Nicaragua may be known for its colorful cities and famous rum, or because its Central America’s largest country, but when it comes to wildlife, watching a sea turtle lay and bury her eggs can be an awe-inspiring sight. 
La Flor Reserve, also known as El Refugio de Vida Silvestre La Flor, is located approximately one hour or 21km south of the touristy surf town of San Juan del Sur and 150km south of the capital, Managua – reaching the reserve can be difficult without a 4WD.
El Refugio de Vida Silvestre La Flor is known for its influx of Olive Ridley turtles between the months of July and December.
This turtle species is particularly noted for its massive nesting aggregations, known as arribadas, where thousands of female turtles nest their eggs in the beaches of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. 
courtesy Wikipedia
In the Pacific, the Olive Ridley turtles nest primarily on beaches between Mexico and Chile, and La Flor’ in Nicaragua happens to be one of the major nesting beaches in the area. The La Flor refuge was formed to help protect these endangered animals from being completely wiped out as many restaurants have been caught stealing eggs. The pristine, undisturbed beaches in the La Flor Reserve provide the protection needed on the turtle population.
It’s not only the Olive Ridley vying for space in La Flor, you can also see rare Leatherback turtles ambling up the beach as well.
The Olive Ridley turtle was named after its olive color shell that is shaped like a heart. Adult Ridley’s reach up to 70 centimeters in length and weigh up to 110 pounds, making it one of the smallest sea turtles in the world, but thanks to the continued existence of several large arribadas, Olive Ridley’s are also the most abundant sea turtle in the ocean. These turtles usually nest one to three times a year and produce about 110 eggs during each nesting.
Within a few hours of being in San Juan, I met a local who offered me a ride to witness this phenomenal event. Although rough, the ride there was unforgettable; as I sat in the back of a pick-up truck and kept my head up to watch a night sky full of stars. I arrived with a group of travelers at La Flor late in the evening and it only took a few minutes until we came upon our first turtle emerging from the ocean. She slowly crept up the beach until she found a suitable nesting ground.
Upon choosing a location, the turtle then paddled and began to dig.
Once a secure hole was formed, it was time to give birth. The turtle gracefully nodded its head up and down, moaned, and out came the shiny white eggs, landing in the sandy nest. After laying around one hundred, she paddled again to cover the hole, before heading back into the water. There was something so graceful and amazing about the whole scenario. 
As we continued down the beach, we spotted another turtle in the middle of nesting. Ironically, the greatest single cause of Olive Ridley egg loss results from these arribadas themselves. The density of nesting females is so high that previously laid nests are carelessly dug up and destroyed by other nesting females. This was what we witnessed with the second turtle as we found many destroyed eggs around her nest, and later we found more destroyed eggs, which were most likely hunted by birds.
Hatching mostly occurs at night, just like the nesting process, and occurs during the months of January and February.
The incubation period lasts around 50 or 60 days and once hatched, the baby turtles claw their way through the sand to the sea’s edge. They must take care as other animals hunt them as they make their way down to the ocean. Once there, their fight continues until they reach adulthood. 
While many visitors flock to La Flor to witness the arrival of thousands of Olive Ridley turtles, it is not as touristy as the beaches in Costa Rica or Mexico. During my visit, my group and I were the only visitors on the beach. To experience an arribada is to experience wildlife flourishing. In short, it should not be missed during a visit to Nicaragua.
]]>THE LOWDOWN
Where: The La Flor Wildlife Refuge, Nicaragua
Stay: There are many hotels in the nearby town of San Juan del Sur, or you can camp within the refuge (roughly US$25 per tent).
When: The refuge is open all year round, but nesting season is between July and December each year.
Costs: There is a fee to enter the park (roughly $5), and it is possible to book a tour leaving from San Juan del Sur.
The rejected US dollar coin, featuring the famous Shoshone Indian Sacagawea, has found new life in Ecuador, writes Jeremy B. Jones.
Sacagawea set out for the middle of the earth less than a decade ago, on the heels of a failed resurrection. The US government had hoped dearly for her resurrection, her reinvention. Beginning in 1998, it spent US$67.1 million to promote her as an emblem of American life.[i] Sacagawea was supposed to be a symbol of liberty, and they coined her as such. Indigenous liberty.
‘Liberty’, some quiet voices noted, was surely not a word for Sacagawea’s life. Taken as a child to marry a rough trader and forced to lead gruff, white men through the wilderness, then to die at the age of 25.
Despite this arguably sad tale, she was poured and pressed and unveiled in the year 2000, with Liberty printed above her head.
Despite the money, posters and surveys from Washington, once Sacagawea was coined and passed around, it became clear that no one really wanted her. Many people simply didn’t know who the woman on the coin was meant to be. Plus, she was a confusing size, barely bigger than a quarter, sliding easily into a coke machine but vending no coke. And 65% of Americans preferred the Statue of Liberty to her Shoshone face, and simply didn’t get or want it. [ii] The dollar coin is built to fail, and fail she did.
But while Sacagawea was being indifferently passed around – a slight, forced smile on her face and a baby, wrapped and asleep, on her back – a president in Ecuador was shaking hands and scribbling his garbled signature on stacks of papers. With the flick of a wrist, he welcomed in George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and, eventually, Sacagawea, as he laid to rest Simon Bolivar, Juan Montalvo, and Rumiñahui.
This president, Jamil Mahuad, didn’t win much local support for his decision. Ecuadorians actually forced him to resign not long afterwards. Why would they want these foreign men invading their country, filling their banks and pockets? They asked. And why would he boot his countrymen – the ‘founders’ and the Inca warrior who fought against them – for these American men in green?
Mahuad left his office, eventually flying north to the United States and a job at Harvard.
Sacagawea sat in stacks in banks and the Mint. She waited and waited, and when it became clear that she had no place along the historical narrative of American currency, Washington bought her a one-way ticket to the newly dollarized Ecuador. Her plane may have passed Jamil Mahuad’s somewhere over Texas as she neared Ecuador and he relocated to the United States.
In 2002, Sacagawea landed and set out into a new world – a country smaller than Nevada[1]; a country of Darwin’s islands, Andean mountains and Amazonian jungles; a country where at least 30% of the population is indigenous; a country where the highest mountain in the continent stands; a country where Sacagawea has now made a strange but comfortable home.
I met Sacagawea on my honeymoon. I stood in a Panama hat store in a touristy piece of Quito and after buying my wife a skirt, the short bald storeowner set Sacagawea firmly in my hand without a tinge of mystery.
I studied her. Her faced looked up at me and I didn’t recognize it at first. It wasn’t her face. It was a proxy: a young Shoshone woman studying art history named Randy’L He-Dow Teton. Because no one knew what Sacagawea actually looked like, Randy’L sat for hours and Sacagawea was formed.
I stuck Sacagawea in my pocket, and took her deeper into the Andes the next morning.
Leaving Quito, we passed by Mt.Cotopaxi – snow-capped and looming. A large eruption from the nearly 5900-meter beast would not only send rock and lava into the lowlands and toward Quito’s suburbs, but the ice and snow loosed from the rumbling would send its glacier balefully into the civilized world – a frightening mix of fire and ice.
We stopped briefly in Baños, a township in a we’re-shoestringers-who-like-thrill-and-culture-but-of-course-we’d-prefer-a-latte-at-the-Swede-owned-joint-rather-than-a-café-con-leche-at-the-local-spot-down-the-street kind of way. We left just before its volcano - Mt. Tungurahua – erupted, dumping tons of ash on farmland and rural villages.
