You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Condortrekkers' tag.
My time here is passing, and as I become more and more aware of my decreasing number of remaining days I plan more and more trips, trying to balance where to spend time with who to spend time with. Condortrekkers continues to slow grind towards official registration, and the commencing of official tours. Until then there is only so much that I can do to help the organisation out. It is, for now, at the mercy of lawyers and civil servants, which in Bolivia is a very very grim place to be.
Finally in the first week of April we trekked out towards Maragua, as much to save the sanity of Randall the director as to explore the countryside, looking for campgrounds and hiking trails, potable water and hospitable farmsteads.
The long tail end of the wet season hangs heavy over Sucre, and the nearby mountains that generate storms and hail were our destination. Out here the land is amazingly green, and the crops not smashed down by hail grow tall. Freshly-carved wooden ploughs wait by farmhouses, for their chance to carve up the wet earth.
We descended from the mountain highway by a restored pre-Colombian trail of smashed red stone, looking out over the valleys, and the ridges of tortured stone thrown up by the groan and strain of tectonic millennia. Stone of all colours could bee seen as we stared out towards Maragua crater – purple stone, blue stone, red stone, white stone.
Far down below and we followed a river swollen with recent storms as it wound through eucalyptus groves filled with raucous parrots. Pungent smoke wisped up from farmhouses in defiance of the pillar of cloud that loomed over the cordillera, eventually covering the sky. We quickened our pace as thunder broke overhead, but no rain fell by us.
We pitched our tent in a lovely meadow, by a desolate church and the parched hulks of old trees. We filled our bottles with brown water and watched the sun creep under the cloud cover to illuminate the cliffs we had earlier descended. In the evening we cooked by moonlight and the clouds gave way before the stars.
The second day was immense, as we crossed the river and ascended into the crater, through the many coloured strata of the mountains. The crater was formed by erosion, and was once underwater; tiny marine shells are still dug up here and sold by the local urchins. The shallow walls of the crater form and endless series of arches-within-arches, a prehistoric procession of monumental snails. At the centre of the crater is a tiny village of church and houses, divided up by barren arroyos of smooth purple and crimson earth. It is a beautiful place, all long grasses and whispering crops and distant lonely cows.
The hike up and over the crater was breathless and deceptively long. Up high the breeze picked up and followed us along paths in the sides of mountains, into more precipitous country of fertile valleys and jagged peaks and tiny houses built as punctuation to the magnificence of the landscape.
We came eventually to our destination, a sloping rock face criss-crossed by giant footprints sunk into ancient, solidified mud. Millions of years ago dinosaurs had crossed this field, before it had been crookedly thrust up high into the mountains. The tracks appeared and disappeared and stumbled over the top of one another and invited speculation about the forgotten narrative behind them. Though they are eroded and worn they are also majestic and awe-inspiring, and demanded that we stop to appreciate them, and siesta in their presence.
The afternoon as long as the morning, plunging into valleys where the lamentations of a solitary donkey echoed off the stony faces, and where men played Sunday soccer, the enormity of the mountain vistas around them momentarily forgotten. I always wonder how much these people enjoy their setting, but judging by the locations of the standing stones, the tiny cemeteries and the coarse stone houses here, the people are very very aware of and amazed by the beauty of their lands.
As the sun sunk low we descended smooth slopes of bright red gravel and luminescent shrubs, arriving on the muddy banks of the toxic river that flows out of Potosi. in the vast riverbed there was no potable water and nowhere to pitch a tent. We had come to investigate some thermal baths built around natural hot springs flowing out of one of the mountains here, but the baths had been obfuscated by a landslide that was rumoured to have been triggered by a territory dispute settled with the hard logic of dynamite and detonations.
We filled out bottle with hot water and found a tiny clearing behind the adobe wall of an unoccupied house. In our tiny tent we slept a jumble of awkward limbs and angles.
Our final day was the shortest, one more ascent out of the red earth and back into the fertile valleys, the peaks overhead wreathed in morning cloud, the rest of the sky radiant. Our destination was a beautiful one-road village of dozing dogs and shaggy donkeys and overgrown flower thickets. We passed along the road and its adobe houses, and settled by a bend in the road to assemble a formidable breakfast of leftovers that had soon drawn every hungry school child away from their Monday morning activities. They clustered at a safe distance and only passed us by at a nervous run. Some crept close enough to share fruit with us, but most could only find the courage to speak in the company of numerous cronies and with comforting fingers firmly wedged in mouths.
