My green slime and I havejust watched the Andes slip away under the wing of a tiny plane on our way our of Huaraz and onto the Amazon.
: (
Not sure how the team feels about it, but I was sad not to have more time in the mountains, and another chance to trek... even though the Huayhuash has left me with a blistered eyeball, burnt lips and a deeply imbedded green slime situation which has given me unusual expertise on the quality of Peruvian tissues (mostly only good for one blow, no sneezing, and a touch rough on the skin which is why I have lost about half a pint of blood since coming off the hills). Not that I´m complaining. I love those mountains, and that crazy rubble-strewn town with it´s chickens in all states of life and death, and it´s flowers so incredible they look fake. Could eat the avocadoes and the potato chips as long as the elastic in my pants holds out.. and wouldn´t mind givng it all away to live Peruvian, if only it was with the blue skies and the sweet ocean of home. The mountain makes real men out of the sober ones, and they leave the Aussie suits for dead. Zac, our guide, for example, can re-stitch a sleeping bag in a 5am snow squwal, cook pancakes by 7 and then carry a girl 8 hours over a glaciar if she shouls so wish... and still look freshly ironed, cheerful and bursting with the wealth of an open heart and a healthy soul at the end of it .. evn if said girl is now demanding a hot water bird bath, three litres of soup and a game of Pigs (which it would be best for everybody if she won).
It seems like a long time since then though (and it´s certainly several kilos of shopping later for the team who seem to have been able to recover from the various trails and existential traumas of the treks well enough to manage 8-hour shopping assaults on the gold-toothed and no-toothed market folk of Huaraz) .. out 2 days in town went super-fast, jam-packed with feasts, a touch of the vomits and splats here and there, extravegant and bedazzling displays of Peruvian silver jewels on two of our more glamour-oriented chicas, and delicious sleeps in real beds. With pillows.
We are in transit now to the jungle and I can say that there is a lot more excitement and hype at this junction in our adventure than there was when the team were facing the climbing chapter of the trip. All fears behind us now (except for some questions about the size of the spiders and cockroaches we may be encountering .. and the truth about pirhanas, and whether or not Amazon mosquitoes really can rip your arm off to suck out the blood) ... Girls on Top are practically wriggling in their zip-off pants to get into the tropical heat, the sweet air and the oxgen gravy of the Amazon. I can´t wait to see them morph from broken-lipped, dry haired, fleecey layered mountain travelers into babes of the hot selva. Many delights await....
PS: With reference to my control issues, the mountain guide co-ordinator in Huaraz and I have discussed this at length and agreed, in the end, that this may just be a misinformed perspective on what it actually takes to get the job done, in the Huayhuash, without injury, evacuation or sillyness. I´m proud of myself and all the team that our Girls on Top tribe of inexperienced mountaineers made one of South America´s toughest trips without as much as a real bruise between us, and with something to laugh about at the end of almost every day.
jx