16th October

Our target for the day today was to reach the village of Sangalle. This was a four hour trek away from San Juan de Chuccho, but a trek that was mostly on level ground. So my calf muscles that were currently on fire from yesterday’s mammoth descent, would at least, be given a small break today.

The first hour of the trek was all uphill, around 300 metres, and this was pretty hard going. We managed okay though, slow and steady, there was no rush. Going on from there on level ground we passed through two tiny villages nestled on the sides of the canyon wall. The second village we came to we stopped at for a while as we spoke to one of the locals. This guy was a character. Quechua natively, but luckily he spoke Spanish so we could understand a lot of what he said. Sometimes he reverted to Quechua just to throw us off, I think that amused him, and he laughed as he translated it back into Spanish for us.

This fella showed us around the local museum, well, more just a room really, depicting life of the villagers through the ages, or so I thought. What I was taking to be a history lesson actually turned out to be a lesson in contemporary life. How they grind wheat, how they make soup, how they make clothes etc., was all demonstrated to us by this man. These people really are living history and do everything for themselves. I just love them.

Then came the sentence I had been dreading; “would you like some Chicha?” I really liked this guy, and I didn’t want to offend him by saying no, so reluctantly I said yes. I hid from Jess what I knew and she didn’t, and she also tried some of this strange brew that our man was offering. Chicha is alcohol brewed from corn. It’s also helped to ferment rapidly by using human saliva. Oddly, it tasted quite nice.

So on we went, our last stretch to Sangalle, and quite an easy one. It’s hard to describe Sangalle, apart from using the tour agency nomenclature. They call it paradise. I was reluctant to accept this definition, until I saw it. It really is a piece of paradise shoe-horned into this difficult canyon. Swimming pools and palm trees, surrounded by these high canyon walls, you feel like you’re in the Garden of Eden. But like the Garden of Eden, this paradise also had a hidden dark side. No serpent this time, but public toilets that were even more open to being spied upon than those in San Juan de Chuccho. I held onto mine again. This was getting tricky.

Toilets aside, Sangalle was a fantastic place, and I loved being there. We had some great conversations with our fellow trekkers, downed a couple of beers and ate together. It had a great camaraderie. But that was today, and tomorrow is going to be very, very different.

What comes down must also go back up, and I had grave concerns about how I was going to get myself out of this canyon. We needed to climb 1,100 metres to get back to Cabanaconde, and our route goes straight up through an intense series of switchbacks that should take us three hours, but I was betting more like four. The zenith of this hike was also at 3,300 metres in altitude, so altitude sickness was going to play its part too, though we had acclimatised pretty well at this point.

I was not looking forward to it, and I was not the only one, not by a long way. There was downbeat talk amongst a few people about this part of the trek. This was going to be a seriously hard walk, one which I thought may well be just too physically demanding for my less than fit body to achieve. This was going to make the trek to laguna 69 in the Cordillera Blanca look easy by comparison.

I don’t understand this whole exercise and endorphins thing. I hear people talking about “no pain, no gain” and “going for the burn”. I just don’t get it. I’m a more “no pain, no problem” and “going for the buns” kind of guy to be honest. I get no pleasure from physical exercise. Getting out of this canyon was going to hurt, really hurt. Late in the afternoon, I found myself looking around the pool at Sangalle, weighing up the competition, how old, how heavy and how fit they might be. Seeing a handful of people who I thought I might be comparable to, I slowly resolved that if they can do it, I can do it too. It gave me confidence. I knew it was going to be hard, but now I thought at least possible.

Imagine my consternation the next morning, an hour into this insanely difficult walk, when I saw said competition sailing past me on mules that they had hired. My mathematics just fell apart right in front of my eyes. Bollocks.

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Part of trip: South America 2009 - Ecuador, Peru & Bolivia

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