A Night in the Peruvian Andes

 I was standing at a small tienda or store, if you can call it that, trying to ask the Quechua girl standing in the little box about Coca leaves. I am not sure she understood what I was asking, but she reached up to the back wall and pulled down this bag of leaves.

“Es esta la hoja de coca?” I asked in my butchered Spanish, she smiled and gave a little laugh and nod, so I took them.

I am always impressed at how pretty she looks. Even though her face was dirty, her colorful outfit, jet black hair pulled back into two ponytails under this giant tall big brimmed hat, with skin red as a well-tanned beach goer and a smile as grand as the girl next door; gave her a beautiful appearance.

“Gracias Senorita, y dos cervezas por favor.” She pulls out two bottles of Cristal from her cooler and hands them to me.

“Devuelves las botellas, senior,” she says to me as I take the beers and hand her the dinero.

“Si, si, yo return,” I say, not sure of how I am supposed to say it, but I know that they want the bottles back as they recycle them, and you got to respect their rules out here amid the mountains of the Andes of Peru.

I hear a horn honk behind me. I turn around, and my cohort J sits in the white Toyota truck.

“We’re running out of time,” he yaps at me.

Grabbing up my belongings, I jot on over, dodging a couple of dust-covered kids trying their begging skills with me to get some free candy. Sure, you always feel compassion, but once you meet it every day for a month, you get used to it and know the game; throw ’em a candy once in a while but not too much otherwise, the next time you stop every damn kid in the village will be there waiting for you. I jump into the truck with the goods.

“Check it out, man; I got the coca leaves,” I hold up the bag I got from the store girl.

J laughs, “You think that shit is coca, man?”

“I don’t know; other guys have told me they sell it up here, so figure why not give it a go. I don’t think she understood me so well, so who knows what I got. Let’s try it out.”

I rip open the bag, and the green dried leaves pour out onto my lap. Having heard the stories from others who had worked in Peru and from other sources, I wasn’t so worried that chewing on these things was like shoving an eight ball up your nose. The local natives had been using coca for centuries for ceremonies, and chewing on the leaves at high altitudes, prevents altitude sickness and gives a bit of a boost for walking around in a thin atmosphere. Most of the work we were doing was well above 10,000 feet, so why not do as in Rome. I grabbed a few leaves and stuffed them into my lip like it was a wad of chewing tobacco. The leaves tasted dry and bitter, and my face puckered like a dried prune.

J started to laugh, “So what’s the verdict?”

Replying with a muffled voice as one does with a wad of coca leaves in your lip, “Not sure yet, but taste like shit!” I laugh back at him while handing him a beer as I crack mine open.

On up the mountain, we went along the hour and a half drive that would climb up a narrow rocky road that went through a few villages, through some streams, and a climb from 9,000 feet to around 13,000 for our current work site. The mountains in the area went higher, some at over 16,000 feet, which were in the upper elevations that we sometimes worked.

We were doing a geophysical survey and worked on the MT portion. MT stands for Magnetotellurics and is a method of measuring the earth’s conductivity at various depths and can read extreme depths of over 2000 meters. The purpose is to detect ore bodies deep within the geological structures of the Andes or wherever the survey is taking place, with the typical target being copper ore.

We started the survey at dark after the day shift finished with the electrical survey. We could use the same lines of the electrical survey to do the MT work. The bitch of it is that these lines were 4 kilometers long. When shit went down, it was usually with battery packs or sensors placed along the line, and that meant walking the line out in the dark to find the problem over some challenging terrain carrying a butt load of wire and gear so that you could fix the problem once you got there.

As we headed up the mountain, we spun around the corners.