We caught a train in Riobamba and sat on the top of cars as we passed patchwork mountains and crept down the steep switchbacks called, El Nariz Del Diablo –the Devil’s Nose. We willingly fell victim to the laziness and comforts of Vilcabamba. We trekked up and down the Andes until we spent all of our money, and with every step, Sacagawea surprised me. Everywhere we went, everyone knew her.
She was everywhere, pocketed in markets and passed on buses, paid in stores and put away for later.
Many people believed she was one of them. Sacagawea was indígena, an Ecuadorian Indian, they said. They were proud of her, believed she represented them. Her popularity had grown so quickly in the five years she’d lived in Ecuador, that she was the muse of Colombian counterfeiters. In 2002 and 2003, the US Secret Service raided a number of warehouses in Colombia that housed large-scale operations focused entirely on shaping and forming fake Sacagaweas.
Of course, the coin as currency may function more seamlessly in Ecuador. Dollar coins work easily in many of the informal sectors, and people are more comfortable with them. Still, as we rounded deeper into the mountains, and indigenous women climbed on buses with babies and animals and boxes bound to their backs, I couldn’t help but wonder about Sacagawea’s face, looking worn and hard with a baby wrapped to her, and think that maybe she is Ecuadorian in some way. Maybe she has more to say here, or can at least find a place to stand, to exist.
I carried Sacagawea back with us to the US, after the rest of our money ran out. Once we had walked into the multi-level, cement-laden parking structure outside of the Atlanta airport to climb into our car and head home, I rolled down the window to the pay attendant. I handed the man Sacagawea. He held her in his hand for a moment, tilted his head to the side while he studied her face. Flipped her over, looked for any sign that she belonged. Finally, he took her in, opened our gate, and likely sent her back towards the outgoing flights.
Jeremy B. Jones
teaches writing at Charleston Southern University. He received his MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa, and he has traveled through much of Latin America. His published work, and excerpts from his current book project, can be found at www.thejeremybjones.com
[i] “New Dollar Coin: Marketing Campaign Raised Public Awareness But Not Widespread Use” Report on the Subcommittee on Treasury and General Government, US Senate. Sept. 2002.
[ii] “New Dollar Coin: Public Prefers Statue of Liberty Over Sacagawea” Report to the Honorable Michael N. Castle, House of Representatives. Jan. 1999.
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Most depictions of the Atacama are of a bone-dry, lifeless and barren desert uninterrupted by a stem of green for miles and miles in the merciless scorching sun. This is what I imagined when I first ventured there and, at first glance, this is what I saw. As I became more intimate with life in the desert it didn’t take long for me to realize that there is, in fact, life in the desert!
The Atacama Desert stretches south from the Chilean border with Peru for about 600 miles (960 km) with an area of approximately 70,000 square miles (180,000 sq km).
In such a vast area, conditions vary significantly. Some corners of the Atacama report no recorded rainfall –ever– and support no life. In fact, a 2003 issue of Science magazine described soil samples taken from an especially arid region of the Atacama Desert that were so lifeless and void of all but trace organic or bacterial matter that they were compared to soil samples taken by the Viking mission on Mars. Other parts of the Atacama receive regular seasonal rainfall and support a variety of vegetation, some wildlife, and even human agriculture.
Believe it or not, the Atacama Desert hosts more than 1,300 native plant species. Approximately 60% of those are believed to be endemic to the region. The highest concentration of plant species in the Atacama is located in the south and along the coast. Much of the interior desert in the north lives up to the Atacama’s reputation for being a dry and lifeless wasteland of sand and sun. However, wherever there is even a drop of moisture, there is life. Plants in this region receive moisture in one of three major ways: from underground water stores, coastal fog, and periodic rainfall events.
Underground Water
The Atacama is a rain shadow desert with unique geography. Most of the westward-bound moisture that would fall over the Atacama gets caught up in the lofty heights of the Andes, cools and falls on the Eastern side of the mountains, draining into the giant Amazon River Basin. The land on the western side of the Andes is characterized by vast salt and mineral fields bordered on the east by the Andes and the west by a coastal range that rises rapidly from sea level up to more than 3,000 feet (900m). In the wide valley between the two mountain ranges, underneath the mineral flats, are ancient stores of water – glacial melt from a former ice age that was denied drainage by the geographical barriers of the rising mountain ranges.
One northern native desert tree seems to have been designed especially to take advantage of these ancient underground water sources. Prosopis tamarugo, a mesquite tree known as tamarugal in Chile, sends long taproots deep into the ground to be nourished by underground springs. Native tamarugal trees were nearly driven to extinction by overuse for fuel and are threatened further by the lowering of the water table due to industrial use. Reforestation is very difficult because younger tamarugal do not have the longer, established taproots that they need to access the underground water sources, making it even more important that older species are maintained and protected. In 1987, the Pampa de Tamarugal National Reserve was established about 45 miles (70km) east of Iquique to protect the last remaining stands of native tamarugal in the Atacama.
Camanchaca
Life on the coastal slopes of the Atacama is not quite as desperate as it is on the high plain. Coastal conditions are relatively consistent: the Humboldt Current, which travels north from Antarctica, introduces cool temperatures to warm, humid sea air, causing most of the moisture to be released offshore. The little moisture that does remain suspended in the air usually gets hung up in the ‘fog corridor’ around 1,000–2,000 feet (300–600 meters) above sea level, unable to penetrate the coastal range to dissipate over the interior desert. The special type of fog that these conditions create is known in Chile as camanchaca. Camanchaca is a big part of life in coastal desert cities. You can see restaurants and boats named fondly for this life-giving natural force in towns along the northern Chilean coast. Camanchaca is an important water source for many coastal plants such as endemic cactus and bromeliad species. Eulychnia iquiquensis is an endemic cactus that can be found clinging to the high slopes of the northern coastal range. Tillandsia landbeckii, is a bromeliad that can be seen in dusty groupings on hills or lomas along the fog corridor of the coastal-facing slopes of the northern desert. Copiapoa cacti are a favorite of the southern Atacama coast. Each of these plant species depends primarily on coastal fog for moisture.
Following the model of fog-catching plants, humans have also successfully cultivated camanchaca. An experimental fog-collecting project in the early 90s in the northern Chilean coastal village of Chungungo proved a technical success. At the project’s peak, 94 mesh fog collecting nets were harvesting 4,000 gallons (15,000 liters) of water per day for the village’s 300 or so inhabitants allowing them to freely use water for agriculture, drinking, and bathing. It is not fully understood why the fog collection method was not permanently embraced by the village, but most point to reasons of culture rather than technical problems in the collection process. Fog collecting projects based on this experiment have flourished in other parts of the world.
Oasis Agriculture
Along the Atacama’s coastal range, deep valleys and dry river beds cut down from the high desert toward the sea. Some of these valleys receive enough seasonal rainfall or run-off from the high desert plateau (known as the Altiplano) to sustain oasis villages. People, animals, and plants flock to these desert oases. Some oasis villages, like Pica, have enough water to practice agriculture. The tasty mangos, limes, and strawberries of Pica can attest to the effectiveness of oasis agriculture. Underground springs in the northern oasis town of Mamiña run both hot and cold, giving the village a small hot springs tourism industry, as well as a water bottling plant. The oasis town of Azapa near Arica is famous for the cultivation of olives. In the southernmost Atacama, where the climate is semi-arid, crops such as papayas, avocados, and the sweet grapes used in Chile’s national drink, Pisco Sour, are grown with great success in valley communities, such as Valle de Elqui.
