Andy Ruck

A Walk in the Apolobamba

2010-09-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

I'll improve this and send it somewhere soon. For now it's exclusive to this site! The Cordillera Apolobamba in North-Western Bolivia is an awesome area by the way, you should totally go. This is why...

You couldn't have made it up, really. Bound for the high Andes and followed onto the bus by a three-piece panpipe ensemble of the type most commonly witnessed outside the new shopping centre in Tunbridge Wells. Was it a joke, or just pure “authenticity”? Either way, nothing quite seemed real in that freezing yet crystal-clear dawn among the scattered litter, stray dogs and general commotion of El Alto, the city formed from millions of indigenous Aymara fleeing the inhospitable Altiplano (“High Plain”) and stopping abruptly upon reaching the steep cliffs and hillsides dropping away to equally choking, frenzied La Paz.

As ever, there had been several contradictory theories among the staff in the many ticket offices as to where our bus actually left from, and wildly varying predictions as to how long it would take - ranging from a mere six hours to my own deliberately pessimistic (then you're prepared for the worst) forecast of just under two weeks. One thing seemed certain: just getting to the Cordillera Apolobamba, hidden 300km North-West of La Paz and a world away from the well-trodden Cordillera Real, would be an adventure in itself, traditional-instrument-wielding campesinos and all. In an inverse simulation of the great Aymara relocation, we were heading the other way...

It would also emerge that we had unwittingly planned this departure on Día de los Indios, a day celebrating Bolivia's thirty-six indigenous minorities, which comes very shortly before the Día de la Patria (National day) and is within weeks of around thirty-seven other excuses for a good old fiesta. The first small village we reached en route was in the midst of wild celebration, as was every other, right up until the penultimate village (twelve hours into the journey), where in true Andean fashion we stopped for three hours with a predictable mechanical failure. Everyone was bedecked in Aymara flags, kids parading in blue shirts and white bowler hats, some swaying with drunkeness yet somehow managing to beat a drum in a vaguely rhythmical manner. Loud, honking trumpets accompanied the din, cymbals crashed, people shouted, and a swaying figure in a blue-and-white dragon mask raised his bottle of beer at us. The panpipe ensemble promptly disembarked and joined the throng.

At Pelechucco, where our trek would begin, the bus ground to its umpteenth yet final screeching halt, and the diverse group of traditionally-clad travellers disappeared into the night. The trekking guidebook we had brought described Pelechucco as having a “Spanish feel”, which apparently means “cobbled streets and a general air of decay” - slightly harsh to both the village and to the recent World Cup winners, we felt!

The grey dawn saw us repeatedly encircling the sleepy plaza, confused as to which general direction we would be heading these next five days and not helped by the thick mist that was unseasonably shrouding the surrounding mountains. Old men leant against walls chewing coca leaves and chatting away in Quechua. We, meanwhile, were something of a walking piece of intra-European Union diplomacy - me, my Dutch girlfriend Bree, and a tall, tousle-haired German stereotype called Mirko. Eventually we located a narrow path that fit the brief guidebook description, and were on our way, trailed by a local Alsation who quickly (and without any real reason) gained the nickname Don Juan - and who, we later found out, belonged to the friendly proprietor of the hostel we had spent the previous night in.

Semi-tropical-looking trees and then pink flowers emerged out of the mist as we followed a now-wide path upwards, willing the skies to clear. Then, inevitably when the only guidebook instruction was “after 2 ½ hours”, we came upon a junction of paths and didn't know where to go. Luckily, a passing off-duty trekking guide was on hand to show us the way for the very reasonable fee of 30 Bolivianos (about £3). Unburdened, sandal-footed and with a makeshift wooden trekking pole magically retrieved from the side of the road, he was difficult to keep up with as he raced on upwards through the clouds and rain towards the first pass of the trek, at 4,900m. He also agreed at this point to return to Pelechucco with the still-following Don Juan, who on the way up had been picking fights with llamas, who in turn proved fairly handy with a raised front hoof.

Halfway down the other side, however, the remarkable canine came padding up beside us again as we descended to a stone bridge and a wide valley of flat meadows ideal for camping. With the tent pitched and the tea beginning to boil, some more ultra-friendly off-duty guides with beaming faces (this time returning from yesterday's celebrations in nearby Illo lllo) stopped and announced they should reach Pelechucco in three hours (it had taken us six), and duly made a fresh attempt at escorting Don Juan home. Half an hour later, though, the errant hound made a second reappearance, though this time the pursuant guide appeared on the horizon then came and tied the leash better.

Happily, I stuck my head outside the tent (mainly to check that Don Juan hadn't come back again) at 2.30AM to see the whole galaxy of stars and the sharp silhouettes of pyramidal peaks all around us. Back to business as usual, then. An amphitheatre of green and rocky mountains opened up as we followed the big track round to Illo Illo, preceded by straw-roofed houses and then mist rising like scentless smoke from the valley bottom. Another dog (Don Pedro?) briefly latched onto us, but seemed reluctant to leave his village.

The further the long grind up from there went on, the more the views to the not-so-distant snowy peaks began to reach wide-screen proportions, glaciers giving way to triangular snowy pinnacles. This pattern would continue all the way up the at-times Uber-steep route to the Sunchuli pass, the highest point on the trek – 5,100m according to the sign, which stood next to a bit of MAS political sloganeering painted onto a rock. They never miss a trick, these Bolivian activists.

The campsite at the bottom of the pass was in the lee of another great peak Cuchillo I, this one a towering mass of seracs and steep glaciers tumbling down to the green valley. We were greeted this time by scurrying Vizcacha, an Andean rabbit-like creature with a long tail. The third day was a short one, and allowed us to take in these awesome surroundings. The time was filled semi-constructively by consuming the half-kilo of pancake mixture that Mirko had dutifully carried from La Paz. He also, however, dutifully managed to get the vast majority of it stuck to the pan and use up around a third of our total gas supplies in the process.

We finally set off to the sound of what was either blasts from the nearby goldmines or serac fall from Cuchillo I. Thankfully it turned out to be the former, and similar sounds would resonate throughout the day, giving the air a smoky haze as we crossed the smaller Cumbre Viscachani and descended to its eponymous village. This was a dusty, seemingly-abandoned outpost with mining equipment laying discarded outside tiny huts clearly hewn out of the same rock as the huge escarpment rising up behind. Two miners emerged, sat on a rock just beyond the village and bade us a cheery “Buenas Dias!” I meant to reply with one of the few Quechua phrases i'd learned before we left, but the mountains and pancake dough had apparently erased it from memory.

Goldmines were in fact the order of the day, as a couple of hours later we reached another one, having apparently gone the wrong way. A dog made it known that we were unwelcome there, but his owner quickly appeared dramatically atop a boulder and repeatedly reassured us “Amigo es!” (He's a friend). It turned out that this mining village was in fact perched right on the edge of a frighteningly high cliff with a loose, steep-as-hell path barely clinging to the side of the cliff. Our new amigo (the man, not his dog), however, advised us that this was a miners' path, pointed to another one and advised us to take the long way round. Taking that route, we reached the enchanting spot of Incacancha via a still-not-exactly-gentle descent, splashed in its adjacent waterfall and took in the view down a magical valley bathed in low-lying cloud, a spiky peak forming the centrepiece. Behind us, we were dwarfed again by the colossal snow-dome of Akamani.

From there it got easier, even if with the lower hills and greater choice of paths, following the ambiguous guidebook description became frustrating. After a slog in the blistering lower-altitude heat of the day up what was clearly not the right route, we emerged on a cliff-hugging Jeep track that led us to the village of Curva. Our tiredness only partly clouded the great character of this isolated outpost, occupying a lookout position on top of a prominent small hill, shabby houses surrounding its quiet central Plaza, replete with a slightly over-the-top green-painted building indicating that this tiny, sleepy place had its own Municipal Government. We had timed this penultimate day to coincide with Día de la Patria, which seemed to be an altogether quieter affair than recent Día de los Indios. As in there was nothing happening at all. Having found the hostel in nearby Lagunillas to be closed, and instead been hosted by the kindly man in the information office who let us sleep in his Scottish bothy-like building, we returned to the Plaza and were repeatedly assured that something was about to kick off. During the hour and a half we sat waiting, a speaker-set, a mattress, a wheelbarrow and a galloping horse would all appear in the Plaza, but any actual event seemed hours off, and we were too cold to hang around. I returned to our accommodation to find that a dog had urinated all over the socks i'd left out to air. And I must admit they actually smelt better than before.

All that remained on the final day was a descent, a slog in more sweltering heat to a white chapel occupying a fantastic aerie looking back to Akamani, and then a descent to Charazani's very welcome (and crowded) hot springs. In Charazani itself, the festival was in full swing, and seemed to consist mainly of drunk people swaying about in bright traditional dress, a horse race round the Plaza (maybe that one in Curva last night was just in training then, or on his way here to compete), and a “Running of the Bulls” on the sports ground behind the village – apparently they never kill the bulls here, not for humane reasons but because they're too expensive.

An anecdotal guide to climbing Cerro Tunari (5,034m) near Cochabamba, Bolivia

2010-09-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

This may end up a bit prosaic, but there's really not much other info on the 'net so thought i'd provide some and spin a bit of a yarn at the same time. It's about a mountain we climbed in Bolivia this summer. Off the beaten track for Bolivia, but an obvious choice if you happen to be based in Cochabamba. And probably worth a trip there for...