“Bus!” I yelled as we whipped around a sharp turn and a large bus came around, edging the outer side of the road, wheels right on the edge of the downslope that went near vertical for several thousand feet to where the road was below. At one point along the journey, the rusted remains of a bus that had taken a tumble down one of the slopes were resting in this small drainage at the bottom of the slope. Its skeletal structure is crushed like an aluminum can with scattered bus parts along the path of its descent. Crosses and small alters of the Virgin Mary were set up near the point where the bus had exited the road and began its horror death roll down the mountain. It didn’t slow anyone driving down, though; everyone driving these roads always seemed to be racing along without concern that within inches, there was often a several thousand foot plummet just waiting for the slightest misjudgment.

“Hey J, did you ever ride with local drivers?” I asked as I felt the numbness of my mouth and a bit of a rush coming over my brain.

“Hell yeah! They’ll give you a ride, high?” J replied.

“Jesus, right man! The other day I was coming up with H, and we missed a turn. Holy Christ, man, he whipped the truck up to the goddamn edge of the road and did a three-point turn. I closed my eyes each time he pulled that truck to the edge to turn around. It was amazing, though, that he could stop that truck with the tires just teetering on the slope’s edge! Honestly, I held on to the door handle, just in case we started to go over so I could bail out. Hahaha!” I continued laughing like an evil Djinn, just discovering that he had condemned his first victim.

“Starting to feel that coca?” J asked.

“Yeah, a bit! Hahaha! Hey, up ahead, sheep gal.” I commented and pointed out a woman with some sheep up ahead.

“We don’t have time for this,” exclaimed J.

“Yeah, but you know if we don’t give her a ride, they will be shitty with us whenever we go through her village.” I reminded him.

As you head up the mountain, you often run into locals walking up or down the road between villages, and they often have sheep or goats with them. It’s expected that you will give them rides if you are going their way or as long as they don’t have too many animals with them. They’ll jump right in the truck with a few sheep or goats with you. People aren’t afraid about riding on top of your cab either, but what they do mind is if you zoom on past them and don’t bother even to offer them a lift, doing so does not leave a good impression on you. You can pay the consequences by being not treated as friendly with whatever village they are from. One problem with this whole ride-share expectation is that you get your truck full of smelly animals, and the locals also like to take advantage of whatever lunch you have packed with you.

“Alright, I tucked our lunches up here with me, she’s only got a couple of sheep, and her kid, shouldn’t be a problem,” I inform J as he pulls up next to them.

The girl gives us a welcoming smile as her kid jumps into the back seat while she shoves two sheep up on top of him and then climbs in herself. She rambles on in very rapid Spanish with some bizarre dialect, and we all converse the best we can to keep up good local PR. Meanwhile, one of the sheep finds an interest in climbing up in front with me, so I get to hold on to this smelly sheep for the next 20-minute ride to the next village. Once at the village, the woman shouts out for us to stop. I open my door, pouring my sheep onto the ground as a mother, kid, and the other sheep climb out the back. We start taking off back up the mountain, and I notice that the kid managed to find a bag of snacks that we had tucked into the back for later.

“The little bastard got our snacks!” I say to J.

“Thieving little brat! Oh well, just another day, hey? Plus” J is responding.

“I know, I know! We’re running out of time,” we both say simultaneously and laugh the whole thing off.

We arrive at the control van just as the day crew is packing their gear and getting ready to head in. The crew lead meets us and lets us know the line’s condition and where they had any troubles. As soon as we set up and run a test, we get a bad line read from the system. The digital display can give us a good indication of where the problem is. Still, it can also be a battery issue on either side of that section of the line, so it requires taking a couple of hundred meters worth of cable, four batteries, and extra extension hookups along with you for the repair to make sure that you can fix the problem once there. All this gear weighs a good 50 pounds, the cables I can loop across my body while the batteries and other parts I can stuff into this large canvas backpack. The good thing is that I can drive the truck up part of the way, then I have to pack it for another kilometer from where the line no longer crosses the road, but it is getting dark, and the temps are dropping. I throw the gear in the truck, throw my headlamp on my head, grab a handheld radio, and head out.

I take the truck to the last point on the line that the road crosses and look out into the darkness at the black cable leading off into what appears to be primarily level ground before it starts rising sharply some 500 meters from where I stop. I figure I can edge the truck along the line as the terrain looks barren enough that rocks and boulders won’t be a problem until the hill slope heads up further down the line.

