Peru July 25

Woke up this morning with not too bad of sleep. Vaughn on the other hand slept awfully because he kept thinking the wind blowing the tent was cows trying to push it off the cliff. Our goal today was to pass through Choco and back over the bridge and make it a little ways up the road toward Cabanaconde. We made it back to Choco in about 1 ½ hours and sat for a couple minutes to relax. The plaza was pretty crowded and we heard over the intercom that today was the day they distributed shoes. The excitement of shoe day was rivaled by the reappearance of the two white people they saw the day before. We had our yogurt drinks, bought hour water and left. On our way to the bridge we passed about 20 people with mules, which slowed us down due to having to get off the path all the time. These mules would have been a lot more helpful if they had come a day or two earlier. We made it down to the bridge around 12:15 and were offered a ride up to Cabanaconde by the guys who we formally though were creepy. The ride though was not till 3:00, so we took a dip in the river and tanned. I soaked my lower half in the ice cold water for about 20 minutes to heal my newly aching knee and my blistered feet with toenails almost coming off. It felt amazing!! But let me tell you right now, the shrinkage that occurred in those 20 minutes would have made George Costanza feel like a champion. So after our only relaxation so far on the trip, we went up to the workers who offered the ride and conversed with them. This was round 2:45. When we got to them, they said it would be another 40 minutes so we sat and talked. Soon after, one of the workers offered to buy us beer and would not let us say no. So he gave us a bottle of Arequipina, the local Arequipan beer. It was warm and disgusting. While talking to them we found out that they had been drinking for the past 6 hours. Not only that, but one of them was a coke addict with more metal in his mouth than teeth, and had some fetish with taekwondo. The other, whose name we heard about 23 times (because he kept repeating everything over and over because of drunkenness), was named Jorge and attempted to name all of the 50 states about 14 times and only got more than 5 once. He kept naming Georgia, NY, FL, Washington and California. We also found out, in the middle of this deep heart to heart with these two drunk construction workers that didn’t speak English, that it was actually a priest coming from Choco whose car we were going to take, and non one knew exactly when he was gonna be there. Around 3:50 we were getting frustrated waiting for this ride that was seeming to never come, so we decided to get up and start hiking again. Right when we stood up, the priest appeared and we go our goodbye hugs and waves from Jorge and the unknown coke addict and were on our way up. The priest was very nice and it turned out he saw us when we walked through Choco earlier, and I remember I saw him as well. He was Argentinean and had lived in Brazil, Italy and now Cabanaconde. He goes to Choco once a month to do a sermon, and by some sort of Godsend, it happened to be his day today. It was about a 45 minute ride up the road to Cabanaconde and we picked up some local family hitchhikers in the back of the pick-up for the last 10 minutes. When we got to town we sat and people watched until 7:00 and then ate at a restaurant called Kunter Wassi. We got an amazingly delicious appetizer of avocado slices with lime juice, salt and pepper. Scrumptious!! For main courses I got this chicken with a crispy fried crust thingy and mashed taters and Vaughn got Al Paka Steak and cheese stuffed potatoes. Quite good. We now have to catch our 9:00 bus to Arequipa. If this is my last journal entry it means the bus got hijacked or we got robbed by the cab driver at 3:00 am in Arequipa. Adios!

Peru July 24

Today’s entry is going to start last night in the middle of the night. The situation was a first for me. I was having trouble sleeping when Vaughn turns over around 4 am and touches me and says “Forrest, is that you?” Keep in mind that we are in a tent in the middle of nowhere and not more than 2 people can fit in the tent. So of course I reply with a cordial “Ya”. Vaughn takes my “ya” the wrong way and rolls over and says with a little frightened anger, “No it’s not!” He then proceeds to punch me as hard as he can (which luckily isn’t very hard at 4 am) to fight me off, because obviously when I say “ya” it means “No, I’m a stranger that somehow took your friend out of the tent and took his place without you ever knowing.” I finally convinced him that I was myself, not Tom Cruise from Mission Impossible with a mask of my face on. We had a good chuckle after that one. But I be Vaughn’s arm didn’t hurt while he was chuckling. We ended up waking around 6:45 on not very good and not very much sleep. We woke up to a man walking by with some mules and whistling (everyone local that walks past either whistles or plays a crappy fuzzy sounding radio). Unfortunately, I didn’t warn Vaughn quick enough to get him to ask the guy if we could use a mule. So we got up and had our usual oatmeal breakfast. Then, when we were ready to leave, a guy with donkeys walked by but wanted 70 soles for us to use one. BUMP THAT!! So we followed some guy on a horse who was going to Chacas, where we wanted to go. Sadly, he was on a horse and we were wearing heavy packs so we cold only follow him for so long. Soon after he left us we hit a fork in the path. Now I contributed to this dilemma by saying the famous Yogi Berra quote, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Sadly, that advice doesn’t work when it comes to trails in Peru, so Vaughn and I chose one way. That way took us past a bunch of ownerless cows (who we aren’t particularly scared of anymore) and finally to another fork. Shit! We decided to eat lunch at this fork and hope for a local to walk by and lead us in the right direction, or tell us that we have already been going in the wrong direction. No one came except more cows, and their English isn’t too good. We were totally demoralized because the whole hike so far was extreme steepness with literally no breaks in steepness. And now we had to make another guess at what trail to take from the trail we were on (which we didn’t even know if it was right). Thijs is when the thoughts of turning back really became prevalent. Somehow, through our total demoralization and doubt, we chose a trail. The trail took us into a small canyon which was going north, the direction we needed to go in. But, it was a narrow trail with no mule or horse droppings or footprints, only cows (mules and horses are usually accompanied by ppl, while cows sorta roam free a lot). That meant there probably wasn’t much human traffic along that trail, which was not in the least bit reassuring. We hiked for about 30 more minutes through the canyon and nothing looked reassuring. So, at a break that we had, we ended up deciding to head back the way we came because getting lost in the mountains of Colca Canyon is not the smartest thing in the world. We were totally bummed but then realized it was the safest, smartest thing to do, and immediately our spirits went sky high for some reason. So, in high spirits, we climbed right back down to our same campsite in about 2 hours, when it initially took us 4 ½ hours to get there. That’s how steep the paths were. So now we are in the same exact position as we were last night, except going back where we came from instead of forward. We had spaghetti and sauce for dinner and then star gazed for about 30 minutes, like every other night on the hike. Romantic. No light-pollution and clear skies means beautiful and countless stars. We also had the silhouette of the canyon which didn’t hurt the aesthetic pleasure of the sky. And finally, we saw a couple shooting stars and two comets. The comets shot off at the same time but in opposite directions. We watched one for 5 minutes and one for 3 minutes. We’ve learned to enjoy the little things we can’t see at home. That’s it, goodnight.