I sat, on rock, in sleeping bag, on rock, coca leaves in mouth (“no es droga!”), cliffs on one side, and on the other a Laguna whose name I couldn't make out on the poorly-photocopied map obtained from the Instituto Geografico Militar in Cochabamba. Evening light was drawing in. Need I say it was beautiful? Blind you with superlatives? Probably not. Needless to say, too, that I felt a million miles from my voluntary desk-chair in Cochabamba. There were occasional ripplings from fish in the Laguna, otherwise all was still. And cold. Really cold actually, definitely worthy of a stove and gas for keeping oneself hydrated and fed at that altitude. We, unfortunately, had always timed our visits to outdoor-type shops in Cochabamba to coincide with the three-hour lunch break, and had failed to track down any gas. It is definitely recommended that you do.

Having taken a Trufi to Quillacollo we had begun asking around on the main street where the taxi drivers gathered. The consensus seemed to be “Ah, the young'un'll do it!”, and we were pointed towards a driver who looked about fifteen, who agreed that the steep, cobbled 25km up to Tawa Cruz would indeed be “divertido” (fun). So we climbed out of Quillacollo, surprised at how quickly sheep, cows and people with firewood on their backs appeared out of the urban sprawl of the town. The stony surface persisted as we wound our way up, past Estancias like Tambo and Chaqueri. Our driver stopped in a small, breathtakingly back-to-nature village and spoke Quechua with a traditionally-clad female inhabitant. He explained that he needed to rest his hands after the 15km of violently-vibrating road surface. Fair enough. He still seemed as excited as we were to be up there.

Having been dropped off at Tawa cruz (which was indeed just a “cruz”), it was only by chance that I saw a point on the map that said, in letters that barely stood out from the black and white contour lines, “Tunari, 5034m”. Otherwise, we'd almost certainly have tried, almost certainly unsuccessfully, to climb the wrong mountain. In fact Tunari was out of sight from there, and a few kilometres (and a few hundred metres of ascent) up a dirt road pointing to the “Lagunas”. Tour buses from Cochabamba take you right up it. So we walked up thorough green hills that were awesomely high and open, but that are in some ways like a higher-altitude version of Scotland. No massive, snowy peaks like elsewhere in Bolivia, but it was grand. I was right where I wanted to be, albeit with a bit of a headache...

So the Laguna's a great place to camp, and the track ends there. To start with though, we went back in the direction we'd come from for a short while to begin the ascent. Skirting round the cliffs and steepest slopes, basically, and then a plod gently up (to the right) across dry slopes where llamas roamed. Then we took the wrong, but still possible route up. The face, right ahead of us, was severely foreshortened. It looked like a loose and dangerous rock climb, but we later learned there was a perfectly amenable path going up it. So we took the left-hand flank, which was loose and steep and involved several slightly sketchy steps up smooth slabs. We were in high spirits though when after twenty minutes or so we realised we now were on the right route, having joined the previously scary-looking path. All that remained was a scree slope.

An unbeatable view over Cochabamba from the summit, and in the other direction to Tunari's more rocky outposts, and eventually to the great snowy bulk of what could have been Illimani, all the way over by La Paz. We sheltered under an outcrop, catching our breath and shivering in the bitingly cold wind. We could make out the hill where the Jesus statue stands proud (the usual viewing point of Cochabamba), but the man himself could not quite be discerned.

It was only 400m of ascent from the Laguna, and we descended back to the tent in less than an hour. Back at the road, our worries of having to walk all the way back proved unfounded, as even on a Sunday there were loads of cars and Trufis (well, about one every five minutes) going past. I was made to count to one hundred in Spanish five times by the cute-at-first, then bloody annoying girl in the seat in front of me, who also told me that my hair was “like (that of) a rooster”. We even got down in time for part the World Cup final, which for the Dutchwoman among us was not the highlight of the day...

In summary, then...

Getting there and back: Take a Trufi to Quillacollo and ask around until you find a taxi driver willing to lay his suspension on the line. It's the road towards Independencia you're travelling on, so alternatively, ask directions to that road and hitch a lift up it in a truck, car or Trufi. We found out this was possible on the way back, as loads of passing cars were visible (even on a Sunday) from the walk down and we got in the first Trufi that passed. Either way, to start Tunari, get out just before Tawa Cruz (just a big cross and a road junction) and take the wide track towards the Lagunas (and signposted as such, I think).

The Route: From just before Tawa Cruz, follow the signposted Jeep track all the way up, past several Lagunas, until it ends at the last one, below the cliffs that lead up to Tunari. There's a junction at one point where another track goes to the left. Don't take that. From the Laguna, go back up the track a bit, then turn right and head up the gentle slopes. Tunari will come into view in front. Take the path right up the face to the summit ridge and follow that to the top.

Guides: With these great instructions, it's really not necessary, but if you're in a big enough group, it might be as cheap as we managed to do it. I can't remember the names of the agencies in Cochabamba, but they are there, and they're all in the Centro somewhere. They'll also get you up and down in a single day, although we preferred to take our time.

Equipment: Trekking stuff. Ice axe and crampons definitely unnecessary when we did it, but we later saw a dusting of snow on the peak from Cochabamba.

Accomodation: Take a tent or bivvy bag. And, very advisably, a stove and gas.

Maps: From the Instituto Geografico Militar in, Cochabamba, May be worth paying extra for a colour photocopy (think that's possible) which would make it more clear. But whichever option you take, Cerro Tunari is marked on there if you look closely...

Out of Routine

2010-07-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

Getting into a routine here and starting to feel that Cochabamba is, if not home, then at least “base” for a while. It doesn´t seem strange any more. I walk back to the house after (unpaid) work, striding out as I would back home, listening to the same tunes, no longer aware of my wildly “different” surroundings. Striding at least five times faster than your average unhurried Bolivan, that is. And that´s great. It´s just a man of my 6 ft 4 inches can´t walk that slowly without getting deep vein thrombosis.

Along Avenida America there´s always that same evening air, sharp and invigorating and always sunny. There´s always that bit where a small flight of steps are cut into the concrete and which I always nearly fall down. I always pass that same collection of tin-roofed eateries on Plaza Tarija decorated in Coca-Cola red. Along the loud, busy, horn-honking main roads where the bridge crosses the narrow, mostly dried-up, litter-filled river, such a characteristic of developing-world cities. At that point views always open up to the verdant, rounded 4,000m hills, any photo of which is always criss-crossed with power lines and advertising boards in the foreground. Another roundabout, and under a flyover, decorated with a silhouette image of Cristo de la Concórdia. Then the man himself appears, stand proud and arrogant and dazzling white atop his dry, scrubby hill. He´s bigger than the one in Río, by the way.

Always a sign outside a shop owned by “Dña Hilda” (could she really not fit in that one extra letter?). Then off the main road, a playpark with a fountain in the middle, which every time I think how unusual that is in the so-called Third World. Number 260 Trufis (minibuses) buzz past and Coca-Cola sings continue to appear alongside blue ones for Taquiña beer, gracing nearly every corner shop, on nearly every corner. Those psychedelic, red-blue-and-white ´70s Dodge buses splutter on past too...

***

Routines have their good points. But I nonetheless jumped at the chance of a trip with CEDESOL to Mocharéti, in the far South-East of Bolivia, where forty solar cookers needed demonstrating to the “campesinos” (country folk). The director did that. My fellow volunteer and I just carried the bloody things.

Great as ever to see some new places.... That feeling came right from the start as we wound our way out of Cochabamba, through those mountains again, this time shimmering in a purple haze (the mountains, not me) then becoming enshrouded in a bank of fog as we descended to the other side. The small towns looked bleak and isolated, like scenes from a faded black-and-white movie rolling slowly past. The twinkling lights around the toll booths made them seem like atmospheric outposts in a little-traveled land.

Opera-like music on the radio gradually infiltrated my dream about 6AM and I awoke somewhere fairly far South of Santa Cruz, as an atmospheric dawn gathered over an enchanting land of tree-covered mountains. Stopped and took photos of the cloud enshrouding the hills in the pre-dawn glow. Cows ambled across the road a bit later. They have right of way here.

Camiri nestled right among the biggest of the vividly-green hills, delightful cobbled streets climbing part-way up them. Fruit trees. A small university. People SWEEPING THE STREETS. Jesus, this place must be affluent. All seemed peaceful, watched over by those verdant escarpments. It WAS Sunday morning.

To one side the mountains remained but to the other stretched the Gran Chaco, which Bolivia once fought a war over with Paraguay. They lost. The soldiers from the Altiplano weren´t used to the heat. Neither was I.

In Boyuibe the dusty streets were almost empty. Bread and stuff, and coffee, for breakfast. A cute kid sat pulverising a piece of pineapple in his mouth, then took it out and offered the mushy mess to me. A local woman talked to us about local politics, and broke a chicken´s neck under a broom handle just in the run of conversation. Its deathly squawking, to her annoyance, put an end to the conversation. The scene was presided over by two green parrots on a gently-swinging perch.

Mocharéti, like all these places it seems, has a tidy central Plaza, this one surrounded by “Mimosa” trees, and there's no economy of space. They've got the whole Chaco to expand into should they wish, so there are no high buildings, and always big gaps between houses. And wide, dusty streets (it's difficult to describe most rural South American towns without saying “wide dusty streets”). It's like a less touristy version of Buena Vista, from the last blog entry. There's a church on a hill overlooking the whole scene, too...

“Muy triste la vida en el chaco, poco agua, pero así es la vida...”, one woman said as she gave a rousing speech to just me and the other volunteer, at the end of the demonstration day. She actually said “así es la vida”. I almost handed her a flyer. Water (agua) is a different problem, of course. "Triste" means sad by the way, "poco" means not much. But all seemed enthusiastic about their new solar cooking possibilities. More on all that shite still to come...

For now i'm off to (hopefully) climb a mountain...

x

Asunción, and on and on...