We left the town in an open-topped truck crammed with people and their wares, bound for Sucre. The sun and the dust coated us and my foot screamed for freedom from the child and the bindle wedged upon it. From early on in the trip we could see Sucre away across the ridges, but it took hours to ascend and descent and ascend and descend and finally shudder into town, exhausted and bruised and burnt but content with having found a way out into the magnificence of the countryside.
It’s very hard to draw a defining line between work and play in Bolivia. There is none of the stoic solemnity surrounding work that seems to be the norm in the west. Most of the time the attitude towards work is frustratingly casual, while leisure is taken very, very seriously. Nothing is observed as fastidiously as the long lunch break, or the long night out.
Given the difficulties we gringos face in distinguishing work from play, it is very helpful to find one of Bolivia’s largest festivals, celebrated in and around Tarabuco, a town not far from Sucre, is named Pujllay, or ‘Play’ in Quechua.
Confusing matters slightly was the fact that I was sort of attending Pujllay in a work capacity. Although Condortrekkers is still not quite legally registered, we its representatives found ourselves taking a group of backpackers along to the festivities. This was never meant to constitute more than sharing transport, but somehow things got mixed up, and we ended up more or less as guides for the weekend.
The weekend was scorchingly hot, and the first to really feel the heat was the truck that was to take us to Tarabuco, which ran out of drive on a hill, and could go no further. We were forced to find another ride, and ended up perched in the back of a much larger truck, watching the green valleys roll by.
Tarabuco was its usual tranquil self on Saturday; the real festivities started out in the countryside in the tiny pueblos, and would only converge on the town on the following morning. We had a contact in the nearby pueblo of Pisily, and so with our group – who had turned out to be a rather excellent mix of open-minded and enthusiastic travellers – we hiked out of Tarabuco and up a long valley of flocks and fields. On the occasions when I make it out into the countryside I am always struck by its simple loveliness; the tiny stands of crops (who knew that potatoes grew such pretty purple flowers?), the lonely, elderly shepherds, the adobe houses and the steep hills and valleys.
On our route we passed a couple of other groups already returning, and when eventually we reached Pisily the sun was casting long sideways planes of gold across the land, and the people were resting after the festivities. Still, before the sun went down and the multitude of stars and satellites took to the sky, there was time to share the best meal of the weekend, and some very local firewater, as well as to see the men dance and play their hoarse pipes and flutes.
The Tarabuco region is famous for its handicrafts, and for this weekend the men were assembled in their finest gear. Leather hats styled upon the helmets of the conquistadores, and wide ponchos of deep red and black. When they danced they danced in thick-soled wooden shoes and enormous, clamouring spurs.
Despite our untimely arrival we were met with great warmth by the tiny pueblo. We numbered twelve and this was a huge number to make space for, and yet the only hesitation was that of the shy children, who hid among mothers’ skirts and could barely find a word to say to us.
We trekked back in the dark, the night cool on faces tinged poncho-red by sun and moonshine. All of Tarabuco turned out for a concert that evening, but few of us saw this through to the end. We were no match for the seriousness of local merrymaking.
Sunday was fiercely hot, and before our patio breakfast was done skin was burning and the Australians amongst us were scampering for sunscreen, hats and scarves. Overnight Tarabuco had transformed, with every street crammed with stalls selling handicrafts or snacks.
As we left the hostel a helicopter buzzed overhead, lowering itself over the fairground. Word surged through the streets that Evo had come, and instantly there were running, shouting forms everywhere as the whole town turned out to greet their president. Sucre may be anti-Evo, but this province as whole is pro-Evo, and this is particularly true in indigenous Tarabuco. By the time we reached the fairground people were already leaving, their heads hung low; it wasn’t their hero Evo, it was only the vice-president Alvaro Linares, a former guerilla turned intellectual. His motorcade stormed through the narrow streets and was well-greeted, but the momentary fervour aroused by the possibility of Evo had dissipated.
With Linares seated on a pavilion in the main plaza, the dances and processions and music began. They would continue almost unceasingly for the rest of the day.
