Ausangate
I bought a $5 map of the Ausangate trek in a tiny bookstore in Cusco. "It's a good map," the lady told me, in her Quechua-accented Spanish, "It's in color!"
The shiny paper shows the town of Tinqui in one corner, then a tear drop shaped yellow line that winds its way around ten or twelve peaks, illustrated by very closely drawn blue contour lines. There are eight possible camping sites, two hot springs, eighteen lakes, and numerous streams and rivers.
Throughout the five days that we spent trekking around Ausangate, we found there were many things that the map left out. The map didn't tell us how hungry we'd be for oxygen at 17,000 feet, and it didn't tell us how each morning we'd wake up to frozen boots and an icy tent. It showed a few towns along that yellow line, but we had no idea that these "towns" were mere settlements of three to four stone huts, with stone shelters and stone corrals, the homes of kind, soft spoken shepherd people who welcomed us, and helped us on our way.
It's difficult to look at a map and know how tired you'll be a the end of the day, or how speechless you'll find yourself when the clouds separate, and there the mountains are, booming over you.
Several times the map failed us, or perhaps we are the ones who failed. We got confused in the lush green vallleys, full of alpacas and llamas, and weren't sure which mountain pass to cross next. We completely missed our campsite on day 4, got stuck in a snowstorm over a 16,600 foot pass, and four hours later arrived at the campsite for day 5. Oops.
Maps are friends. They help us know whether to go southwest or southeast, they form a good point of reference for a person who speaks only Quechua and one who knows only Spanish and English.
But I'm thankful for the experience between the lines. I'm glad that things are not always as they seem.
The shiny paper shows the town of Tinqui in one corner, then a tear drop shaped yellow line that winds its way around ten or twelve peaks, illustrated by very closely drawn blue contour lines. There are eight possible camping sites, two hot springs, eighteen lakes, and numerous streams and rivers.
Throughout the five days that we spent trekking around Ausangate, we found there were many things that the map left out. The map didn't tell us how hungry we'd be for oxygen at 17,000 feet, and it didn't tell us how each morning we'd wake up to frozen boots and an icy tent. It showed a few towns along that yellow line, but we had no idea that these "towns" were mere settlements of three to four stone huts, with stone shelters and stone corrals, the homes of kind, soft spoken shepherd people who welcomed us, and helped us on our way.
It's difficult to look at a map and know how tired you'll be a the end of the day, or how speechless you'll find yourself when the clouds separate, and there the mountains are, booming over you.
Several times the map failed us, or perhaps we are the ones who failed. We got confused in the lush green vallleys, full of alpacas and llamas, and weren't sure which mountain pass to cross next. We completely missed our campsite on day 4, got stuck in a snowstorm over a 16,600 foot pass, and four hours later arrived at the campsite for day 5. Oops.
Maps are friends. They help us know whether to go southwest or southeast, they form a good point of reference for a person who speaks only Quechua and one who knows only Spanish and English.
But I'm thankful for the experience between the lines. I'm glad that things are not always as they seem.
posted by Ansley at 6:03 PM
1 Comments:
John and Alex say they can tell the difference between llamas and alpacas, but I'm not so sure. The alpacas seem to always be a cream color, while llamas can be brown or even blackish. Llamas also seem to be bigger, and they have longer noses. Vacuñas are the much smaller cousins of alpacas and llamas that are wild, they are not used as domestic animals that I know of.
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