Fuddland

Meet Roberto, our gracious and very friendly host for days two and three of our trek. He lives deep in the forests of the Yungas, in a very muddy and quite steeply-inclined clearing. All of his accommodation is constructed from the trees that grow all around, and consists of four huts: one for sleeping, one for cooking, and two for storage. He was tremendously excited to have visitors from another country staying with him, and made a real effort to show us how he lived. Within minutes of us arriving I had been given a hot drink made from boiling the blossoms of a nearby tree — a traditional pick-me-up, I was told. Unfortunately I can’t report on its effectiveness since he laced it with so much sugar that I can’t be sure it wasn’t just that which got my blood flowing again.

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Day two

Leaving our first night’s lodgings in the late morning, our journey up to Roberto’s place was similar to that of the previous afternoon, but even cloudier and chillier, and gloomier as descended into the forest. On two occasions we had to pull our horses up off the track onto the hillside to make way for hundreds of goats or sheep being shepherded through the mountains, watching with interest as our guide chatted with the others and they exchanged mouthfuls of cocoa leaves and shots of firewater. We arrived at Roberto’s in the early afternoon.

It has to be said, even by the more basic living conditions that we saw on our first night, Roberto lived in a bit of squalor. Rubbish littered the floor — plastic bottles and leftovers — and mouldy food sat in piles in the kitchen area. But what worried us most were the flies: hundreds of them, constantly having to be waved away, and crawling over everything, including the open containers of fresh water that we were given hot and cold drinks from. Naturally we were far too polite to enquire, “Would you mind awfully if you boiled the water for fifteen minutes before we drink it? Only I’m not that keen on getting dengue fever on this trip.” So we took our lives in our hands and appear to have come out disease-free, thank goodness. This was only the second time our guide had brought people to this particular region, and he didn’t seem to be aware that foreigners don’t usually have his natural resistance to the bugs that lurk in the drinking water.

Night two

At one point in the late evening, long after it had gotten dark, the four of us were sitting outside, chatting as best we could, when Roberto’s dog leapt up and starting barking out into the darkness. Roberto grabbed a torch and swung the beam around in the direction of his dog’s yelps. I caught a brief glimpse of a long shape moving through the trees, before Roberto switched off the torch.
“Yaguareté,” he said.
Our guide knew the English word, and translated: “Jaguar.”
Eep!, thought Jo and I. Yes, we were staying deep in the Yungas where jaguars roam free. Our eyes were a little wider and our ears a little more pricked than usual for the remainder of the evening.

Day three

On the third day, I awoke to find Roberto had left a shotgun by my bed at some point in the night, presumably as a defence against the jaguar. Nice of him to [a] tell me, and [b] show me how to use it. Still, we’d survived the night without a mauling so I decided not to mention it.

Today was the day the horses rested, and made their own way to the river about an hour’s hike down the mountainside from Roberto’s place. Roberto was heading off in the morning to the local market [a day away], and had packed up some supplies. He also wanted to take one of his chickens with him, to sell, and that meant catching it.

It seems that, no matter how steeped in tradition your culture is, or how many years experience one has, catching a chicken always involves two or three people dashing around, arms and legs splayed wide, jumping over fences and slipping around on the mud, trying to corner a bird that really doesn’t want to be caught. Couple this with the fact that these chickens weren’t your average farm-bird, in that their wings hadn’t been clipped and their leg muscles were fully developed from a life of avoiding Roberto’s dog, and you’ve got ten or fifteen minutes of frantic huffing and puffing. But eventually it was caught, and I was the one that caught it.

After Roberto had left, we set off down towards the river, having been promised a “short trek” to see a nice waterfall. Once again, we learnt the hard way of our guide’s devil-may-care-but-I-don’t approach to time-keeping, as the hike took over four hours to complete, and he didn’t even bring any snacks, much less a lunch, down with him. This was particularly galling as we’d had nothing but a few mouthfuls of plain bread and a [very sweet — undrinkably so] coffee for breakfast. Nonetheless, it was quite a nice waterfall, and the water was clear enough for me to sneak down behind a large boulder for my first wash in three days — very, very cold, but worth it to get clean for a while.

Of course on the hike back up the mountain to Roberto’s place I got very hot and sweaty, and it was soon as if I’d never bathed at all. [And I’ve left out the part where I slipped down the rocks just after I’d gotten out of the water and got all muddy — not to mention a badly-grazed shin — so had to wash all over again.]

The following is an entry which follows on from the above:

1. Out of the Yungas--days four and five [Fuddland]. Excerpt: Day four As had become expected by now, leaving Roberto's home was not a simple matter of waking up shortly before our scheduled leaving time, packing up and jumping on the horses--for one thing, our guide Horatio discovered that the...