Blooming Desert
Perhaps life in the desert is most spectacularly seen in the phenomenon of the blooming desert or desierto florido. In the southern stretches of the coastal Atacama, millions of seeds lie patiently dormant in the sand waiting for a rainy day. During years with a high increase in rainfall – usually years with El Niño weather events – those seeds explode into a desert confetti of red, orange, yellow, blue, and purple. Tourists as well as academics and floral enthusiasts flock to Llanos de Challe National Park, Paposo National Reserve, Pan de Azucar National Park and other areas near Vallenar and Copiapo, Chile to view the natural spectacle, which occurs roughly every four to five years. These parks and reserves were created to protect the hundreds of endemic plant and flower species that can be found within their borders. Of particular value and fondness are the beautiful Leontochir ovallei, known locally as Garra de Leon or Lion’s Paw, which grow only in this unique eco-region. More than 200 other floral species show up during years with major rainfall events, many with endearing nicknames such as suspiro or ‘whisper’ (Nolana elegans) and pata de guanaco, ‘guanco’s paw’ (Calandrinia longiscapa), to cover the once rocky desert in a cheerful carpet of color.
Life in the desert is not easy and the margin of survival is thin. Plants of the Atacama Desert have naturally adapted to their harsh surroundings in ways that humans continue to struggle to do with as much success. These rugged and beautiful plants breathe life and character into the solitary desert and present an inspiring model of resource efficiency.
Further Reading:
www.chileflora.com - Photo identification and descriptions of plants of Chile
www.atacamaphoto.com/atacama-flora/desert-flora-1.htm - Beautiful photo gallery of blooming desert (desierto florido) by photographer Gerhard Hüdepohl
Rianna Riegelman is a restless Colorado native who loves exploring new places and sharing what she finds and what finds her. Recent homes have included a 4th floor walk-up on a sweet tree-lined block in Brooklyn, a shipping container at the base of a sand dune in the Atacama Desert, and a very practical Swiss-designed one-man tent inhabited by two people in Patagonia.
Sources:
Navarro-Gonzalez et. al. “Mars-Like Soils in the Atacama Desert, Chile, and the Dry Limit of Microbial Life”
Science 7 November 2003: Vol. 302. no. 5647, pp. 1018-1021.
https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/302/5647/1018
Dale, Stephen. “Collecting Fog on El Tofo” International Development Research Centre
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Juan-Vito points to the low stone mound at our feet. ‘Legend says this was one of our first Quechua ancestors, turned to stone where he lay,’ he tells us through our interpreter. We’re catching our breath while hiking the high narrow trail that winds around Lake Kinsaqocha in Peru’s Potato Park. The view is spectacular, and we have it all to ourselves.
Parque de la Papa (Potato Park) is a new ecotourism attraction, located in the hills above Pisac in Peru’s Sacred Valley.
In 2004, six communities joined together with the Lima-based International Potato Centre to promote the preservation and sustainable use of potatoes, and use agriculture as a way to introduce visitors to the local culture.
Juan-Vito, our guide, works directly for the park. He grew up in the area, farming potatoes in the hillside fields. As we continue around the lake, he points out features significant in local lore and present-day agriculture. The hill looming above the lake is the nesting place of condors in legend.
The low cactus growing near the lakeshore is known as ‘mother-in-law’s seat’, for reasons which can be easily guessed. The poor mountain soil means the fields across the lake can be planted only once every seven years but the lake itself is lower than it was years ago, as global warming shrinks the glaciers feeding it.
As we hike along the lakeshore, we scare up ibises, coots and two pairs of noisy Andean geese. Our interpreter, Carlos, is an avid birder and identifies them as they glide away.
After an hour of hiking, we completely circle Lake Kinsaqocha.
We arrived by van earlier that morning at the Potato Park Visitor’s Center in the community of Sacaca to a welcome of flower petals and traditional music. Women from a local collective gave a short presentation about the use of medicinal plants and sold their small-batch teas, soap, shampoo, and salves. After leaving the visitor’s center, we bounce along the road, heading north for Lake Kinsaqocha, and afterwards the community of Pampallaqta.
In Pampallaqta we’re in for a delicious surprise: a blanket full of steaming baked potatoes of multiple varieties, along with a piquant green dipping sauce. We sampled each variety, purple and yellow and white. Surprisingly, the tastes differ noticeably.
After the taste test, we file into the dim storehouse where over 1000 different potato varieties are kept. The village mayor explains how different varieties are adapted to different elevations, soil conditions and water availability. It takes a master to distinguish which potatoes are best for which fields in which years; the mayor is that master.
There were plenty of opportunities to ask questions about village life and agriculture. In fact, asking questions is a must. The tour through the park gives visitors a chance to interact with the local campesinos, and interaction. This experience is not for people who prefer their tours seen from a bus window, or spoon-fed to them in rehearsed sound-bites. Visitors are expected to actively participate in a dialogue, and the more questions we ask the more interesting and insightful the answers become.
Another villager demonstrate the use of traditional hand-tools in farming potatoes, after which the women display their locally-made, high-quality textiles.
They are for sale, and we sort through them, admiring the distinctive patterns and the finished edging of the pieces. We select the best two. Juan-Vito and Carlos engage the village schoolchildren in a pick-up game of soccer, leaving us to bargain for ourselves in our broken Spanish. However, with liberal use of finger-counting, we agree on a price and it’s smiles all around.
Back in the van, Juan-Vito patiently answers our questions about the local textile patterns, as well as about techniques for planting and harvesting potatoes, and the history of the park. Potato farming at these altitudes is very sensitive to climate, we learn, and global warming has pushed the fields higher up the mountain slopes.
The day is drawing to a close. Our next stop is Chawaytire, where the newly-built Papamanka restaurant, run and staffed by local women, is located. Today’s menu consists of marinated alpaca, a quinoa casserole, and a salad of marinated greens, topped off with a pisco sour and potato pudding for dessert. The food is good and the portions are large; we relax in the airy restaurant and chat. After Papamanka, we return to Sacaca, say good-bye to Juan-Vito, and head back to Cusco.
The park is ideal for tourists who want to learn something about the people who live in the valley of the Incas today, not just 600 years ago.
The people we met in the park are not professional guides, but real residents of local villages, sharing things important to them in their lives. And that’s what special about the Potato Park: it’s a glimpse of Peruvian life through the lens of a subject very important to the local people, not the preconceived expectations of tourists.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
The Potato Park offers multiple tours, which must be arranged ahead of time. We signed up for the one-day driving tour, but three- and five-day trekking tours and a one-day cooking class are also available. The Park’s English website http://www.parquedelapapa.org/eng/01visitanos_01.html offers more details.
The Park will provide a guide, but you must arrange for your own transportation and (if needed) a translator. The cost of the visit, including lunch, is 105 soles (about US$35) per person; much of that goes to pay the guides so they can afford to take time away from their farms. The park can be contacted directly through Robin Smalley at robin@andes.org.pe If you need transportation and a translator, some Cusco travel agencies can arrange these services. We hired a driver, van, and translator from Planet Earth Explorations (reservations@pebhl.com or 1-888-569-1769).
]]>Andrew Moskalik is a research engineer and his wife Teresa is an artist. The two are neophyte South American travelers, but love experiences that combine learning with beauty, culture with experience, and the traditional past with the vibrant present.
Montezuma
Spanish conquistadors are credited with the discovery of vanilla, but Central American Indians discovered it first. If legend is to be believed, the Aztec emperor Montezuma himself introduced the taste to the Spaniards in 1520 when he offered a gilded tortoiseshell goblet of xocoatl (made from the pulverised seeds of the cacao tree) and vanilla to conquistador Hernando Cortés.
However, it was Bernal Diaz, a lower ranking officer, who first noticed and documented vanilla, when he saw Montezuma drinking it with xocoatl.