2010-06-23T19:17:00.000-07:00

The cheapest and quickest way from Buenos Aires up into Bolivia is through Asunción in Paraguay, which isn't exactly top on most people's South American traveling agenda. Bree put it best in an email, when I was in Patagonia and she was at Iguazu Falls. “Everyone says it's not very nice, but most of them have never been there, mostly because they've heard it's not very nice”. Do we have, then, a vicious circle that keeps travelers out of Asunción?

Well, actually it's not very nice.

Only joking. That's a bit unfair. From a purely touristic perspective there isn't that much to see, at least on the surface, which is all we had time to scratch. There are big colonial buildings, there are museums (well there's at least one), there are loads of shops (in fact there's a surprising prevalence of Western-style multi-storey supermarkets), there's a big screen showing world cup matches as there was in Buenos Aires. But none of them are as impressive as the ones in, say, La Paz or Lima, so you can see why people don't make any huge effort to come here.

Except, that is, for my good friend Carson, the star of “Así es la Vida”, who once spent a year here. And from what I saw i'd go with what he said about it seeming like “one big village”. The city centre seems like a non-capital city in, say, Argentina. But it does have the size of a capital city. And there are a few things to see. Down at the mile-wide Río Paraguay, boats cross to the other side and also to Concepción.. There was a small but loud protest going on outside one of the government ministries. A statue of Simon Bolivar proclaims him “el Libertador” of a whole load of countries, but not this one. He probably heard it wasn't very nice.

***

We reached Santa Cruz in Bolivia via a 24-hour, ultra hot-and-sticky bus ride through the Gran Chaco, the huge area of arid bush, sand and scrubland that Bolivia and Paraguay once fought a war over in the erroneous belief that there was oil underneath it.

We stopped for just a night and a morning in Santa Cruz, which is actually the biggest city in Bolivia, but in the same way that Asunción didn't feel like a capital, doesn't really feel like it. A couple of hours outside of there, though, via a bus ride livened by a guy with a stereo blasting out MC Hammer tunes to everyone on board, was Buena Vista, which even down to its name felt like it wasn't quite real. In a good way, that is.

Restaurants and Artesana shops and an old Jesuit Church surround a lively Central Plaza, decorated by palm trees. The whole place is surrounded by tropical plantation country and the Parque National Amboro. Apart from a half-day trek into said plantation country, we were content to sit around and soak up the atmosphere of the place. How happy and content everyone seemed, how life just seemed to drift on at such a leisurely pace. This was real middle class Bolivia actually, and I didn't think such a thing existed. A shame, though, that most of the young people sitting round idling away the evenings in the Plaza, would probably be moving to Santa Cruz, or further afield, in search of work in the not-too-distant future.

“But they seem so much happier here than people in cities. How could we convince them to stay?”
“We could show them pictures of Aberdeen?”

***

Seven hours in taxis and “colectívos” took us from there to Cochabamba, a journey in which I had a close run-in with a scorpion in the back of a taxi, which I dealt with in a manner that would have been heroic if i'd actually known it was a scorpion.

In Cochabamba now, of which more to follow. About to do a wee internship with these guys for a month and a bit.

And in icy Argentine they say “now we've seen it all”...

2010-06-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

This is where the blog entries become totally off-the-cuff by the way. But this South American jaunt is off to a flying start...

That title is in fact a lyric by a band called Islands, and i'm not sure what it refers to, but in the previous line “a hot rain made of magma melts Alaska”, so probably to more pressing matters than a gringo (I didn't think they said that down there but there was a cafe in Trelew called “Gringos”) like me arriving in town. In terms of us, they have indeed seen it all. Oh and it wasn't all that icy. But it was certainly out of season. And it was Southern Argentina. The Northern bit of Patagonia.

I'd decided to head down there on a brief road trip before heading North again. I kept it very brief because the restlessness of lonesome travel (I didn't meet a single other traveller) was stronger than ever this time. Whenever I travel on my own i'm like the travelling equivalent of the Duracell bunny – that is to say, I don't stop until my batteries fully run out - and my aim once I got to Trelew was always getting back North and meeting up with Bree again. The other reason was the cost of everything. Way more pricey than I remember it being three years ago, although it must be cheaper the further North and the more Bolivian things get. But let's just say my waterproof Lifeventure moneybelt was feeling the affects. I even had to pass up the opportunity of a daytrip around Peninsula Valdes, just off Puerto Madryn. That wasn't the main point of the trip, and a proper trip, in the right season, to Southern Patagonia is certainly on the lifetime “to do” list.

The main point of this wee excursion was, in fact, to visit the old Welsh colony around the towns/villages of Gaiman and Dolavon. For a Welsh person to take a 22-hour bus ride either way to do this is maybe understandable, for a non-Welsh person it was probably a bit silly. But i'd read a lot about it, and do I need a better reason to go somewhere than that?

The Welsh colonisation of the Chubut valley is one of those random things that's so random that now loads of people know about it. Like the capital of Outer Mongolia being Ulan Bator, and like Kermit the Frog being called Gustavo in Spanish (ok maybe you didn't know that one?). 153 of them arrived in Puerto Madryn aboard the ship “Mimosa”, with a view to preserving their language and culture in the face of encroaching English influence back home, They'd tried this before, when a Welsh contingent had emigrated to the US, but were assimilated without trace into mainstream American culture. With an organised, well-led colony who all lived next to each other, they reasoned, this time the venture would be far more successful.

And going by the plethora of quaint tea rooms offering “Te Gales” (Welsh tea) with names like “Ty Gwyn” and “Caerdydd” (Had the owners ever been to Cardiff?!), it was. Although a book I read called “The Last of the Celts” claimed that the whole Welsh thing was just a bit inauthentic and touristy. That is to say, the language is in decline, but it is still spoken. The man in the museum, housed in the old railway station building, said that there are still a few who speak it. But only a few. He himself was half Welsh and spoke “un poco de Gales”. He also went on to speak about Bolivian immigrants who in the last twenty years have moved here and bought land, and about illegal sweatshops in Buenos Aires where Bolivian immigrants also work. I can't remember how we got onto that. My Spanish is still frustratingly bad, but I was able on this occasion to say “si, si” and “es interessante” at the right moments.

The bus from Trelew took a roundabout route up the valley to Gaiman, past fields lined with poplar trees and separated by the original irrigation ditches dug by the Welsh to separate their “Chacras” (farms). The brown, ploughed fields somehow seemed bursting with life in the early morning (it doesn't get light 'til about 9 here) winter sun, and wide, tree-lined, sun-dappled, unpaved avenues led between the trees. Gaiman is a collection of wide, dusty, grid-patterned streets that reminds me of other small Argentinian towns i've been to. On this winter Sunday, pretty much everything was closed, and the town slowly, and barely, cranked into life as I wandered round looking at the “Primera Casa de Gaiman”, and several other buildings that, it must be said, wouldn't look out of place in the Welsh hills.

If Gaiman was “sleepy” then Dolavon was in hibernation. It was the quietest town of it's size i'd ever seen. Just occasionally, a retro-looking car would amble through its wide avenues, between the flat-roofed houses and past the circle of benches forming a miniature, leafy plaza. To say the least it was “off the beaten track” - of life, not just of tourism. And there didn't really seem anything Welsh about it other than the name.

But the thing about these non-touristy places is, well, unless you've prearranged something, like some volunteering, WWOOFing or couchsurfing, once you get there, there's not all that much to do. It reminded me of when I hitch-hiked to Kirkenes, on the border between Norway and Russia. I was attracted to it by its reputation as a lonely, rainswept outpost. I got there and found that it was, well, a lonely rainswept outpost. It had little to offer the passing traveller, and I hitched straight back out of there.

So again, that was kind of it. I'd seen it. I'd been there, and it was actually really nice (great travel writing turn of phrase, that). Job done. I went to Rawson (more like “rrowsonn”, in local pronunciation) and Playa Union the next day and felt even more that way. Actually I felt like the equivalent of a backpacker in the UK arriving in, say, Bognor Regis in the middle of winter. That said, there were seals wallowing in the muddy waters of the bay and amongst the rusting orange and yellow fishing boats in Puerto Rawson. We reached the port on the bus through wide, unpaved streets of flat-roofed, bare-red-brick hovels. Wastelands of scrub and litter stretched to the sides. All was desolate and closed down for the winter. I breathed in the sea air, then took a bus back to Rawson, then to Trelew, then to Puerto Madryn, then to Buenos Aires....

The Best Intro

2010-06-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

Shortly preceding their lovely review of "Asi es la Vida", those crazy cats at Adventure Travel magazine recently included this "wacky" selection of extracts from the book, on their website. It's probably the best way to get a feel for what the book's all about, if (God forbid) you haven't bought it yet.

I should remind all that the best way is to order it from your local Waterstones or Smiths (then they'll order more in), but it is available directly from Pegasus Publishers, or from Amazon, amongst other places...

Humble beginnings and departures anew...

2010-06-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are at last. You'll notice that the first post on here dates back to February. Full of good intentions when the book first came out, that was when In started working on this blog/website, then it sort of got lost in a few months of working hard(ish), playing hard and not having time for much in between. So, two days before leaving these shores again for a whole new South American adventure, here, finally, is my initial humble attempt at it. The blog entries aren't really meant to be in order, this Blogspot lark is just the easiest way to get bits of writing on the 'net!

Recent developments with "Asi es la Vida" include a positive review in Adventure Travel magazine. "Portrays the continent and its people superbly... Highly recommended". Awww thanks guys!

So yeah, i've also been some interesting places in Scotland recently, which hopefully i'll share with you soon. And well, i'm flying to Argentina in 2 days armed with warm clothing and a copy of Chatwin's "In Patagonia", so I might scribble the odd thing about that too...

