05.09.2004

The green of the bush in the lower parts of the Trek. Click here to see more photos!

Morning broke and the sky was clear again. We had a good view of Pico Norte that we had already seen the night before. The night had been quite cold again, so after having had a hot breakfast we started walking down that road again. Here the road was not very busy anymore and even disappeared after a short while.
Suddenly we came to a landslide that made the way impassable for us. At first Fernando climbed up to have a look for the right way around it. In the end we dropped down to the riverbed and passed tense bushland on our way. We were still at 2900m altitude but there was already Bamboo and it was much warmer than the day before. Fernando and his mules did not have half as much trouble walking through the narrow bushes since they all were at least one head smaller than us. Just the muddy and stony ground seemed to bother them from time to time, while we could only conquer this part of the path in ducked position. Many of the branches and grasses covering the path had thorns, too, which was most unpleasant.
After walking like this for quite a while the situation finally changed a little. We were near the river and the path was even partly paved with big round stones. Besides that there were sometimes stairs made out of these big stones. All these are supposed to be remains of the Incas, who once constructed the path between Ancoma and Chusi. But those ways were not constructed for eternity and so at times we had to walk around them through the river bed. Luckily the river was not high and we could pass these places without getting wet. While descending further and further the temperatures got higher and higher and we even started sweating just by walking downhill.
But we were lucky. Our campground that night was near a village and just next to it was a waterplace where we could even have a nice shower. That was wonderfully refreshing after hiking the third day. Since we arrived in the early afternoon we even had time to have a tea sitting in the grass and to relax from the past two days. When we were just about to cook our dinner, children of the village appeared. This time they were much older than Sonja and her friends from the first village - and they did not talk?! They just came, sat down, and watched us doing whatever we did but would not say a word! After a while the boys seemed to get bored and disappeared behind the nearby houses that were not inhabited. We tried to talk with the girls but were not lucky. In general they spoke Castellano as they told us, but obviously only single words and no sentences, and most important - not with us!
When the sun slowly disappeared other lights got stronger and stronger. Glowworms we would call them, but in fact they were glowing bugs.The mountain slope across the valley was gleaming with the lights of these bugs. It was like in a fairytale... But after watching them for a while we went into our tent where we had a very warm night - a total contrast to the cold night before.