thing to do.

As always, love to everyone. You're with us out there.