Long time since the last post…

In the past week, a lot has occurred:

Last Friday, Simon’s friend Duncan and his girlfriend Vai came to Ollantaytambo to meet up with us and do some climbing.  Duncan is a guy from Colorado who has been climbing in South America for many years and met Simon last fall when they were in Chile, and his girlfriend is another climber from Valparaiso Chile.  We met them at a café on the square and brought them to the camping spot.  The next day, we brought them both to the big 70-meter slab we developed and they both hopped on the route that Simon cleaned. 

Saturday night was the last one that we spent at Elder’s campground.  After a slow start to the day, we got everything packed up and took the bus back to Urubamba.  Simon and I got a head start and stopped halfway to check out some nice looking rock across the river.  The going was slow because we had literally all of our bags with us, but we finally arrived at some cliff line along a farm road.  We set our gear down, had a quick lunch, and then decided to free climb some Class 4 scrambling up 25 meters of sloped rock steps.  From up there we were able to get a better look at some potential cracks/routes that we could take all the way up in the future.  Afterwards, we came back down and caught the bus the rest of the way.

We arrived back at Llama Pack and rang the bell.  Alejandra came to let us in and showed us a room we could stay in.  It felt great to have an actual bed to sleep in again.  We chilled at the hostel and waited for Rebecca, Duncan, and Vai to arrive, and in the meantime we met some of the other guests/volunteers that were staying there:  A couple of Americans, some Peruvians from Lima, and a British girl.  Later on we went to the market.  It was nice to have an adequate stove to cook on again.  Had a very relaxing night as well.

Monday we woke up early to make breakfast.  We told Coqui and Alejandra that we would help out and volunteer in exchange for our stay at the hostel.  By 9:30 in the morning, all five of us plus the two Americans hiked 3 hours up the Puma Wanka valley together to reach a tree nursery.  The hike was a bit strenuous and all up hill, but the work we had to do only really involved a couple of people and a lot of waiting around.  While the American girls were watering the tree sprouts, Simon and I went up a bit further to search for boulders by suggestion of Coqui.  We found two really nice stones in this farmer’s field, brushed them off, and established a few boulder problems.  The fact that people are living way up in this valley in small stone huts still boggles my mind.  Apparently, once you cross over the pass of that valley, you enter back down into cloud forest, which is pretty cool to think about.

Once we had watered all the trees, we all hiked back down to the Llama Pack and Rebecca cooked up some mean butter chicken.  We also picked up food for our two day stay up at the refuge in the soon to be Llama Land Park.  We woke up Tuesday morning, had banana pancakes, and then Coqui drove us up to where we would be staying.  On the way up, we let the llamas out of their pen and led them up to the hill to graze.  Llamas are very interesting creatures, and each with its own unique personality.  Most llamitas are shy and don’t like to be touched, but Puma Wanka, a red fuzzy llama, was very friendly and came up to us right away to greet us and be pet.  Puma Wanka believes that he is the alpha male, but that title actually belongs to Guapo, the large, white, and not particularly friendly llama.  There are a couple others in that herd, including one very shaggy looking one whose name I didn’t catch.  Llamas are also quite large, some growing up to 2 meters tall (taller than me).

We got to the refuge, which is a building that has walls and a roof but is not completely excavated, out.  We learned our job was to be rolling rocks down the hill onto a large flat plain that will later become a llama corral.  The job itself was hard work, but we soon learned our tasks were far greater than just rolling rocks.  We ran out of water before the first day was up, but were told that there was a spring we could access from further down.  Duncan and I went to get water as the sun was going down, and nearly got lost walking back in complete darkness aside from our headlamps.  The water itself seemed a little tainted by all the livestock roaming the hills, so we figured that we would have to boil it before it was safe to drink.  This entailed making a fire with primarily cow patties as fuel.  That would be the first time I boiled cow feces out of water using cow feces. 

It wasn’t all hard though, in fact it was very tranquil.  We sat around, ate food, watched to clouds, boiled water, moved a few rocks, and had a chill time in general.  The second day was a bit difficult deciding whether or not we should return to get actual clean water.  In the end, all but Rebecca stayed it through, seeing as she was leaving the country soon and had to take care of some things beforehand.  Early Thursday morning, Duncan and Vai got an alpine start to go hike up the hill more and get a glimpse of the surrounding mountains.  Simon headed down at around 8, and me a bit a later.

We relaxed a lot today, and also got some pizza to celebrate Beck’s last day.  Can’t believe another whole month has nearly come and gone.  Amazing times here in the Sacred Valley of the Inca’s and we all feel very blessed to be able to live here.  We’re going to miss her when she leaves tomorrow!