Dalton Holland Baptista
The Indians called ground vanilla beans tlilxochitl, from the word ‘tlilli’ for ‘black’ –
a reference to the colour of the vanilla bean when it is cured and bursting with flavour. The plant is endemic to the tropical forests of Central America in what are now known as eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. It was probably the Totonacs, prior to the Aztec period (1200-1500AD), who discovered its flavour and attempted to grow the plant formally, rather than jealously guarding its flowering vines in the wild.
Vanilla vines moved from Mexico through Europe to the Indian Ocean and to the South Sea islands, carried by a current of horticultural curiosity and commercial interest. From Mexico, the Spaniards took vanilla beans back home and, in the later part of the 16th century, set up factories for manufacturing vanilla flavoured chocolate, but it was many years later that beans were successfully cultivated outside the lush forests of Central America.
There had been many attempts to grow vanilla vines in various parts of Europe.
Cogniaux (1841 - 1916)
However, they had met with mixed success and the appearance of flowers on the vine was virtually unknown. When in 1806 or 1807, a single vanilla orchid appeared on the vine in a greenhouse in London belonging to Charles Greville, it was recorded as a momentous event. The European growers did not yet know that the vanilla orchid could be fertilised naturally only by a particular type of bee found in the vines’ native region. Meanwhile, vanilla beans had to be brought into Europe and North America from Mexico, and remained a rare treat for the privileged few.
In the era of the three-way struggle between Britain, France and Holland for control of the sea trading routes to the Orient, vanilla arrived in the Indian Ocean. Cuttings from vines growing in the Dutch controlled Moluccas were smuggled out in the late 18th century to French controlled Bourbon (Réunion) by Pierre Poivre, a missionary turned ambitious horticulturist. The plants died, deliberately poisoned by someone paid by the Dutch East India Company. Poivre smuggled out a second lot, but they did not fare well. It was only 50 years later that the planters of Bourbon were finally able to grow vanilla vines on their island. In a quirky twist of fortune, those were plants donated by the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, which had been grown from cuttings from the vine that had flowered in Charles Greville’s garden.
Vanilla beans proved elusive for another twenty years or so, until one day in 1841 when the Bourbon planter Bellier-Beaumont found two growing on his single vine.
Réunion. Wikipedia commons
One of his slave boys, Edmond, claimed to have fertilised the flower by hand. The claim was disputed, particularly by the Parisian botanist Jean-Michel Richard who said he had discovered the technique himself and demonstrated it when he was in Bourbon. Bellier-Beaumont campaigned on behalf of Edmond and the historical record was eventually set straight by a story published in Album de l’île de Réunion. The use of le geste d’Edmond spread throughout the vanilla farming industry and is still used today.
In the late nineteenth century, 80% of the vanilla imported into Europe came from the French colonies in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. By the beginning of the 20th century, Madagascar had outstripped Mexico, Réunion, Comoros and Tahiti in supplying the world market and the island now produces half the world’s exports.
Mexico, the home of xa’nat and once the sole supplier of one of the world’s most precious commodities, has been left trailing. Sixty years ago it exported four hundred tonnes of cured beans. Now it produces a tenth of that amount. That fact’s enough to make Montezuma seek his revenge.
VANILLA FACTS:
- According to Vanilla Queen Patricia Rain (www.vanilla.com), vanilla was first brought to America by Thomas Jefferson in the late 18th century. His recipe for vanilla ice cream is now held in the USA’s Library of Congress.
- There are 150 types of vanilla, but only Bourbon and Tahitian are used commercially. Real vanilla contains around 400 hundred components, which give it its rich and complex flavour. Most of the vanilla flavouring in foods comes from vanillin, which occurs naturally but can be and is, made artificially.
- Vanilla has become a byword for ‘plain and boring’, but the industry that produces it is shot through with intrigue and skulduggery. Vanilla vines grow on supporting trees in forest plantations that are difficult to guard, so the ripening beans are easily and readily stolen. In subsistence economies where even a few dollars are worth stealing for, desperate thieves will kill for just a few beans.
]]>Corinne Vella works in media and communications services. Travel writing is one of her favourite tasks.
Suddenly, my wife, Romina, shoots past me. Screaming speed pulls her downhill, while the brakes keep her knuckles squeezed white. Her bike wheels, locked solid, skid left and right. The steep switchbacks, rife with washboard, rob her of any sense of control. Queue the blood; she’s going to crash.
“Let go of the brakes!” I scream. “Hang on and let go of the brakes!”
It’s no use; she can neither hear me nor react quickly enough. In a fleeting instant, all the positive memories of our trip will be lost in a soon-to-be crumpled heap of bicycle, luggage and newlywed wife. I close my eyes and sigh.
The idea to spend our honeymoon traversing Patagonia by bike came long before the wedding plans were finalized. While Romina kept busy arranging flowers, being fit for a dress and dealing with the caterers, I studied maps and planned a route.
The in-laws never understood my romance with such a punishing honeymoon. Even Romina, who had never cycled outside the confines of her hometown, had doubts whether the trip would be full of fun or suffering. The looming crash seemed to favor the former, despite the fact we’d enjoyed the rest of the long ride.
We’d spent time in the Lakes district before, so we opted for the less-traveled roads of Neuquén.
We bid farewell to Bariloche and dodged cargo trucks along the shores of Lago Nahuel Huapi until Villa La Angostura. From there, the rough seven-lakes road guided us to San Martin de los Andes. And finally, we hit Ruta 40 in Junin de los Andes and followed the fading sliver of national pride north for 1000 km.
The short descent to Rio La Rinconada marked the distinct landscape change we expected. By the time we huffed our way up 20km of switchbacks, Patagonia had transformed itself. The forested valleys and blue lakes that make the region famous unfolded behind us, while a dry and barren world loomed ahead.
We camped our first night in the desert-like atmosphere behind an abandoned gas station.
We rationed dinner to preserve our water and crawled into bed as the sun sank behind the lurking Andes. Summer arrived late in 2010, but autumn couldn’t be slowed. By the time Romina crawled out the tent early the next morning, searching for a drink, our limited water supply was frozen solid.
Hours later, I sat down at a table built for kids. It was much too small for my lanky Canadian frame. Romina’s small Argentinean physique didn’t suffer the same problem. Thankfully, the soup warmed our wind-chilled bodies and erased any awkward feelings about our elementary-school surroundings.
“Do you want more mate?” asked the young school keeper, eager to keep us talking. “I can heat more soup or get some tortitas, too.”
“Gracias,” Romina said, breaking the awkward silence. “but we need to go.”
Our surprise visit to the roadside boarding school provided the school keeper a welcome break from her routine; she normally deals with a room chock-full of competing ten-year-old students fighting for attention. Unfortunately, with our water bottles re-filled, we started eyeing the exit.
The tumbleweeds are headed north and our bikes are facing the same direction, but our destination is still 70 km away.
The stiff breeze propelled us along at a quick 30km/hr despite the rolling terrain that, when coupled with our heavy loads, would normally punish our legs. As darkness descended upon the Patagonian steppe, we flicked on our headlamps and pedaled onward. Only 15km separated us from cold beer and pizza in Zapala and that tasty promise kept our legs spinning.
As the days blended together, the weather remained predictable. From Zapala, the road to Las Lajas dropped as quickly as the evening temperatures. The ride to Chos Malal remained painfully dry but flat and the afternoon sun left our limited water supplies dripping from our pores. Days later, a herd of chivos ran us straight off the road. Gauchos, riding horse-back, ignored the traffic laws and herded chivos through the police checkpoint, down the highway, and across the narrow bridge that spans the Rio Neuquén near Chos Malal.
After all, livestock takes precedence from cyclists in this isolated corner of Patagonia.
After Chos Malal, the road that linked Buta Ranquil, Barrancas, and Ranquil del Norte took a dramatic turn towards the sky. We climbed along Volcan Tromen for two days, crossed the Rio Barrancas celebrated our arrival in Mendoza. The final grind left us at the privately owned Laguna Coipo Lauquen without a campsite.
