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Gathering wood to make a fire for warmth at night.
Walking in from the drop off point for a few hours.
Stopping to explain the characteristics of the top-of-the-Andes grassland (puna) landscape to some Cape Farewellers.
Leading Cape Farewell the next day into the
puna near the tree line.
Hiking around puna ponds.
No, we’re not all slowly sinking. It’s just that the grasses are
really tall.
We rest just above the tree line, where the top of the clouds are as well. I
describe how this ecosystem transition (ecotone) is
changing with climate change.
I wander over to see how Kathryn is getting on with her landslide surveys.
Taking advantage of the vista to take some measurements.
Standing on clouds.
 
A couple Cape Farewell group shots.
Observing features of the Andes/Amazon with the sunrise.
There’s a lot to think about from here.
The last minutes of night for the Amazon and Andes.
Lots of stars to be seen at the top of the Andes.
Our glorious bus, which we had to dig out by starlight when it got stuck in
the mud and almost flipped off the cliff.
THE
TROCHA UNION
Is this Heaven? (Hmm, but it begs the question as to where is
Hell…)
Our group in ’07 before we hit the Trocha.
Actually, it wasn´t so bad at first. We did
the first 16 km to our plat in record time. What normally takes 3 hours we
did in 1.5 by maintaining a hurried pace over the rough terrain. Our speed
was instinctive--shortly after we arrived and set up camp, it started to
rain. The rain finally broke with a couple hours of sunlight left and we were
able to get some work done.
We
made dinner and called it an early night at 8 pm. That night a torrential
downpour hit. And it continued all morning so that our campsite began to
flood. We dug out a rather primitive but extensive canal drainage system and
spent the afternoon beneath a tarp anxiously watching the successfully
drainage system. The rain broke in the afternoon again with a few hours of
daylight left. We hurriedly did our work, not wanting to spend another day in
The Trocha. We used up most of the rest of our food
for dinner and hit the sack.
 
Our slumber was interrupted in the middle of the night be an attack on our
campsite by a pair of Osos--bears endemic to the
area. We cautiously emerged from our tents, unsure if we were being visited
by some aggressive squirrels, large cats, or the legendary "Chuyanchakee" known to haunt The Trocha.
The Osos ran off before we were able to get a
decent look, but the evidence was in their footprints and the large bite they
took out of one of our food storage containers, plus pots and things knocked
over.
HELL
BELOW HEAVEN? (NO PHOTOS ALLOWED IN HELL SO USE YOUR IMAGINATION):
The
next day we packed up camp and prepared to go our separate ways--the rest of
the Oxford
crew back up The Trocha and me with the Peruvian
student helpers down The Trocha to set up more
plots at another site lower in elevation. However, the Oxford crew needed some help carrying stuff
up so two of the Peruvian helpers followed them back up. By the time they
returned to Plot 4, where we were, it was 5 pm with little daylight
remaining. We loaded up our stuff and set out. And this is where Hell begins.
The first hour down--and last hour of daylight--was interesting. We made our
way up and down through an excavated tunnel system beneath the forest amongst
the giant tree roots. Feeling good about our pace, we hoped to be down The Trocha in a couple more hours, plenty of time to meet our
connecting car at The Mirador by 7:30 pm. The next
6 hours of trekking did not go as planned, however. Night fell and The Trocha got treacherous. The tunnels got old fast as they
became smaller and smaller so that we were forced to crawl on our hands and
knees with our 50 lb. packs of equipment, tents and clothes continually
catching on the sharp coarse-woody roots protruding from the sky. The ground
itself was a mixture of hard slippery rocks and thick swallowing mud. The
space in front of us was thick vegetation and sharp branches that cut us up
and jabbed us in the eyes and head. In fact it was so bad that we took
comfort going through the mud swamps because the mud was soft on our aching
feet and we knew we couldn’t hurt ourselves by slipping and falling on
a rock. So yeah, it was bad. But it gets worse. There had been a mix up in
the water situation and it turned out we had none except for one bottle I was
carrying, which we went through quickly. We also had no food as we had intended
to leave in the morning, not at 5 pm. So that was the situation. And we had
little hope of getting out of there safely because The Trocha
forked a few times and we weren’t sure if we had missed the right turns
in the dark. Oh, and we were following Oso tracks.
Miraculously we made it down The Trocha after 5
hours. But our driver wasn’t there since it was 10 pm. We slumped down
at The Mirador, despondent, severely dehydrated,
hungry, tired and sore. We yelled and whistled, hoping our noises would carry
through the valley, but to no avail. Left with no other choice, we gathered
up our stuff for the 2 hour walk to San Pedro. We soon encountered a
waterfall to our joy and we drank eagerly for a while.
We continued down the road in a zombie-like state, only to be startled by a
deadly snake in the middle of the road.
After
we scared it off, we lost each other in the dark in our dazed state.
Eventually one of the Peruvians caught up to me and we took a break in the
middle of the road. However, we both fell asleep lying in the road, but I was
awoken by his snoring. I woke him up with an unenthusiastic, "Vamos," and we continued on. Meanwhile, the other
two Peruvians had reached San
Pedro, found our driver and sent him up the road to fetch us. We reached
San Pedro, scarffed down
our food supplies there--namely cookies, coke and oranges--laid out our
sleeping bags and fell asleep, completely drained.
We decided to take the day off the next day where we laid out in the sun,
soaked our feet in the waterfall and listened to music in our truck. Even
though The Trocha was hellish, there are two things
I can be thankful for. One, it didn’t rain on us. And two, the
temperature wasn’t too bad.
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