From mountaineer to “well-rounded-individual” via the frozen North: My ERASMUS experience in Tromsø, Norway

2010-06-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

I wrote this years ago for a competition and didn't win. I don't think I focused on the ACADEMIC side of it enough, y'know? I did, however, finally find a home for it in late 2008 in the form of the now-defunct Aberdeen publication "The Open Mind".

“There has existed a settlement here in Tromsø since the end of the last ice age (some would argue we’re still in it!), although the first church, called ‘St Mary’s close to the Pagans’, did not appear until 1252. The city is situated on an island 10km long by 3km wide, and is now home to over 100 different nationalities, due in part to oil and fishing, but perhaps mainly due to the University, which I have had the pleasure of studying at since……..”

That was my job in summer 2006. Taking tourists on a whistle-stop tour of the North-Norwegian city of Tromsø and trying to fit a summary of the whole improbable experience into approximately one hour and 45 minutes. Tourists would arrive every day on the Norwegian Hurtigruten (coastal steamer), be herded en masse onto a tour bus and proceed to “do” the city via a couple of photo stops and a “knowledgeable local guide” from Brighton, England reeling off a myriad of instantly forgettable facts.

Perhaps the very antithesis of this inauthentic, “it’s-Wednesday-so-this-must-be-Norway” experience, is a year spent on ERASMUS. “Yeah yeah”, I shrugged as I read about it being a valuable addition to one’s CV, enhancing one’s life experience and turning one into a more well-rounded individual through experiencing at length a culture other than one’s own and all that cliché stuff.

I was in fact driven to Tromsø by the (to most) bizarre and esoteric sport of winter climbing, and a friendly yet secretly fierce rivalry with my friends and fellow participants in said esoteric sport. It all began with an e-mail entitled “Come and study anthropology in Norway” and a prompt reply saying something along the lines of “Yeah okay”. “Wow”, I thought, “Norway is the new ice-climbers paradise!”, many British climbers having been lured there in recent winters by increasingly mild temperatures in Scotland (and by 1p Ryanair flights). “I’ll be able to climb icefalls 2 minutes from the road, every day! And when I come back I’ll be way better than all my friends!”.

That, in all honesty, was my sole reason for opting to study for a semester in Tromsø, and then for extending my stay to a year when I realised the winter didn’t really kick in until the second semester. The well-thought-out paragraph I wrote on the application form about it being a “valuable cultural experience, especially for the aspiring anthropologist” was, well, a bit of artistic license. But here’s the shocking thing. The cliché exists for a reason. My year in Tromsø turned out to be far, far more than just climbing.

All ERASMUS students are very often asked “what did you think about leaving behind your normal life, your friends, your home university?” and so on. Think? I didn’t much. Not really. That was, at least, until I found myself having hardly slept for three days, all alone and apparently having passed a point of no return. The year had begun in my typical “commit to ridiculous idea first, think later” manner, with me deciding to travel BY BUS from my home town of Brighton to the far North of Norway. And no, not via the Newcastle-Bergen ferry. Via France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Then the entire length of Norway. This decision had been made by vague hippie-ish sentiments about the environment and how planes aren’t good for it, and by a desire to “get some idea of where I’m going”. I got that all right. Four days, sitting there, all alone, sleep deprived and thinking a lot by now. “What the hell have I done?!”. This place was just so inconceivably far North, so mind-bogglingly far from anywhere. There was no way I could just nip home if I got homesick. What if I had no friends? What if I couldn’t stand the place? What, worst of all, if there was no-one to climb with?!

Tromsø is a place of extremes. I think I can safely say I will never, EVER complain about the British climate again, customary or otherwise. Lying 400km above the Arctic Circle it is well within the much-romanticized “land of the midnight sun”, my year there beginning and ending with 24-hour daylight. In the autumn, however, the receding daylight was alarmingly noticeable on an almost daily basis (there was also a record 57 days of rain during this period), until from the 21st November the sun retreated below the horizon, not to return again until 21st January. This period was livened up at times by the jaw-dropping overhead displays of Northern lights – to which any long-time resident of the city responds with a very brief upward glance and vague grunt of approval.

The most extreme time, however, was perhaps mid-January, when in fact the snow had melted temporarily and turned to ice, thus rendering Tromsø the world’s biggest skating rink for at least 2 weeks. Then it got far colder, but still didn’t snow, and temperatures dropped to about –30 with the aid of a vicious and bitingly cold wind that knocked you off your feet if the sheet ice didn’t do so first.

The late winter and early spring made it all worthwhile, though. Almost every day we enjoyed cold yet clear and sunny weather with stunning panoramas over a vast, mountainous winter wonderland in every direction. Ski-ing to University was the norm. And at night the aurora borealis continued to dance overhead, wavering from green to yellow, red to pink…..

Despite these climatic extremes a surprisingly large and lively town has existed there for some time. It has in fact earned the nickname “the Paris of the North” due to the sophistication of the inhabitants and chicness of the women surpassing the early visitors’ expectations. Tromsø prides itself on (and unsurprisingly makes a lot of money from) being home to the world’s most Northerly University, brewery, protestant cathedral, catholic cathedral, Burger King and…. I could go on. It was also the capital of Norway for 5 weeks during World War 2 and is twinned with 10 towns including Zagreb in Croatia and Quatzaltenango in Guatemala. But that’s me slipping back into “tour guide” mode again….

I have heard rumours about ERASMUS communities having their own social dynamics, being their own entity that rarely mixes with the locals (spot the social scientist) across the continent. And believe it or not, even way up there in the world’s most Northerly University, such a community existed. It was at times more likely to hear Spanish spoken than Norwegian, places as diverse as Japan, Uganda and Alaska were represented, and a part of seemingly every conversation was “What is (insert relevant topic) like in (insert relevant country)”, leading me to think “What did I ever used to talk about back home?”. It was like an ongoing United Nations Summit, only with more home-made wine.

Amazing though this “Europeanizing” experience was, it was actually a challenge sometimes to meet Norwegians, and even more of a challenge to learn their language, especially with every single person speaking immaculate English. But slowly, frustratingly, and through countless mistakes - such as getting the words for “hours” and “years” mixed up, as in “I’m just going into town, I’ll only be a year or two” – it came, aided by my guiding job, my dissertation research at Indigenous peoples’ festivals, and several hitch-hiking trips around the neighbouring islands and the vast, isolated North-Norwegian interior.

During the year I would find myself helping a Norwegian farming family herd their 500-strong flock of sheep down from the surrounding mountains; wildly dancing at 8 o’clock in the morning with a crowd of severely inebriated native Saami people (all in the name of “anthropology”); paddling a canoe along the Russian border at midnight after 1,000km of hitch-hiking; and mingling with the crowds in the High Street at Tromsø’s annual reindeer race.

And yes, I did lots of ice climbing. “But that”, I found myself saying to my friend at the end of the year - “that’s just climbing really”. Seriously, believe the hype. Believe the “valuable cultural experience”, “well-rounded-individual” bullshit. ERASMUS is great. Go do it.

Modernity, Spirituality and Passive Solar Housing

2010-06-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have asked me what exactly I was doing in Ladakh, in the Indian Himalaya, last autumn. I tried to explain it briefly and concisely, completely failed, and came up with this rambling diatribe instead...

“Ladakh forms the North-Easterly region of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, bordering Himachal Pradesh to the South, China/Tibet to the East and the Baltistan region of Pakistan to the North. It comprises around 70% of the state, which is the largest in India... There are slight variations in climate within the region – Nubra, for example, is known to be at a lower elevation and thus enjoys warmer temperatures than, say, Durbuk, where winter temperatures can drop to -45ºC. In all regions, however, winter temperatures fall lower than -20ºC, and there is very little rain, with winter snowfall being the main source of water. The region is classified as a 'high altitude desert'.

High up in the Ladakh and Zanskar mountain ranges; the mountain villages this project aims to support lie between 2,800 and 4,600 metres above sea level, and many of them are isolated for more than six months per year due to access roads and/or passes being blocked with winter snow. Almost nothing grows wild....”

So began, minus a few really boring bits, the rather dryly-worded proposal I wrote for Ladakh Ecological Development Group (LEDeG) during my two-month stint of volunteering there in Autumn 2009. A funding proposal for a new project encouraging the spread of “Passive Solar Housing” was my brief. Don't know what that is? No, neither did I. All, however, was and shall be revealed. For now, though: Yes, it really can drop to -45, yes there are villages above 4,000 metres, and yes, this place really is in India.

Despite a plentitude of signs along major highways proclaiming things like “India is one!” (imagine oppositions to the SNP erecting “Britain is one” signs along the A90...), it's really not. India is a continent, not a country. And Ladakh is really not India. In fact, as well as “the Desert in the Skies” and “land of high passes” (that's actually what it's name means in old Tibetan. The first one, admittedly, was probably the local tourist office), it is often referred to as “Little Tibet” - an admission that it has more in common with the subjugated state than with the great subcontinent to the South.

So who lives there, and more to the point, HOW? Allow me another dryly-worded indulgence:

“Despite these climatic extremes people have survived here for over a thousand years. By converting glacial and snow-fed water-courses into stone-built irrigation channels to create swathes of cultivable land, and by taming animals and creating hybrids such as the dzo (a cross between the local cow and yak ideal as a draft animal), they have created, to quote LEDeG founder Helena Norberg-Hodge, “oases in the desert”. Also, crucially, although the climate is extreme, it is also relatively stable, and the region enjoys an average of 300 sunny days per year. Now, including the relatively expansive city of Leh, Ladakh continues to support a population of approximately 270,000. Despite the relatively recent shift towards tourism as a source of income, 60% of this population - in Leh District at least - are still involved in small-scale agriculture, the main crops being wheat and barley, with a short summer growing season. Average agricultural land capacity, however, is less than half a hectare per household.”