Moments later Emeterio Sepulveda materialized from the nearby brush. Walking with a noticeable limp, the easily-in-his-60s farmer hauled an axe on his shoulder and a bundle of firewood in his arms. The wood served two needs: fuel for cooking and heat for fending off autumn. Several other cyclists passed his home throughout the summer, but we were unexpected late arrivals. Emeterio’s stories of raising 10 kids without the help of running water or electricity poured out as he guided us to a dusty campsite reserved for cyclists.
We awoke to hammering and sawing sounds, and crawled out of out tent to meet Emeterio’s son, Ramon.
Of the 10 kids, only Ramon remains on the family farm; his siblings have all left in search of jobs. He’s building his own house and he’s eager to complete it before winter. Meanwhile, his young son played nearby and kept a keen eye on us, the odd visitors.
After tearing down camp, we bid farewell to our friendly hosts and pedaled 5km before the pavement ended. Thankfully, the bikes gained speed down the gravel track and our narrow road tires plowed through any loose sections. The Sepulveda homestead stands at nearly 2000m, the peak of our ride. 
From there, the road twists, turns, and descends into the Payunia region of Mendoza. Volcano craters dotted the landscape and dust-filled winds gust every afternoon. We soon crossed the Rio Grande, which guided us past La Pasarela to Bardas Blancas and back to the pavement.
The descent continued to Malargue and El Sosneado, where the road turned east towards San Rafael.
Our route took us via El Nihuil and the steep descent into the Canon del Atuel, where Romina began her out-of-control skid that would, undoubtedly, leave the in-laws questioning my cycle-touring honeymoon decision for years.
But when the expected crashing noises never reached my ears, my eyes pop open. Romina rounds the next curve and continues towards the canyon floor. She’s the model of control. All my fright evaporates instantly, as I realize this final tense moment will easily slide into memory.
A couple hours and two wrong turns later we arrive at our final destination, San Rafael. On the outskirts of town, we spot a rare English-language sign that reads: Free Champagne Tasting.
What better way to celebrate the final moments of a honeymoon in Patagonia?
]]>Jeff Bartlett is a freelance photojournalist with two homes: British Columbia, Canada and Mendoza, Argentina. When Jeff isn’t traversing the glove with his wonderful wife, Romina, his work focuses on adventure sports, environmental issues, and social problems. To see more of his work, please visit www.photojbartlett.com
Click here to read Part 1 of this article
Our small convoy winds down the mountain, stopping briefly at the military checkpoint of Unduavi for some chorizos and api, a hot mucous-like drink made of purple maize, what I imagine Polyjuice Potion might look like. Further down we pass Cotopata camp, where the new road to the Yungas begins, and then pull over in Chuspipata, a littering of dilapidated huts perched at 10,340 feet along a saddle ridge, where we erect the jib arm.
Within minutes of our arrival, seven inquisitive runny-nosed children swarm us. Rob lets them peer through the camera’s viewfinder, and much to their delight Sergio offers them some sweets. I wonder what daily life is like for these children of the cloud forest. Most are barefoot in the cool mountain air and it’s clear that the older ones care for the younger ones, one of whom is still an infant.
To our right a metal sign announces Cotapata National Park.
Chuspipata straddles the border of Cotopata National Park and Integrated Natural Management Area, established in 1993 to help protect a representative portion of a fragile tropical watershed region stretching from Bolivia to Ecuador. The park encompasses about 150,000 acres (60,000 hectares) sprawled over five distinct ecological zones including glacial environments of the Andean summits, high Andean grasslands, Yungas páramos, cloud forest ridges, and humid montane Yungas forests.
I ask the children about the plants and animals in the area. They point out several stunning orchids and spidery bromeliads in the moss-laden trees nearby, and they talk animatedly about the shy spectacled bear and tunqui or Andean cock-of-the-rock.
“Have you ever seen these animals?” I say.
The tunqui, yes. The bear, no. But they know plenty of farmers lower down in the valley who have.
I recall a witch on Sagárnaga Street in La Paz telling me that some of her talismans contained pieces of bear tongue, and her aphrodisiacs ground bear claw. I mention this to Sergio, but he dismisses its likelihood on the grounds that the species has almost been hunted to extinction.
Enforcing legislation has long been a contentious issue in Bolivia’s national parks and reserves, local farmers don’t want to be told what to do on land they feel is rightfully theirs, gold mining in the lower valleys has polluted water courses for decades, and the new highway – the principal reason for creating the park – has adversely affected the ecological stability of the park’s eastern sector. New fault zones heavily impacted by frequent rains threaten the young road and adjacent hillsides almost as much as the old road; and at the most vulnerable areas bulldozers and work crews in yellow hats and coveralls are kept on standby.
As a result, Cotapata National Park now sits on the Center for Tropical Conservation’s ‘vulnerable’ list.
Today the clouds have lifted enough for us to film trucks burdened with lumber, produce, propane canisters, beer, soft drinks and passengers, grinding slowly up the narrow ribbon of road over 1500 feet below. Chuspipata is a popular drop-off point for many of the adventure cycling operators run out of La Paz, and normally the trucks would have to share the road with the dozens of two-wheeling thrill-seekers and their accompanying minivans, but with the severe rains the traffic is comparatively light.
One trucker we interview expresses a deep loathing for these mountain biking enthusiasts, many who have little or no experience, and who, he says, ‘make the road unsafe for everyone’. He adds with a note of sinister humor: “And I don’t break for bikers.” The reality is that most of the 200-300 annual fatalities on the road can be attributed to drunk-driving and driver error, while fewer than 20 cyclists have careened to their deaths since 1998.
Maria knows how treacherous the road can be. She is one of several human semáforos –literally ‘traffic lights’ – stationed along the 35-mile descent to Caranavi.
Although she lives in La Paz, she comes down to work on the road because her husband is in jail and this is the only job she can find to feed her family. At the most notorious blind curve she stands holding a green flag in one hand and a red one in the other. When a vehicle appears, if the way is clear she holds up the green flag and shouts, “Libre! Libre!” (Clear! Clear!). If there is oncoming traffic, however, she blows a whistle and waves her red flag to warn drivers.
From this point forward, the road becomes a memorial to the thousands of ill-fated. Cracks in the steep cliffs rising into the cloud bristle with wooden and metal crosses – some dating back to the 1930s when the road was first carved out of these mountains by Paraguayan prisoners during the Chaco War. At the side of the road more recently erected cement monuments with metal plaques march solemnly past.
I peer over at Mike, who sits rigidly in his seat. He smiles feebly. “I see what you mean by this road is dangerous!” he shouts over the din of the engine.
We stop just past a river crossing, where the left shoulder of the road disappears into the ethereal 2000 feet below. Here, the margin of error is negligible, the average width of the road about 10 feet across. I locate a metal cross at a spot where, 13 years earlier, a friend, Lucy, returning from the lowlands, had stopped momentarily to relieve herself and stepped out into nothingness. She fell about 400 feet, landing on a ledge. The impact broke her back and both arms and legs. By the time her boyfriend Pablo had hauled her broken body back up to the road, she was dead.
Not far beyond this, a prominent rock marks where another friend with the German Mission, Helmut, was pushed off the road by an oncoming truck. His SUV tumbled several hundred feet down a steep embankment. Two passengers were ejected from the back hatch of the vehicle – they survived by clinging to the hillside – while three others suffered the rest of the wild roll. When Helmut came to, he realized the arm he’d had resting out the window had been crushed to a pulp. Nearby a young native boy had materialized and was now staring down at him. Helmut asked faintly for help, to which the reply was, “Do you have any money?” Even in his horribly injured state, Helmut was shocked by such calloused opportunism. In fact, ransacking accident sites has become a part-time occupation for some younger residents along the road. Fortunately, Helmut received the help he needed at the nearest clinic in Coroico, where some emergency surgery by two local interns miraculously saved his arm.