Pujllay commemorates a battle during the struggle for independence, in which Tarabuco essentially won its freedom by beating back a Spanish contingent. Every year on the main fairground a giant Pukhara (a tall, decorated scaffold of wood) is erected, and offerings of fruit, cheese, beer, jars of olives, bottles of mayonnaise, and other wares are hung from this. At the top of the Pukhara the fresh carcass of a cow presides over the events, while down below the dance troops circle and cavort, until eventually some men climb the Pukhara to collect and distribute all its bounty to the waiting throngs below.
By the early afternoon the fairground was filled with people. Clouds of dust were kicked up by the shuffling, stomping feet of the indefatigable dancers, and thin skeins of bluish smoke drifted about the hundreds of hotplates and barbeques. The drink of choice during Pujllay is chicha, a local brew made of fermented corn and almost anything else. Traditionally the process is started by chewing the corn, though this is less common today. Under tents great buckets, barrels and vats of chicha were opened, and communal cups were dipped and passed, every drinker offering a brief libation to Pachamama, or mother earth, before throwing back the draughts that tasted of peach or orange or corn or foot.
We passed the entire day under the Pukhara, passing cups of chicha and chasing the shade. The dance groups continued relentlessly, the media descended upon the vice-president, and when he left he was farewelled warmly, the disappointment of his arrival forgotten. This was no doubt aided by the huge volumes of chicha consumed. As the day progressed the number of people stumbling into the river beds and arroyos to vent bursting bladders increased, as did the number of scuffles, the number of amorous intertwinings, the number of comatose forms lying in the dust, and the number of locals eager to talk to gringos, and to share yet more chicha with them.
As shade re-took the field men scrambled up and onto the Pukhara, and soon the grounds were flooded with celebratory breads and sausages and cheese and fruit and bottle of beer and mayonnaise. The cow remained nobly mounted at the top of the tower, and was still there when we left, cramming ourselves into a mini-bus, which surged into the twilight and towards Sucre, racing and dodging the other speeding buses, vans and trucks filled with dozy revellers. There is nothing as exhausting as play in Bolivia, and I would welcome the return of the week, of the working days, so I could get some rest before the next weekend bout of play.
After inert months in the cities, finally the chance came to get out and into the campo, the countryside that makes up so much of Bolivia, where its icons live.
Yamparaez, a town among the parched hills, all terracotta roofs and one narrow street, was our starting point. Five of us set off up the hill, out under the gate, over the water pipe, and into the ridges spanning away from the town and into the farms. The wet season had left the countryside comparatively green, but it is still a dry world, flattened beneath the ambivalent sun.
We had come to find condors, to camp below their nests, to find trails and points of interest for future hikes. On the crown of this first long ridge birds of prey were gathering, casting sentinel eyes out of the adobe huts, the men and oxen working the fields below. One by one they would launch, gliding over us, catching the updraft, soaring into the sun, spiralling down the meet and report in the fields. First came the eagles, brown feathers and fanned tails. Then came larger, darker vultures. Then came the condor, flying low, casting ancient eyes over us, its naked head, thick neck, long body and wide wings of black and white.
Afterwards, down into the humps of shade-less plains, and lunch in the narrow shadow of an empty school. The countryside empties on the weekends. The odd man sprawled out under a bush, occasional shepherds with flocks of mixed animals, children shy on the crests of hills or in doorways, offering a timid wave, fingers in mouth.
Through a village where colours intensify. The blue of the sky, the deep green of succulents, the red of earth and everything built of earth. Alien plants towering out of adobe walls and into the clouds.
In the afternoon into wilder country, away from the sparse vegetation of the farms. Among the solitary mud brick houses that perch on spurs of land, nervous goats cowering away from us by their pens. Gradually the spurs and ridges drop away into canyons where birds wheel. A long and winding descent down towards the cliffs and their condor nests.
In the bottom of the canyon a stream slowly wears away at the rock, turning it smooth, sinking further into the ground. Willows overhang and remote swimming holes tempt. We rise from the shade of the river as shadows lengthen and the sun casts its sideways golden rays to illuminate the flowers. We pitch tents on stony ground facing the high cliffs, where the condors nest in clefts stained by their droppings. The locals call the place Condor Khakha (Caca) as the easiest form of reference.