Glacial-fed water-courses, then. But what was that other bit? “The relatively expansive city of Leh”? Oh dear. Has the evil spectre called “modernity” come a-knocking, perchance?

Year Zero
In so many places across the world, people lament the decline of local, “traditional” cultures in the face of “modernity”, “the West” or whatever we choose to call it. This would indeed be desperately sad if it was really so clear-cut, so inevitable. Anthropologists, however (of which i'm afraid I am one), are often quick to criticise “culture collapse” theories that proclaim the death of a way of life simply because the people eat instant noodles and drink Mountain Dew. Such simplified arguments tend to point to one event in the history of a region, before which everyone was good and happy, and after which everything had, in terms of culture and identity and so forth, gone tits-up. Almost like an alternative year zero, marking the birth of the Antichrist that is Western consumerism. “It wasn't like this in my day...”

In Ladakh this supposed “Year zero” was 1962, when with ruthless efficiency the Indian Government (perhaps with help from Himank, the Border Roads Agency, who still call themselves “The Mountain Tamers”) bulldozed a road to Ladakh, thus linking the region for the first time with “Down”, as the rest of India is known. Walk down the main bazaar in the capital Leh, and the culture collapse theorists seem to have a point. In fact one is hit with a barrage of images in support of their views, in the form of advertising slogans, piles of discarded plastic bottles and crisp packets being sniffed at by the malnourished legions of stray dogs, and bustling streets crammed with people trying (more subtly that elsewhere in India, i'll give them that) to fleece tourists in the hope of a quick buck. Where once there were traders bringing their exotic wares from all across Asia, now there are internet cafés, convenience stores all selling the same processed foods, and tour operators all offering the same itineraries taking in the same touristy sites. The thousands of army troops, stationed there protecting the still-fragile borders, always account for enormous queues at the temperamental ATM. Look up, and it's still a beautiful place for the first-time visitor – the ancient royal palace, wreathed in prayer flags, and the more modern, Japanese-built Shanti Stupa grace the immediate skyline – but this is a third-world city, locked into the rich-and-poor dichotomy that plagues the post and neo-colonial world. In short, it ain't no shangri-la.

Eden
In the villages, however, it is a different story. Okay, so in closer-to-home (Aberdeen) terms, a “teuchter” from Ballater might have a slightly different outlook on life to a Kappa-wearing “ned” fae Kincorth, but in Ladakh the rural-urban difference is simply astronomical. Life in the villages is worlds, nay centuries, away from an urban existence in Leh. Andrew Harvey, starry-eyed author of “A Journey in Ladakh” sometime in the 'eighties, talks of a way of life dying out, that the only way to preserve is through songs, folklore and the like. And well, twenty-five years later it's still there. To walk into the village of Photoksar, hewn into cliffs high up in the Zanskar mountain range, is to enter a timeless modern-day Eden. Herds of yaks wallowing listlessly in the crystal-clear glacial river, cultivated fields stretching as far as the eye can see, plenty of food to go round, everyone merrily helping out with the harvest... I could go on.

Popular trekking routes in South America are rife with grubby-faced kids begging “gringos” for things they don't need, and women scurrying to the side of the path with home-made hats they don't need to sell. In Photoksar, so uninterested were they in money that even when we asked if someone would make us lunch, they all said they were too busy with the harvest. Having run out of food and being several hours walk from the next opportunity to obtain any, this came as an unwelcome surprise at the time, so accustomed was I to being viewed as a walking cash machine. Six hours, a mental note to carry more food next time, and a hard-won pan full of instant noodles later, however, I was fully appreciative of the paradise we had entered.

Sustainable Spirituality
Adding to this “paradise” status is the light, and the scenery – at a casual glance, brown and barren, but subtly revealing of its charms. Andrew Harvey puts it better than I have so far managed:

“I have never seen sunlight so sharp, so precisely delicate, as this. There are so many blues in this one cloudless blue, and each involved a different memory... Everything that has not been clear in my life falls away from me here, my imagination sheds naturally in this landscape everything that does not call to these rocks, and this light, it is, as the rocks are, as the two stone-chats are... mind is as spacious as light in this country”.

Though of course the locals don't see it like that. They just live there.

Having said that, the fact that every visitor to Ladakh comes back talking like a Buddhist is testament to the region's well-founded reputation as a stronghold of Tibetan Buddhism. “Stronghold” is perhaps not a suitable word, being implicit of the social oppression some other religions (that shall remain nameless) stand to be accused of. And that would be unfair. Following Buddhism is not just an institution that stands apart from others. It is not like solemnly going to church on a Sunday out of a sense of reluctant duty and then just forgetting about it until next Sunday. In Tibetan Buddhism, the only hard and fast rule seems to be walking round Stupas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stupa) on the left which, while random, is easy to adhere to even as a visitor. Buddhism is everywhere, an unquestionable part of life. In theirs, and Andrew Harvey's terms, it simply is. Love for everything and everyone. And just you try saying that last bit without sounding like a Buddhist.

PSH
The downside to this scenic, community-based, love-for-everyone utopia is that it's cold. Really cold. -45, you will recall. I was there in Autumn, before the temperatures had dipped to their lowest point, and believe me it was cold enough then. A stroll along Pangong Lake, just a few kilometres from the Tibetan border, swiftly turned into a steady jog, such was the sub-zero chill, and then quickly turned back into a walk as the cold air burned my lungs. The cold is inescapable. And it gets worse.

The main problems lie in heating the homes. Although some villages are now served by newly-built roads (another supposed agent of “culture collapse”), these are primarily for the delivery of supplies during the summer months (instant noodles, mountain dew and the like), since few if any of the villagers own their own cars. A shortage of local fuels and the high price of imported fossil fuels result in a situation of energy vulnerability, Ladakh lying well within India’s “energy shadow” region.

Women and children often spend roughly two months per summer gathering dung in pasture lands for winter fuel. Collecting firewood for heating purposes can also be very time-consuming. The supply of fuels such as LPG gas, meanwhile, can be problematic in winter, and also costly – villagers having to travel to the urban centres to purchase gas cylinders. Diesel generators, meanwhile, also commonly used, are harmful to the environment, unreliable and need to be transported to urban centres for regular overhauls. Traditional houses are thermally inefficient, and even inside temperatures can drop below -10ºC in winter, resulting in unhealthy living conditions. When combined with the low temperatures, smoke from the Bukhari (small, traditional space heater normally used between November and February/March) can result in respiratory infections. The use of fuels such as the above, as well as being unreliable and harmful to health and the environment, is currently heavily subsidized by the Indian Government, and is thus not a sustainable pattern of energy consumption for the future. Even its transportation to outlying villages is subsidized.

Enter stage left: Passive Solar Housing. PSH. The buzzword(s) i've been building up to all along. Now, please be patient as this non-technically-minded social scientist, who felt a sort of swaggering pride that his report included the term “Photo-voltaic”, attempts to explain as best he can how this works.

Passive Solar housing (or architecture) aims at harnessing a region’s natural energy sources, by taking advantage of solar radiation during the winter to heat the inside of a building. Through south-facing walls and large south-facing windows, the house collects solar radiation during the day and enables the rooms to remain warm during both day and night. The principal design is a “Trombe Wall”, named after its French desinger. Trombe Walls consist of a separate wall, made from glass, supported by a wooden frame and painted black, to be built on the outside of the existing South-facing wall. The sun’s heat – maximized through the black paint - is stored during the day in the roughly 30cm gap between the two walls. Then, windows on the inner wall are opened at night to release the heat into the house. My accommodation in Leh benefited from a Trombe Wall, and the only disadvantage was that, frankly, sometimes it's too hot. Though for Ladakhis who have been putting up with negative inside temperatures for their whole lives, i'm sure that wouldn't be a complaint. And the beauty of the designs is that they are so simple, using merely the sun. Using nature. The word “passive” refers to this lack of any actual power needed to heat the homes.

The (Ecological) Development Question
LEDeG, then, aims to improve people's lives in ways that harmonize with the local environment. In ways, moreover, that are culturally sensitive, and show the people that “better things” are not necessarily in the tourist industry in Leh, or in Delhi, or further afield. Emphasis is on the small and local. Less – materially speaking – is indeed more.

“BUT!”, some people cry, “How can you say these people don't have the right to be modern like us?” Well, nobody's saying that. Nobody's standing in anyone's way. The point, rather, is to question that whole idea of “progress”, of an inevitable “improvement” towards Western standards of living which, if dependency theorists are to be believed, is impossible anyway. Helena Norberg-Hodge returns repeatedly to the theme of a “psychological” pressure that the people feel to modernise, which in turn leads to greater tensions between people, and a marked drop in “Gross National Happiness”, to use the King of Bhutan's spot-on measuring system. Westernisation is not the only way, and a higher standard of living need not mean an exodus from the Eden-like villages.

“BUT!”, the doubters still exclaim, “Who's asking for this? This 'higher standard of living', this PSH or whatever it's called? They managed okay before” Well, surely the use of kerosene and other fuels in a desperate attempt to heat their homes is the peoples' way of “asking for it”. The only reason they may not literally ask is that they don't know about it. And if you lived in a single-glazed house in -45°C temperatures you probably wouldn't quite be happy with your lot either. Improving quality of life seems to be a natural human instinct, and to deny people this would be to condemn their culture into infinite “primitivity”, and then for the people to abandon it and cause it to become something inauthentic. It's just, again, one-track “Westernisation” is not the only way to do this.