We spend the rest of the afternoon filming at waypoints Sergio and I have marked on a GPS earlier that week during the reconnaissance.
At each stop we unload the couple hundred pounds of gear. In several places the camera placement is so precarious that Rob slips into his climbing harness and we belay him using the vehicles as an anchor – I’m impressed with the personal risk he takes to get the shot. At the narrowest and steepest part of the road, he sets up the jib arm so that it swings out over the fathomless gulf below. Trucks reluctant to lose momentum rumble past, coming within inches of the heavy tripod, but Rob perseveres until low light and thick mists obscure our view completely, forcing us to call it a day.
We sojourn briefly at the truck stop of Yolosa, turned to quagmire by torrential rain and churning tires. This ramshackle collection of food stalls lining the road was founded in the 18th century by Spanish settlers stricken by gold fever, who panned in the nearby Khori Huayco (literally ‘gold valley’) River, until attacks by Aymara natives forced them to flee to a more defendable position, where Coroico now sits. Although Yolosa proper hasn’t changed much over the 25 years I’ve known it, the area is a good litmus for how the Yungas Road – and now the new Cotopata road – are changing the profile of the Bolivian Andes’ east side.
Today, Yolosa is road’s-end for many of the biking operations, and over the past ten years adventure tourism has helped to bolster local business. Stashed in the jungle not far from the village is La Senda Verde, established in 2003 as a non-profit refuge providing long-term care in a natural environment for animals rescued from illegal trafficking. This is one of the few places ‘voluntourists’ can interact with local species, from snakes to monkeys endemic to the Amazon watershed region. And the nearby Hotel Rio Selva, located at the termination of the La Cumbre-Coroico Inca Trail, has turned from a quaint weekend retreat into a veritable five-star resort, replete with several swimming pools, restaurants and spa facilities.
The hypocrite in me detests the development, yet yearns to escape from the day’s misery to a steam room scented with lemon grass.
Forty-minutes later on, after a dizzying incline over a well-maintained cobblestone road, we reach Coroico, the colonial heart of the North Yungas. Once our outrageously expensive cameras and gear are secure at the Hotel Sol y Luna, famous for its (currently obscured) unsurpassed views of the surrounding mountains, we roll back into town to scout out potential shots and to grab some dinner. We find the plaza aglow with strings of lights, and the massive palms lining the square cast artful shadows across the chipped Spanish tile of the sidewalks. After a satisfying meal, on the way back to the hotel, I hitch a ride on the roof rack of the Nissan to take in the Yungeña night, the stars reeling overhead and the smell of curry and ripe coffee berry sharp in my nostrils.
We awake to the dreaded sound of rain drumming heavily on the tin roof. Rob, Greg and Mike have slept in, much to Mike’s chagrin. Once the vehicles are loaded up, we meander back down to the mud hole of Yolosa, where a driver consents to our filming his La Paz-bound truck heavily laden with produce and people. Rob climbs atop the Nissan with his camera and braces himself on the roof rack. With us in pursuit, the truck sways dangerously at each tight curve, and as we begin the arduous climb to the pass, the rock wall to our left closes in.
The only driving rule on the Yungas Road is that descending traffic must yield to the outside to ascending traffic.
Meeting another vehicle can be a death-defying ordeal. Sitting in the outside passenger seat of a bus whose wheels are only inches away from a 2000-foot drop is an excellent exercise in panic-control. Meanwhile, upcoming vehicles face the risk of scraping against the inside rock face. People traveling in the backs of trucks have been known to literally lose their heads due to a lack of vigilance. Fortunately, on this trip everyone keeps theirs.
By the time we reach our next stop the mist has parted to grace us with a view of a sheer 500-foot rock wall draped with lianas and bridal-veil falls swollen with the previous night’s rain. The crew sets up the jib on a wide curve from where we film a grader scraping along the base of the cliff. It fast becomes apparent we have set up too close to the machine’s intended path. In a mad frenzy we drag Rob and the gear off the road just before getting crushed. A little shaken, we laugh it out, but the driver of the grader yells obscenities at us as he passes by. We then zip up the camera in its waterproof housing to get more intimate shots of the waters tumbling from above and of the many moss-laden crosses populating the road’s edge below.
As we’re completing the series, a large sky-blue vomit-streaked Mercedes bus descending from La Paz rounds the corner with a loud toot of its horn and begins the cautious traverse beneath the falls, but half way across a small white van loaded with mountain bikes and passengers appears moving in the opposite direction and the showdown begins.
David and Goliath meet face-to-face under the heaviest part of the falls.
We see the bus driver’s arm emerge, gesturing threateningly for the van to back up. But everyone knows the rule. The little van stubbornly stands its ground. Then, with a reluctant grinding of gears, the bus slowly starts to edge backwards, and all of us hold our breath, as a deviation of even a foot might land the bus in the ravine 300 feet below – all of us, that is, except Rob who is enthralled in filming the encounter.
Twenty-minutes above the falls we round a bend to find a bulldozer hard at work amidst the rubble. This is the worst slide area between Coroico and La Paz, a place Sergio and I call Santa Clara. It was here in 1982 that a rogue boulder smacked sideways the vehicle my father, brother and I were traveling in, almost ending our brief sojourn on earth. It was also the same area where, on a dreadfully rainy night in 1994, some friends and I helped to rescue a busload of passengers trapped in a river of oozing mud.
As we pull up behind several trucks awaiting clear passage, rocks begin to cascade down from a haphazard outcropping above.
Amid shouts of “Derrumbe!” I see heads craning nervously from open windows. As a sickening sense of foreboding lodges itself in the pit of my stomach, Rob launches himself from the 4×4 and charges camera-in-hand past the trucks out into the middle of the steep gully to film the tail end of the debris tumbling down the mountainside.
We stop to interview the bulldozer driver, then, as if to defy the odds, we clatter over the slide zone to capture man and machine pitted against the fickle mountain, offering some exciting action. Although protected by a metal cage, this driver, we figure, has the same chance of survival as a helicopter pilot at the height of the Vietnam War.
With the help of some student volunteers from the American Cooperative School in La Paz we spend the next day in Chuspipata filming the re-enactment of a near-tragedy – or non-event, depending on how you look at it – involving a school bus and our band of ragged children in tow wherever we go. Sergio has a profound affection for the people he meets in the field. During our first stop in Chuspipata he had motivated the children to cleanup and burn trash, for which they received a propina (reward).
While in Coroico he had purchased a soccer ball, and now, on the eve of our departure, he presents it to them. It’s as if they have won the lottery. An elated cry rises up across the mist-shrouded mountain saddle, and seconds later they are chasing after their new gift along the muddy road. Chuspipata sits at the edge of a 1000-foot cliff. We wonder how long it will take before the children kick the ball into the chasm – and how long it will take to retrieve it.
With the bulk of the shoot under our belts the crew is in good spirits.
We pack up and say farewell to our young friends and begin our ascent to the pass. Before becoming lost in the steep folds of the high Andes, we pull over to take in the view. Afternoon cloud has dispersed to reveal the soft shoulders of the forested slopes below, and cutting across them the meandering scar of the Yungas Road. We watch as ant-sized vehicles meet, pause, and pass each other in the hazardous ritual that so often ends in tragedy, and I wonder at this lifeline to the lowlands that exacts such a sinister toll and demands the respect of all who travel it.