The sinking light, the revelation of sunburnt legs and necks, the spluttering gas stoves and the eating away of the food to lighten our loads for the second day. The moon sinking early below the ranges to give the sky to the magnificent band of stars, and unknown constellations. A firefly pulses in the grass. A cramped tent.
The following day the reversal of the process, tents disappearing into bags and pans becoming clean again. The pack feeling no lighter and returning to bruise my hips. Coca leaves doled out, and a bitter ball of green sludge forming in the side of mouth, pasting my gums.
On into spectacular country, steep ridges and improbably descents. Lonely trees looking our over grand panoramas and the occasional bird silhouette against the sky and the sun. The second day full of unknown paths and asking indigenous ladies and their hats and their toothlessness for the best way forward, upward and downward. We follow the narrowest paths between farms, paths traversed by cows that feed on steep slopes, and donkeys that bray their solitude.
Every plant has its spines and thorns. The labyrinthine arms of tall cacti greet us at the base of our steepest descent. And then a dry river bed full of yellow flowers and broken stone.
A long ascent brought us onto another high ridge and the realisation that there were many more ridges, more descents and ascents, between us and our ideal final destination. A new route was improvised, a slog through difficult terrain and narrow paths of sliding rock. The old paths criss-crossing the land like the scratches criss-crossing my legs from the harsh plants that line the paths criss-crossing the land.
Finally and eventually up into more open farmland, pressed against the sky. Growing gloom back over the cordillera we had come from. Lunch among pigs and pastures, introduced eucalypts standing tall over the land they have claimed. The long afternoon pursuit of a broader path that would feed into broader roads that would snake through the land, descend and ascend and bring us finally to flat landscape similar to our starting point, and thus to a road where vehicles could be flagged down to return us to the city
An open-topped truck crammed with market produce and huddled, drowsy people. Old men sucking on coca and slurring words and dribble through the side of their mouths. The beautiful, winding way back through the countryside, the solidarity of everyone in the back of a truck. The cooling wind in my hair.
Re-entering the city and the truck is pelted with water balloons. Return to the rudeness and arrogance of Sucre, and its beauty in the late afternoon, and the church on the corner of my street, and my patio and apartment, and to the bumping into friends every time you go out.
The moment I moved into my apartment, with its high walls and its cool stone, I found myself very content, and very ready to get to grips with Bolivia. The halfway point of my time was fast approaching; a disturbing fact given how much there still is to be done here.
I had come to Sucre to work with Condortrekkers, a non-profit tourist agency that uses all of its profits to fund other social work programs in the city. It is a simple idea but with brilliant possibilities. The local guides are paid but the bulk of the work is done by volunteers, which keeps costs down and ensures the organisation is self-sustaining.
When I arrived Randall, the director of Condortrekkers, was stuck deep in the convolutions of Bolivian bureaucracy, awaiting the official registration of the organisation. The laziness and recalcitrance of the Sucre officials is infuriating. Randall was told, for instance, that he could operate as a non-profit organisation, but he couldn’t advertise this fact, as it would place him at an unfair advantage over the other tourist agencies that keep the profits for themselves (and most of whom have friends in high and official places).
There are plenty of volunteers eager to work with Condortrekkers, but until the organisation is up and running, it is mostly just Randall and I. My job will be to research and write promotional material and information for the tours. I’ll also be going on exploratory treks as we try to finalise the actual routes of the various treks. It is a great job to have. Be prepared for a barrage of re-hashed snippets of information to appear on this blog…
The only problem is that I only have a tourist visa, which expires and requires renewal every thirty days, and which will require me to leave the country briefly in February to start the process over again. On my paltry tourist visa I am not allowed to work, to study, or to volunteer. To upgrade to a volunteer visa would take medical checks, Interpol background checks, months of waiting, and hundreds upon hundreds of Bolivianos. And even then I wouldn’t be able to function as a tour guide.
So instead of beating my head against a bureaucratic wall, I return to a life of illegality, living beyond the mandate of my tourist visa. Three years ago I worked as a pirate English teacher in Madrid, receiving under-the-table cash for teaching civil servants. Now I find myself a pirate volunteer; a do-gooder pirate but a pirate none-the-less. There is no avoiding destiny (especially when it is an enjoyable destiny).