As globalisation gathers pace some people will be left by the wayside. And that's great. I think geographers call these areas “zones of irrelevance” - that is, areas that are insignificant in terms of world trade and governance. But there is a difference between being sidelined in this way and a full-blown “culture collapse”. In fact these areas, and the cultures that inhabit them, are far from irrelevant. There is so much that “we”, if the West as a whole can be referred to as such, can learn from them. Frugality, for example; how to make the most of very little and still be unquestionably happy. As others have noted (eg. Posey et el 1999), there is a link between cultural diversity and biodiversity too. That is, there is a correlation between numbers of different “cultures” in an area, and species of flora and fauna.

What's that coming over the hill?
Let me take you back to the “timeless modern-day Eden” of Photoksar. In fact I lied there. It's not really “timeless” at all. Every culture, every place, is a constantly evolving entity, in a continual process of gradual change. Any half-decent anthropologist knows that. But one major change is afoot for this particular village, something that could have the culture collapsists proclaiming 2010 as a new Year Zero for Photoksar. Up past the herds of wallowing yaks, past the fields of smiling villagers, following the roaring glacial torrent up and then across the barren screes of the 4,800-metre Sirsir La Pass, and a small but significant sight meets the eye. An encampment of Nepalese migrant workers, here for the summer, aching from a day's hard labour, faces blackened from their kerosene stoves. And behind them, a bulldozer, and another one, and snaking roughly halfway up the pass, a road. By this summer it will reach Photoksar. So let's hope the anthropologists are right, let's hope greater accessibility does not threaten the peace and cultural confidence of this now-connected paradise. More to the point, let's hope LEDeG's message, and PSH, reaches them before it's too late.

A Remote Hope

2010-04-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

(Trail showed some interest in this as I recall, but eventually it ended up as another unpaid piece in Summit, summer 2008. It's about Ben Hope, Scotland's most Northerly "Munro"):

Simply getting there had been an adventure. Single-track roads with passing places masquerading on the map as ‘A’ roads, suicidal sheep making bids for ovine immortality every hundred-or-so metres, and an increasing sense of isolation as the A838 climbed, dropped, twisted, turned and snaked its way through empty, desolate valleys on the approach to Durness. Welcome to the North.

Sutherland, despite its name which suggests otherwise, is the far North-Western corner of the British Isles, stretching from Loch Assynt in the South to the wild, windswept North Atlantic coastline at Cape Wrath, losing out by a whisker to Dunnet head as mainland Britain’s most Northerly point. It is called Sutherland because to the Vikings it was Southerly. Once this area supported a large and now much romanticized clan-based society, all scratching out a meagre living as their land bore the brunt of the vicious Atlantic weather systems. But in a case of jingoistic bloody-mindedness the Duke of Sutherland and his similarly “enlightened” companions began a brutal clearance of the Northern Highlands to make way for a series of vast commercial sheep farms. The process would continue throughout the 19th century, and would leave a population slightly bigger than that of a small English market town inhabiting an enormous area spanning approximately 2,100 square miles.

Sutherland’s awe-inspiring, Tolkeinesque landscape, then, has known heartache, but now it’s beautiful heartache, like a song off the last Coldplay album. Sheer cliffs and golden stretches of sand border a land of bleak, windswept moorlands, empty, desolate valleys, and rising high above them breathing in the bracing North Atlantic winds, are some of the finest peaks the country have to offer. Amongst them is Ben Hope, at 927 metres Scotland’s most Northerly munro. For the record there are no superstore-sized supermarkets in Sutherland either. And I’ve already mentioned the roads. The Lakes it ain’t.

To add to that “wilderness” feeling I had decided to spend the night alone in Strabeg bothy, an isolated dwelling located two squelchy, bog-strewn kilometres from the road at the head of Loch Eriboll. I could imagine the ghosts of centuries of kilted pre-clearance clansmen all watching me intently, laughing at my Gore-Tex jacket and multi-fuel stove and making sure I didn’t drop Super noodles on the nice clean floor. It was irrational but I was quite scared of them. It was a still, quiet night and the slightest noise set me on edge. At one hair-raising moment a sudden cacophonous clatter sent me dashing for the door before realising I’d just knocked my spoon off the table.

The weather hadn’t helped matters. Headlights had been preferable on the drive to Durness, and that evening a swirling mist encircled the lonely tenement. But the scene that greeted me in the morning as I uncurled from my malevolent spirit-proof foetal position could not have been more gloriously different. This was, in technical terms, a scorcher. Unbroken sunshine stretched from peak to peak, valley to valley, and the sky was peppered lightly with only the occasional solitary cumulus. You could virtually smell the sun, and it made the trees greener, the surrounding crags more awe-inspiringly imposing, and the babble of the nearby burn all the more soft and harmonious. I’m sure I heard a bird singing “oh what a beautiful morning”.

The route from Strabeg to the foot of Ben Hope is wild, sometimes rocky, sometimes boggy, and for the most part devoid of anything remotely resembling a path. I bade farewell to Spector McApparition and his ghostly companions and with quixotic glee I was on my merry way, hopping between boulders as I followed the twisting course of a cascading mountain river then treading lightly through a dissected peat hag before emerging in a fierce sweat at Loch Bealach Odhrsgaraidh (no I can’t pronounce it either).

And there she was. Ben Hope, Scotland’s most Northerly munro, reared up gracefully from the remote valley floor, a bastion of silent impenetrability strikingly silhouetted against the hazy Meditteranean-blue sky.

All that remained between man and mountain were a gentle descent through bogs and heather, and the small matter of the wide and moderately fast-flowing Strathmore River, snaking its way towards the vast Loch Hope, and at this point having to be crossed without the aid of so much as a stepping stone. The water proved to be a haven for midges as I stumbled and splashed through its icy-cold depths, the bottoms of my shorts easily within reach of its enthusiastic lapping. On removing my shoes I had taken them in one hand, then promptly dunked them in the coursing tide with a momentary slip. The wilderness and solitude, the lack of human company, not to mention the nerve-inducing bothies and bridgeless rivers, were beginning to test my character.

I was, then initially relieved to stumble upon a car park, complete with several motorised vehicles, occupied by intelligent life-forms (no offence to sheep intended), and a large wooden sign adorned with the unambiguous instructions “Ben Hope – Way Up”. Thankfully the ascent was straightforward too. The craggy, rugged flanks of Ben Hope provide an excellent scramble up the Northern end of the mountain, and its Eastern slopes drop away steeply to deep Corries, all with their own private Lochans. This, however, was plain sailing. The Southern slopes lift the walker gracefully from the plains of Strathmore to the wide, rounded summit.

A narrow, steeply winding path hoists you swiftly to the Leitir Mhuiseil, the ridge that eventually gains the summit, albeit with the customary hand-full of groan-inducing false summits to keep things interesting. The grey, spiky mass of Foinaven to the West becomes more and more visible as you plod on upwards, wisps of atmospheric cloud beginning to circle around its sharp summit adding to its Mount Doom-like qualities. You are required to work or your full reward, though, the complete panorama being kept tantalisingly out of reach until the very top.

If you happen to have the whole summit to yourself, as I did, then it really does feel as I you are the only living being within a thousand-mile radius, a pioneering explorer surveying with wide-eyed wonder a vast, exciting, unexplored landscape. The fairly small yet shapely Ben Loyal and other isolated knolls to the East. In the far southerly distance were the barren and rugged hills of Assynt, all so distinct in character, rising from the lonely plains like sudden blips on a seismograph. And to the North the shimmering Loch Hope gave way to the remote promontory of Whiten Head, and after that the vast, unending, Sapphire-blue stretches of the North Atlantic...

A Golden Week on the Ben

2010-04-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

(This was my second ever bit of published work, if you can call inclusion on an internet site "published". It's been on UKClimbing (http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=857) since March 2008. I don't actually think it's very good, but UKC apparently did, and it WAS an amazing week that needed documenting...)

Sometimes it happens. A route, a day, or a whole trip that makes it all worthwhile. A reward for weekend after weekend of trudging through loose powder, repeated failure, motivational crises, hot-aches, standing at belays being gradually buried in spindrift, agonising over weather forecasts, and all the usual pleasures associated with Scottish winter climbing. This was one such experience.

Happily, our five-day booking of the CIC hut, at the foot of Ben Nevis' towering North Face, coincided with blue skies and unbroken sunshine, yet with bombproof snow-ice on the upper buttresses still hanging in there. Okay, so the rest of Scotland was already bathed in warm summer sunshine and probably every roadside crag in the country was dry and screaming “climb me!” But for those still with the enthusiasm to walk for several hours in the dark, this was a perfect, luxurious end to the season.

The walk-in was quite an effort. As I struggled to make it up the first small rise just after the car park, hampered by my fridge-sized rucksack stuffed with five days'-worth of food and gear, I seriously doubted I'd get very far. Memories of a drunken conversation years ago about how load-carrying elephants and camels should be introduced on the Ben, began not to seem so ridiculous. Eventually, though, we all got into a slow rhythm, plodding on upwards with the occasional stop for the utterance of expletives.

The CIC Hut had always been a place that we passed on the way to climb, it always looked so inviting but it was, well you know, just... not us. The ease with which I had booked the place had come as something of a surprise. Thus, finally entering this hallowed building felt like quite an honour. We all recalled tales from Cold Climbs of Robin Smith stealing food, and of the whole hut bursting into life at 3am with everyone desperate to be first out on the routes (My attempt at such an energetic reveille on day two would result in a smashed bowl, porridge all over the floor and the whole hut woken by my swearing!).

These days it's a slightly less exclusive venue. This evening the hut was packed to the rafters with wild-eyed, dishevelled climbers, all discussing today's experiences and tomorrow's plans. Apparently the six places we had booked included three on the floor.