Sunset’s iridescence fades to the gradient blue of dusk and to the east the snowy massif of Mt. Mururata makes its imposing debut. As we drive away into the twilight I’m struck by the paradox of how the sublime is so often fraught with peril, and how, as human beings we are so attracted to such combinations – hence the documentary we are making; but when the lights of La Paz spread out before us, all philosophizing is eclipsed by the single thought of a hot meal and a warm bed.
Jonathan Derksen spent his formative years in Malaysia, Japan, Canada and Bolivia. He has contributed to editions of Backpacking and Trekking in Peru and Bolivia (Bradt Publications) and he compiled Hiking in the Garhwal Himalayas: A Guide (Woodstock Publications). His writing and photography have appeared in South American Explorer Magazine, Geographical, GORP, and elsewhere. Work with National Geographic and Discovery Channel has taken him from the Andean highlands to the remote Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. His passions include being a husband and father, teaching and leading student expeditions, and protecting Bolivia’s Andean watershed region. Jon is currently working on a novel “Life at 11,000 Feet”.
Note to reader: For a quick background and some visuals from the documentary on the road that is the subject of this piece, please click here http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/roads-2738/Videos#tab-Videos/02716_02 )
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“Please come visit me on my birthday,” wrote Ana Maria Guerrero, a 12-year-old girl my husband, Ed and I were sponsoring through PLAN USA (or Childreach; formerly Foster Parents Plan).
She lived near Tarija Bolivia, in the southwestern corner of the country. I lived in Texas. Not close.
But when you’re invited to come celebrate a birthday, what do you do? You try to go.
So I did.
But several things had to happen to make it work.
First, I needed a traveling companion that spoke Spanish and would be fun to be with. The perfect choice: a college student friend, Norma Madrid, majoring in Travel/Tourism, who spoke fluent [Mexican] Spanish….not the same as Bolivian, but she did very well.
Second, I had to arrange such a trip with the PLAN USA office in Rhode Island. They would need to coordinate with their office in Tarija, who would arrange a visit with Ana Maria and her family.
Third, it was essential to find affordable airfare. We did! American Airlines flies to La Paz, and we caught a reasonable fare, which I doubt has been repeated: $743 each, round-trip from Amarillo.
Fourth, Norma needed a passport. Although she applied in June, and the trip wasn’t until October, her passport didn’t arrive until the Wednesday before we left on Sunday! That’s entirely too close!
We arrived EARLY Monday morning at the La Paz Airport—the highest commercial airport in the world— to be picked up by a driver and guide who took us to a hotel for a short rest and breakfast, then escorted us on a tour of La Paz, including a visit to The Valley of the Moon. Later, they took us back to the airport to fly to Tarija.
In Tarija, two staffers of the PLAN office were eagerly awaiting us, taking us to our hotel which they’d arranged for us, and giving suggestions for dinner.
The next day, we would meet Ana Maria, first at her school and then—weather permitting—go to her home, where we could meet her parents and siblings.
Weather permitting? I wondered. But then I found out. After leaving her school, we were driven toward a shallow river….with no bridge. There were five of us: Claudia Urriogoloitia and Santusa Isnada from PLAN, Ana Maria, Norma, and me. Claudia explained,” We’ll be walking from here to Ana Maria’s home. As you can see, it rained last night, and sometimes this river is uncrossable.”But we were in luck. Getting our feet wet, we were able to make it to the other side…all the time knowing we’d be returning the same way.
Her family had already eaten their noon meal when we arrived, but we enjoyed the delicious food Jesusa—Ana Maria’s mother—had cooked over her wood stove. Then came the presents we had brought for the birthday girl, plus her family.
And there was a pesky question I needed Norma to ask for me: “Did you know Ana Maria had invited Loralee?” This had been bothering me since I’d purchased the plane tickets. What if they hadn’t expected us? What if they resented us? What if we were an imposition?
“We WANTED her to invite you,” her father quickly explained. “The whole family agreed to that. We encouraged her to ask you to come!” And it was quite a family who had agreed to my visit. Ana Maria is the youngest of about nine children, four of whom were there with their parents, along with a year-old nephew.
The next day we met her oldest sister Cira, whom we had sponsored through PLAN, and Juan Carlos, her husband, and toddler daughter, Salome Sophia. Cira had told Juan Carlos about me, and had shown him the gifts I’d sent her. But he didn’t understand completely until he met me.
After leaving Tarija, we returned to La Paz, changing planes at Cochabamba. There was another girl to meet in the Altiplano region west of the capital. Our last day in Bolivia was spent with Hans Hoffman and Basilia Alejo, PLAN staffers from the La Paz office, who worked with Shirley Estavez, my contact. Hans drove us some two hours away from the city to a small village and the school where we would meet Maria-Elena Coca, the second girl my husband and I sponsor.
After our experience with Ana-Maria’s school and the hike to her home, I wondered what we’d encounter here. “Oh, it’s much different,” Hans laughed. “There‘s electricity and running water.”
And so there was. The school looked much like a small school in the States, and Maria-Elena’s home had many amenities Ana Maria’s had lacked. Norma and I met her parents and brother and sister. Again, we were treated to a delicious meal, with conversation constantly keeping Norma busy translating. Maria-Elena, the oldest child of the three, was full of questions about the United States, the foods we ate, the holidays we celebrated.
The drive back to La Paz for our flight out that night was both sad and satisfying. We had been welcomed by two very different families, both of whom were part of the PLAN program, and we had seen two very different school and home environments. Both families were enthusiastic about our visit and supportive of their daughters’ welfare. They obviously took pride in welcoming me and my traveling companion into their homes.
Our time in Bolivia was so short, and we did very little of the “touristy” business….except for a bit of shopping for wine in Tarija, textiles and trinkets in the La Paz Witches Market, and small gifts at the airport shop in Cochabamba.
So how do I remember Bolivia? The first view of the Andes, flying into La Paz at 5:00 a.m., remains in my mind. And the welcome we received from the people with PLAN INTERNATIONAL and the families who hosted us is a memory to treasure.
I’m glad I went.
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A couple of cartons of red wine are tried and tested as the perfect antidote to long distance bus journeys. Except when the destination is over 3,000 meters above sea level and you’re about to climb another 1,000 meters into Peru’s most dramatic and challenging mountain range; the Cordillera Blanca.
Stumbling off the bus from Lima in downtown Huaraz, the first thing that penetrated my hazy mind was the altitude, the wheezing of a heavy smoker which made me stop to catch my breath as I lugged my rucksack up a slight hill towards the city’s central plaza.
Note to self: don’t do this again with a hangover.
Huaraz isn’t a beautiful place. Far from it, the city was hastily reconstructed onto a bland but functional concrete grid following a devastating earthquake in 1970 that left 20,000 people dead and virtually every building lying in rubble.
But it isn’t the architecture that draws people to this region of Peru. It’s the colossal, unspeakably beautiful landscape that surrounds the city, giving visitors to Huaraz an immediate sense of perspective, as well as endless opportunities for outdoor adventures in the country’s mightiest mountain range.
The range is actually divided into two separate cordilleras, with Huaraz sandwiched in the middle. To the west is the Cordillera Negra and to the east, the more famous and snow-capped Cordillera Blanca. The two ranges are both huge but the eastern mountains catch the lion’s share of the moisture rolling in from the Amazon, giving them a thick covering of snow that is rarely seen on the western mountains, which bask under warm currents from the coast.
These mountains are home to a vast network of hiking and trekking routes, making this the leading trekking, mountaineering and climbing destination in South America.
Travellers flock here seeking new challenges and thrills which range between one-day hikes to weeks-long professional expeditions with technical climbs worthy of the world’s best mountaineers.
