A belated update on trek completion, dispatched discomfort, and deserved drunkenness.

(To finish up describing the saga of the trek through the Cordillera Blanca, five days later...)

Trek Day Four

The sun woke me up - or, rather, being awake I noticed the light returning, and quickly began packing up, the donkey who had eaten our bread the night before hovering annoyingly over our tent. Some donkey-chewed bread with ham and cheese quickly consumed, three intrepid mountaineers headed off on what we had been told would be a 2-3 hour easy walk downhill to a town called Vaquería, where we planned to sit down and have a nice hot lunch.

2 hours later, after giving the last of our little candies to the first two of 35 under-age-10 shepherd children who asked us for "caramelos", we found ourselves at the foot of a very long uphill climb in dead heat. Everywhere I go, things take longer than I am told. I thought that in the mountains things would be different. No luck. Another day of dirt, sweat, and "I think I can"s until we hit what we thought was the final switchback and the road to Vaquería and a cheap Menú del dia. Two women hanging laundry on the side of the road indicated to me that Vaquería was back the way we´d come. Ouch.

Backtracking a short way, we soon realized that the metropolis of Vaquería actually consisted of roughly 4 structures. As far as I could tell, the population was roughly 2 humans, 7 chickens, and an occasional transient population of donkeys or donkey-mushers, what we had taken to calling "Muleteers". With the 2 sol in change the three of us were able to scrounge together, I managed to haggle with the owner of the one "store" in town, coming out with 6 rolls, 3 bananas, and a chocolate bar, which was to tide us over for the hour and a half until the collectivo was supposed to have come...

Two hours later, the collectivo rolled by, stuffed on the inside and 5 people on the top. Crap. A few people hopped out to spend some time in Vaquería or head out to the fields, and we tossed our bags (and Danny) on top of the vehicle and hit the road, not realizing that we were still very far from home - and showers, and food. A quick pee and Ryan and I stuffed ourselves in the middle of the back row of the van, holding four men across a width of somewhere between four and five feet. We´d ride one leaning forward and one back, then switch, so as to fit our shoulders in, knees buckled against the seat in front. This collectivo had seats for about 12 or 13 people. At one point i counted 23 humans in the vehicle and 3 on the roof. Later, those 3 stuffed in for a brief period.
We expected the ride to Yungay, a larger village where we would catch a connection collectivo to Huaraz, to take about an hour, and were quoted an arrival time 3 hours from departure. 3 hours of incessant Peruvian folk music, which invariably involves a synthesized harp sound sung over by a whiny peruvian woman and a couple of slightly off-key backup singers. 30 minutes into the ride I mentioned to Ryan that I expect in the future to have nightmares exactly like that ride, and that was only the beginning.
The first two-thirds of the journey were along mountain switchbacks on bumpy dirt roads. To some extent, I envied Danny on top of the van, as he could jump off to safety should we go over the edge, though I suppose the human contents of the collectivo may not have been hurt rolling down a couple of hundred meters, as we were packed in together so tightly. About an hour or so (I really had no concept of time) into the journey, it became evident that our front left tire had been punctured. We all squeezed out of the van while the operators of the collectivo (too many people, 4 or 5, I think, smushing in with the rest of us) discussed what to do. The spare we were carrying had even less air in it than the tire with a slow leak. The decision was made to go ahead, I suppose, until we were actually riding on the rim. Imagine, an old, square van, carrying twice its load, riding on a mostly-flat tire along death defying mountain roads, passing slow dumptrucks. Though, I´ll admit, death didn´t seem like such a bad option at that point. Eventually, a passing trucker was able to offer us an air pump, so we filled up the tire with the slow leak and limped into Yungay in somewhere between 4 and 5 hours.
Along the way, we were supposed to stop off and pay a $20 fee to the park service, for having hiked for 4 days. We made a deal with the van driver to not stop at the control station and tell them that we had come from the trail. Paid him $10, his asking price, though we should have paid less. The crook.

Finally in Yungay, starving, we hopped the first collectivo heading to Huaraz, whose teenage sliding door-operator told us we would be in Huaraz in 40 minutes. An hour and a half and a shady switch into another collectivo in some podunk town later, we finally arrived in Huaraz. Immediately bought some avocado for quick sustenance and a bottle of rum for subsequent relaxation purposes and shook the stank of a four day trek in a hot hot shower. Very nice. We made quite a night of it, too, a 7 sol menu, Lomo Saltado for me (sauteed beef with veggies and rice.. very tasty...) and bar hopping, ultimately ending up in a bar called 13 bujos (owls) with a nice belgian girl, a couple of danish chicks (who we railed about the cartoons), two very "friendly" and drunken british girls with surprisingly nice teeth, a french canadian lass, and a couple of dorky american dudes. Danced the hell out of that place. They even put on "the sidewinder sleeps tonight" for me, one of my favorite REM songs ever. I remember I requested it for our junior prom. They put on "Lady in Red" instead. ouch... And to sleep, rest, and the bus out to Trujillo.

And now recovery. What a trip.