After a dinner of pasta and something dehydrated, and the one beer per day we had rationed ourselves, the decision was made not to mess around and to head straight for The Point. So a 5am start and a gloriously short walk-in saw us standing at the bottom of Point 5 Gully, one of those simply must-do classics. I, typically had forgotten my gloves. Thankfully though, my climbing partner Steve had come prepared (probably just because he knew he was climbing with me – I had forgotten my waterproof jacket on our last outing) and had around ten pairs.

Initial nerves subsided as we realised the route was in exceptionally easy condition, hooks and steps gracing its entire length. There was one point, on the chimney pitch, where this made it harder, as the ice had been hacked to pieces so much as to create an overhang! Generally, though, it was steep, thrilling climbing on delightfully positive holds the whole way. There were several moments where my previously grade-4 climbing mind though “woah, this is f***ing steep”, but it was merely matter-of-fact recognition of this, rather than outright fear. The Rogue Pitch was the steepest section, but today was only 'Rogue' in that it convinced us it was harder than it was. Having hooked our way up that, stretching Steve's 50-metre rope to the limit - in order to reach anything remotely resembling a belay, all that remained was a seemingly interminable snow-plod to the summit.

We topped out around lunchtime, basked in the afternoon sun and in the glory of having just climbed a classic and not had an unpleasant epic. Our friends topped out on Zero Gully at around the same time, and we walked across the summit plateau swapping stories before locating No.4 Gully and descending to our home from home for tea and medals.

It seemed that the “Step ladder” that had been Point 5 had been merely a gentle introduction to the classic Ben Grade 5s, as the following day Indicator Wall (V,4) was giving away very little. Even the approach was scary, shuffling along the top of a steep snow slope which dropped away on hard neve that rendered ice-axe arrest virtually impossible, to Observatory Gully. Steve ably hacked his way up the first pitch, making positive noises about the condition of the ice but not about the lack of hooks. We were on our own now. The crux pitch fell to yours truly, and turned out to be far more sustained than anything on Point 5. By 30 metres up I'd reached that disco-leg stage every time I stopped to place a screw, assuring myself it would be easy after this next bulge... ah okay, the next one then.... bugger, next one?.... until finally I emerged, heart racing and legs like jelly, at a bulge of ice shot through with ice-axe holes, a ready-made bucket seat and an easy snow slope leading to the top. One further deceptive pitch and we were basking in the sun again, taking in the same awesome views as yesterday. “We could get used to this”, we commented, slightly concerned that we would.

There was a definite sense of “we have to make the most of this”, and it wasn't even lunch-time, so the decision was made to race up Comb Gully. It was late enough for the queues to have subsided, so after just over an hour of pleasant climbing we were on the plateau again, Steve relieved at having avoided the drama of two years previously when one of his crampons had fallen off on the crux. We had come a long way. Okay, it hadn't quite been the seven-minute ascent described in Cold Climbs, but it was good for us.

The next day, another perfect Alpine affair, saw Smith's route dispatched in the same workmanlike, step-assisted manner as Point 5. This assistance, however, did not detract from the heart-stopping exposure of this prominent curtain of ice. I even seconded the crux pitch with great care, taking heed of guidebook warnings that of dodgy belays. As it happened, though, the incredible ice made any screw placement rock solid, and my fears had been unfounded.

Our daily sunbathing session came even earlier today. The sun seemed even warmer, but we decided we had to at least attempt another route. Our attempt on Two-Step Corner (V,5), however, was abandoned after a large part of the cornice melted and collapsed very close to the crux pitch. We finished up the pleasant No.3 Gully Buttress, enjoying the views and the satisfaction of what we'd achieved so far.

So accustomed had we become to these unbroken alpine conditions that when the fourth day dawned slightly cloudy, excuses were mumbled about high temperatures, melting ice and tired legs, and Steve and I retreated back into our sleeping bags. The day would then be spent with Steve trying to coax me out of bed and me making increasingly ridiculous excuses for not moving an inch. “It's a famous hut, come on we should just enjoy it!” In fact, a certain Andy Nisbet arrived predicting that “Aye, something'll be in”, which got Steve all excited, but refining his prediction to 'slush' was enough to convince me to turn over and sleep again. Our friends climbed point 5 as it happened, but we'd already done that...

One final day remained, and it arrived swathed in cloud again. We reasoned, however, that at the end of a normal week in Scotland this would be considered great conditions, we had just been spoilt. So, motivation largely restored, we trudged up the snow-slopes once again with the vague aim of the No.2 Gully Buttress area. We were carrying only the selected Scottish Winter Climbs book, and as a result what we thought to be Five Finger Discount turned out to be JP is Back (IV,4), a two-and-a-half-pitch, entirely unfrequented ice route providing a great end to the week and, we assumed, to the season.

The real icing on the cake, however, was the semi-controlled epic bum-slide all the way down No.4 Gully almost to the snowline, the snow having changed in consistency allowing for prime glissading conditions. It seemed illustrative of how easy and painless (aside from the initial walk-in) the whole week had been. It almost didn't seem like Scottish winter climbing.

But as I said, it's weeks like this that make it all worthwhile. As we walked out to the car park, we were already looking forward to next season. More trudging through loose powder, more repeated failure, motivational crises, hot-aches, standing at belays being gradually buried in spindrift, agonising over weather forecasts... and one day, another week like this.

Convillisation

2010-04-21T04:13:00.000-07:00

This was my first ever piece of published writing. I say that as if there's been hundreds since then, but... erm, the book was about the third. It first appeared in the British Mountaineering Council's "Summit" magazine sometime in 2005, and is also available here: http://www.thebmc.co.uk/Feature.aspx?id=1602 - they changed it a bit I think).

I’d been in Chamonix three days, and already I’d fallen down an unexpected snow slope in the Aiguilles Rouges and had a run-in with the fervently anti-British campsite owner. An eventful trip already, but alpinism was what I was here for. All that remained was to learn how to do it properly….

….And this process I like to call the “Convillisation” of British mountaineering. Believe me, the efficiency and speed with which new, competent young alpinists are produced these days is worthy of a well-oiled machine. Every three days a batch of approximately 8 untreated products known as “Scottish winter climbers” or some similar name enter this great system and having been thrown down a few crevasses, dragged out of bed at 4AM and marched to the top of a 3,500-metre peak and numerous other sub-processes, are churned out after three days as the finished article – foul-smelling, sleep deprived and with an appetite for an un-natural quantity of pasta, baguettes and pains au chocolat. In short, alpinists.

I have, as you may gather, nothing but praise for the Jonathan Conville Memorial Trust. Jonathan Conville was a competent young alpinist who died at a very young age on the Matterhorn, and perhaps, with better teaching, his life could have been saved. Set up by his parents in Jonathan’s honour, the Trust provides young, hard-up mountaineers with the chance of 3 days’ professional guiding for the almost incidental sum of £58. It costs them £180.

Tour De Force
After playing about on the aptly named Mer De Glace (“Sea of Ice”) and practicing crevasse rescue on the Glacier Du Tour (my partner here, the vertically-challenged Tony, was unable to pull me out), the course culminated with an ascent of the Aiguille Du Tour via the Normal Route, graded “facile” (easy) but a route nonetheless. Sleeping (or lack thereof) at 2,700m had been an interesting experience, this being the first time any of us had spent a significant amount of time at such a height. Even so I rose with ease at 4AM, tremendously excited at the prospect of my first real alpine route – one with snow, crevasses and the potential for dying a horrible death. As we trekked up the glacier towards the Col Superieur Du Tour in the shimmering pre-dawn light, I was perhaps the happiest man in the world. The only time I had previously seen the Alps was in the heat of the day, and despite the inconveniences of having to leave one’s bed at a fairly un-natural hour, this beat it hands down. As we reached the Col, which happens to be the Franco-Swiss border, we were greeted with a marvellous view stretching across what looked like the whole of the Alps. It might as well have been, for in it you could pick out Monte Rosa, the Alps’ second highest peak, and many other 4,000ers including the unmistakable spiky mass of the Matterhorn. One day….

The view just got better and better as we scrambled to the summit, marvelled at it even more and turned back towards the hut. The time was 8AM, though it seemed to be well-past lunchtime. On the way down we encountered what apparently the French call a “bordel”, literally a “whore house” and meaning any chaos caused by incompetence. A party of about ten Italians (I won’t call them “climbers” as they quite clearly were not), all on the same rope, were attempting to descend a scree slope, but had taken a completely different route to everyone else who was doing so and thus were causing rockslides, general mayhem and a great deal of tut-tutting from our Guides.

All in all, though, the experience was invaluable. I was well aware of the theory of how to climb a mountain in the Alps, but to be taken on a “practice run” like this was priceless. I had learned the basics, met some potential climbing partners and was well and truly “set up” for the rest of my five-week trip.

Original and best
A few days later I teamed up with three of my fellow “Convillists” and trekked up the Mer De Glace with a view to attempting Original Route, a 400-metre rocky number on Aiguille De Ciseaux. We had been deeply frustrated by weather forecasts over the last few days – by all reports snow wasn’t freezing and conditions were not unlike Scotland, but it was great that we could still get out like this. Indeed our day on the Ciseaux took place beneath a blanket of low-lying cloud, although we were occasionally allowed a fleeting glimpse of an atmospheric-looking Grand Jorasses.

Despite the lack of a constant mind-blowing panorama the route was a good ‘un. It was all graded 4+ and below, but there were still a few very exposed lead pitches. We reached the top of the route at about 5PM, and began the abseil down. Perhaps as two faff-prone first-time British alpinists at the end of a hard day, a multi-pitch abseil was asking for trouble, and for about 5 abs we would set off predicting “one more after this”, every time discovering that “one more” took us nowhere near the bottom! It was a good first foray into the range, though.