It was in these mountains that the legendary story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates was played out, since popularized in the 2003 film Touching the Void. Descending in difficult weather from the peak of Siula Grande, Simpson suffered a series of accidents culminating in a 100 ft fall into a deep crevasse, leaving him with a severely broken leg. Yates managed to reach base camp while Simpson, in an extraordinary feat of human endurance, spent three days crawling and dragging himself down the mountain on the verge of death, reaching base camp moments before his fellow trekkers were to leave for good.
But never mind the hardcore professionals and rock climbing heroes, the Huaraz region offers something for everyone else too. Investing 70 soles in the high detail Austrian Alpine Club’s map, the Alpenvereinskarte Cordillera Blanca Nord, is recommended, with all the established trails and trekking routes clearly marked, along with camp grounds, contours and other essential information.
Equipped with this map and some standard camping equipment, casual trekkers can easily spend a day or two following the well marked lower level trails that fan out from Huaraz.
Anything more challenging should always be accompanied by an expert guide.
One particularly pleasant day hike starts from the tiny pueblo of Llupa, situated to the east of Huaraz, and follows a trail up Mt Churup towards Churup Laguna, a stunningly beautiful glacial lake.
You can reach Llupa by taxi (25 Soles) or bus (2 Soles) from Huaraz and from here commence a long, and at times demanding, hike leading directly uphill.
Passing through Llupa you’ll soon notice the characteristic friendliness of the grinning locals, with everyone stopping to say hello. On my ascent I paused to snap a photo of a weather-beaten old woman herding a mixed flock down the narrow lane. “Pay me for my photo, I’m beautiful!” she demanded, beaming a wide and toothy grin at me. How could I refuse, I pulled out some change and handed it over. “Fifty cents?!” she cackled incredulously, grin wider than ever. “Well, it is a beautiful photo,” I said, handing over some more money. It was the friendliest mugging in history, unfortunately the photo turned out useless.
With the eucalyptus groves and swaying maze fields of Llupa behind you, the trail enters the increasingly bare hillsides of Mt Churup.
The trees become stooped and dwarfed before turning into hedgerows, and then the tree line disappears completely. Up here the elements are harsher and a cold wind blows from the snowy heights of the Cordillera.
The trail skirts up and along the mountain’s shoulder before dipping down again into a sheltered valley, at the foot of a long waterfall which originates several hundred feet up, at the laguna itself. This is a sensible place to fill up on refreshing glacial water because the final stretch is a tough scramble up boulders and steep, muddy trails, aided in parts by metal cables which have been bolted into the rock face.
By this point you’re at almost 4,500 meters above sea level, a challenging altitude for even the fittest of hikers. With every step, half climbing, half clambering up the trail becomes increasingly difficult and before long I found myself stopping to catch my breath after every dozen paces.
When you eventually reach the summit, the perfectly still turquoise waters of the laguna stretch out in front of you, contrasting against the gunmetal grey of the surrounding rock face. This is the reward that makes you forget instantly the wheezy ordeal you underwent to get here, although my mild sense of pride was quickly eroded when a troupe of local youngsters bounded past us, having run the entire way without breaking a sweat.
It’s possible to camp at the lakeside, although quality equipment is essential: the temperature up here plummets at night and you’re at serious risk of hypothermia without appropriate kit. The soft beds and log fires at The Way Inn offer a more comfortable option; a friendly lodge built by a long term English expat, the inn is conveniently located on the path between Churup and Llupa and makes a good base for day hikes or longer treks into the Cordillera.
Back down in Huaraz, there are a couple of places that are definitely worth a visit.
Café Andino, located a few blocks from the city’s central Plaza is a perfect choice for breakfast and lunch. A personal recommendation is their huevos rancheros, an enormous plate of fried eggs, potatoes, beans and soft flour tacos.
But no trip to Huaraz is complete without a pilgrimage to the travellers’ Mecca, Chilli Heaven. This place serves the best Indian curries outside of the English West Midlands, along with a huge range of imported British ales, making it an ideal place to end your visit, rest your weary legs and enjoy some of the finer things in life after testing your body and spirit against the might of the Peruvian Andes.
Directory:
For quality equipment hire, including tents, sleeping bags, boots and climbing gear, stop in at Andes Camping (Tel: 043-943049829. Address: Parque Ginebra, two blocks from the Plaza de Armas.) They also buy and sell second hand kit, and offer the best price on the excellent Alpenvereinskarte Cordillera Blanca Nord map (70 Soles.)
The Way Inn is a 20-30 Soles taxi ride out of town on the road to Pitec. Reservations can be made in advance (Tel: 043-943466219) The lodge has comfortable private and dorm rooms plus camping space and offers abundant, excellent food at a good price.
Café Andino (Tel: 043-721203. Address: Jr. Lucar y Torre 530) has a wide menu and relaxed atmosphere and if a perfect place to fill up on a big breakfast before heading out into the mountains.
Chilli Heaven (Tel: 043-221313. Address: Parque Ginebra, two blocks from the Plaza de Armas) is undoubtedly the best and most unusual place to eat in Huaraz. Probably the best Indian inspired menu in Peru, never mind the outrageously wide beer selection. A real treat.
]]>Matthew Barker lives in Lima, working as a travel writer and photographer for the Peru travel specialists, Peru For Less. He splits his time between getting to know the hidden faces of Lima and exploring the beautiful Peruvian wilderness.
North Coast Peru Information Packet
The winners of our July competition are Cynthia Shannon, Michael Veenstra, Rosie Walsh, Erin Brown and Michael Kool. They will receive a copy of the North Coast Peru Information Packet. Happy travelling!
Congratulations and thank you to everyone who entered. We had an overwhelming response and so we thought we would share with you some of the best answers to our competition question:
What is one thing you always take on holiday?
The one thing I would take on a holiday to South America is my SAE membership card – David Smith (we loved this answer! – Ed)
The one thing I always bring with me when I travel is a towel – a soft, strong, medium sized towel. The British author Douglas Adams has taught me that a towel is the most useful thing a person can carry when traveling around the world (or the universe). You can wear it, carry things in it or use it as a sling shot. It can keep you warm, shield you or soak up liquids to be ingested later. A towel can also dry you off. Often a towel is even more useful than money. For example, when you happen to find yourself alone in the rainforest! – Mike Veenstra
To be truthful, and especially on a holiday, I always take extra bathroom tissue with me! – Ruth Olinger
My old sturdy backpack! It’s been with me for 26 years now, and travelled to more or less every continent, if not with me, then with friends whom I lent it to. I don’t get around like I used to, but stepping on the Harwich ferry this week, the customs officer asked whether I wouldn’t prefer one of this nice big suitcases on wheels. I responded with a declaration of love for my backpack – Michael Kool
The one thing I always take travelling is far from glamorous but it’s a total winner: a mini camera tripod. When you’re travelling alone there are times when you feel compelled to take a photo of yourself and usually you have two options. You extend your arm and take a picture of yourself (disadvantages: you look like a moron, it makes your face look pointy/weird and you invariably end up with a great big camera-holding arm in the foreground of your photo) or you prop your camera on some wall or tree or car and wonder, as it falls off head-first and smashes to pieces on a hard dusty road, why you were so stupid as to think that it would remain stable. Step in the mini tripod with bendy legs that can cope with any number of rough, uneven surfaces. Mine can even attach itself to a tree branch. It is a wondrous piece of kit. And it makes me look like a bit less of a loser in my photos. – Rosie Walsh
I always take a headlamp with me so i can read in hostel dormitories without disturbing others. – Andrew Zeiger
Don’t forget that you still have until 20 December to enter our November competition to win a copy of Pins on a Map: A Family’s Yearlong Journey Around the World Don’t miss out!