The Greatest Snow-plod in the land
After our day on the Ciseaux I could be accused of biting off a little more than my route-hungry teeth could chew. A route-finding error on the North Spur of the Chardonnet resulted in a long and problematic retreat and a 19-hour day, and as a rope of three we “faffed” for England on the Aiguille Dibona in the Ecrins. After these two fine displays I decided to be a little more conventional, and instead turned my hand to that practiced art of first time alpinists, snow-plodding!

The Gouter Route on Mont Blanc has come in for some bad press of late. Anyone can do it, right? City workers, Japanese tourists, clowns on unicycles juggling a pair of DMM Raptors? Seriously, though, it seems to have become the preserve of those who work in an office in London, were looking for something to spend their money on and so thought they might climb a mountain sometime. It’d do wonders for their promotion prospects. Of course, their ascent is on a rope of 27 led by a suave-looking French guide named Francois.

If it’s any consolation, I loved it. From the moment we left the hut at 1.30 and began the trudge up the first snow slope, the thought “This is MONT BLANC!” reverberated excitedly around my head, and whether I liked it or not, this was the undoubted highlight of my trip. What made it even better was that once we’d overtaken two or three parties just before the Dome De Gouter, we were the first on the route. And yesterday’s storm had brought fresh snow, therefore no trench to follow, therefore we were route finding. We were making that trench. To us, this wasn’t the tourist route on “the Blanc”, this was a serious alpine route on the highest, grandest mountain in Western Europe. The immaculate snow ridge we followed just after the Vallot hut only served to reinforce this. There were spectacular cornices and seracs, too - silent, deadly yet beautiful in the eerie pre-dawn light. This, for half an hour or so at least, was our mountain.

The mist cleared just after we’d left the summit, and the sunrise brought with it some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. There were wisps of low-lying cloud encircling the Chamonix Aiguilles, the Aiguilles Rouges reared up, dark and jagged against a bright pink sky, and most inspiring of all was the towering, white-capped dome of Mont Blanc staring down at all before it – silent, brooding and serene in the soft orange glow. We stopped every few metres to take photos, congratulate each other and just take it all in. “We’re alpinists”, was our proud feeling, and we weren’t just still alive but as alive as we’d ever felt before. And without the Conville course, well, who knows?

Asi es la Vida extracts

2010-02-13T12:41:00.000-08:00

I TOOK a nervous step back, looking into the eyes of my attacker. He moved forward. My eyes focused on the knife in his hand. Another step back. He jabbed the knife towards me. I froze.

It was two and a half years later and this was where that adventurous spirit had led us. Typical.

“DEJA LA MOCHILA!!!”

No, he really wasn’t joking. A fairly clear order, even with my faltering Spanish, to drop the rucksack, uttered through fiercely clenched teeth and in a tone approaching a declaration of barbarian warfare.

On this occasion, we really should have known better. A poor neighbourhood of tin shacks stood to our left, separated from us only by a short embankment. We had located the slip-road onto the straight, dusty stretch of road that leads north from San Miguel de Tucumán. We were keen to cover as much ground as possible by way of hitchhiking, reasoning as ever that it was the best way to engage with the people. We dropped the rucksacks and began standing with our thumbs out. The initial signs were not good. It was a fast road and no drivers seemed to pay us much attention. Still, it was a busy road too, so you just never knew.

Cars passed.

First, a guy on an old squeaky bicycle passed us, shouting something we didn’t quite catch and indicating the other side of the road.

“Dunno what he was saying,” shrugged Carson. “I mean, why would we want to go that side? Cars won’t pull over then.” We disregarded his advice.

Cars passed.

About ten minutes and numerous dust-clouds from passing cars later, a kindly family who had been busying themselves outside their tiny house for the last few minutes, pointed across the “barrio,” in urgent tones warning “Les van a robar, Les van a robar!” – they’re going to rob you. Sure enough two very shifty-looking guys of around our age were lurking against the side of one of the dishevelled hovels, staring suspiciously in our direction and leaving their intentions beyond reasonable doubt. Now we were galvanised into some kind of action, although perhaps still not as urgent as it should have been.

“Let’s walk away from here, go and try that service station back there instead,” suggested Carson, and we began walking south again, with no particular urgency.

What happened next was something of a blur. I was about ten metres behind Carson when three youths of about sixteen came running down the embankment.

The three boys were clearly nervous; they had probably never robbed anyone as big as me before. They breathed deeply and waved the knife at me whenever I moved. I suppose I might have been a black belt in karate or ex-military tough guy who could floor them all with one mighty blow. Lucky for them I’m, well... not. Of course, I spent the next few days wondering if they would ever have dared use that knife, and whether merely shouting a few obscenities at them would have sent them scurrying back to their tin shacks and hiding in a corner until Christmas. But at that moment panic reigned and I dropped the rucksack.

It took all three of the little bastards to carry it away, mind.

Moments later a police truck screeched to a halt in the dust and out jumped Pedro Ortiz, a real-life, Hispanic incarnation of the police chief from “The Simpsons.” Only without the yellow skin and blue hair if you can stretch your imagination that far. We sat in the back of the truck as kids came out to stare at us and the policemen unhurriedly knocked on a few doors and asked if the occupant might have seen three youths but five minutes ago in possession of something resembling a battle-ship with carrying straps. It seemed that no-one had, and Pedro was quick to repeatedly stress that there was “poco esperanza,” little hope. So after ten minutes or so we were driven back towards Tucumán’s “Centro” and the local police station.

We gave our statements, taking roughly forty-five minutes to explain that Scotland and England were both parts of the “Reino Unido,” and were not completely separate countries but sort of regions of the one big country, but sort of a bit more than that. Okay, I admit that is confusing, and the shock and nerves of the situation rendered my Spanish virtually incapable of such complicated elaborations. Once we had established the political boundaries of the United Kingdom and tried to remember everything that was in my rucksack, Pedro began advising us on what to do if this should happen again.

“Sorry Pedro,” interrupted Carson at one point. “You’re saying we should buy a big knife and fight back next time?”

“Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, claaaaaaaaro!!!” enthused the chubby-faced officer, as he did in response to most questions, reinforced by many wild gesticulations of his arms. He also recommended that next time we stare into the eyes of our attackers, which he unconvincingly assured us would scare them off.

“Los ojos son la ventana del alma,” he said, poetically. I tried to imagine a policeman down the local nick in Brighton advising, “See those eyes, mate? Window on the soul, I’m telling you...” but I couldn’t.

He continued the “eye” theme by repeatedly telling us to be careful, which he did by touching one of his eyes with a finger and stressing “Ojo, uh? Ojo…,” which he would do at the end of each piece of advice for several minutes, each time stopping to check that our heads were nodding sufficiently, until it was clear his point had been made.

While supposedly another policeman was out looking for the rucksack, Pedro insisted we accompany him to the small convenience shop-cum-café across the street and drink a “café con leche” with him.

“Un café con leche?!”

“Er, yeah, why no- …”

“Café con leche?! Señor? Un Café con leche?!!”

We were left with little choice, and dared not even ask for “un café solo” instead. Pedro proceeded to tell us all about recent goings on in Tucumán, then about his wife and kids and the brand new mobile phone they had just bought him for fathers’ day.

“Es bueno, uh? Es bueno?”

We nodded in polite bemusement, uttering the odd “Si, si” at appropriate moments, all the while secretly wishing he was out there looking for my rucksack, lovely though his new mobile phone was.

Pedro had offered us a bed in one of the cells in the police station for the night, but we were eager to get out of Tucumán.

“Ojo, uh?” repeated Pedro a further six hundred times as he bade farewell to us at the gates of the police station. We walked back to the bus station where we had arrived in such good spirits that morning, flinching every time someone made a sudden movement, feeling jarringly uncomfortable every time an inquisitive look was directed at us. There were buses to Jujuy. As we were about to buy our tickets, however, we found out it was only a four-hour journey and that we would arrive there in the middle of the night. Then what would we do? It was too dangerous, surely.

It was getting dark in Tucumán. This time the previous day, we would have taken that bus and slept in the terminal, or even on the streets. Something would have worked out. But now we felt disinclined to risk it. Our gung-ho adventurous spirit had been badly shaken by the appearance of that knife blade. My new-found lack of a sleeping bag or even a warm jumper didn’t help either. Attracting unwanted attention to ourselves just had not seemed like a danger until now. Carson, for example, had been practising hand-stands on station platforms in Buenos Aires. The previous night, en route to Tucumán, I had walked around the small town of Deán Funes at 3am (“there was absolutely no life about the place...”) and not felt at all threatened in its dark, unlit streets. Now we felt vulnerable, like we wanted to hide in a corner, or be back home where we would blend in.

It was pitch darkness by now and we needed somewhere safe, inside, to stay.

“Best take a taxi to a hostel, eh?” said Carson. I pinched myself to check he’d really just said that. A taxi! That had been a taboo word until today.

We felt not as if the wind had been knocked from beneath our sails, but that our sails had been ripped down, our boat commandeered by knife-wielding pirates and all we had left was a tiny rubber dinghy with a slow puncture. Our possibilities now seemed to be severely limited – I had lost my sleeping bag, warm clothing, climbing gear – what could we do without that? Also, it was not just this material loss that we felt, it was the loss of our aim. The trip so far had been a headlong dash toward the Cordillera Real in Bolivia. All this mixing with the locals en route had been fun, but the mountains had been our overall aim, and we had been moving on quickly every day. Now what would we do? We could slow down, take it all in, keep talking to friendly locals. But it all seemed somehow pointless without a destination.

“You stole our purpose, man!” joked Carson, shaking a fist in the rough direction of our attackers, but neither of us really thought it was funny. Now our time in this scary place stretched ahead as one dangerous, gaping void.