Looking down at the Garmin GPS, I see I am near station 40E. I have to get to 55E with each section being one hundred meters, so I have to go at least 1.5km before I get to where we think our problem is, which is going up over a high ridge through some rough terrain and at 13000 feet with 50 pounds of gear stumbling around with a headlamp it’s an ass-kicker.

I pull the truck off the road and edge along the side of the cable, paying attention as I eek along, watching for the station markers as this is where the battery boxes and control units are, and I don’t want to run them over. If I can save myself 500 meters, it’s all the better—every bit matters. The lighting from the moon and my headlights create tricky shadows on the ground, and the flat terrain of this small plateau is crossed by narrow, deep ravines that are entirely hidden in the darkness. I find this out very quickly as I get about 100 meters in, and suddenly, the front end of my truck drops below the ground surface.

“Shit!” I cry out as I am now staring downward, and the front end of the truck is stuck down into this small ravine that is maybe 3 feet wide, but wide and deep enough to drop my front end into it. I am already in four low but trying to back out is useless. I call J on the radio.

“J, I got the truck hung up. Going to have to wait till morning when the others come up and pull it out. I’ll walk it from here, but it will be a bit.”

J replies, “You tried to drive it in there, didn’t you?”

I reply, “Ughh, yep.”

“You dumb ass. I told you about those ravines.” J says.

“I know, I know, I was hoping to save us some time, but I didn’t. Anyway, I’m loading up and heading out on foot. Let you know when I get to the station.” I tell him.

“Alright then, nothing to do about the truck until the morning, but get a move on because we’re running out of time.” J sarcastically replies as I start walking and cursing into the night.

I slowly make my way up the hill, clambering over ever-increasing size boulders and huffing at thinner and thinner air. At last, I crest the ridge, end up on another flat plateau, and start following the cable across a featureless plain that is primarily hardened sand and clay. I am keeping the headlamp aimed down at the line maybe 15 feet in front of me as I trudge along, sucking air through what feels like a straw when I hear noises up ahead.

Lifting my head, I peer into the darkness ahead and see many pairs of greenish glowing eyes staring back at me. Then I hear the jingle of bells and the baaing of sheep. Before long, I am in the midst of a flock of sheep, all of them calling out and jumping around when suddenly, I hear something more sinister. First, there is one growl followed by another, then a couple behind me in the darkness.

In front of me appear three large sheepdogs, all teeth bared in grimacing snarls of saliva dripping from their mouths and teeth. Soon there is a dog on each flank, and I can hear movement behind me. The sheep flock has fled past me, and now the dogs that are their protectors are here to do their job, and they don’t care that I’m American. I jump up and swing my gear around, screaming at the dogs in front of me, and they back into the night just as the ones from the sides and rear come in at me, snapping their jaws at my claves. I take a coil of cable from around my body and start swinging it at them and yelling as loud as I can, and they retreat, but I see their glowing eyes in the darkness circling again to come back at me. I get on the radio to J.

“J! J! I ran into some sheep then found the dogs, and I think these fuckers are intent on taking me out!”

J replies, “Pick up some rocks and start throwing them at them.”

“Thought of that one man, but there ain’t shit around but sand.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” J asks.

“Fuck if I know, man. I thought you should know if you didn’t hear from me.”

“Ok, well, good luck. Do what you can, but hurry up. We’re running out of night here!”

“Haha! You son of a bitch!” I laugh as I see the dogs now regrouping and starting back for me. “Here we go!”

I start swinging cables at them, shouting and screaming at them, which backs the ones in front of me away, but the scary thing is every time I do that, a couple will come from my side and back and damn near get ahold of one of my legs or feet before I pounce at them. Thinking that I’ve about had it, I suddenly hear whistling and calling off in the near darkness. The dogs break off and run over to a figure that appears out of the night. It’s a female sheepherder who has just now caught up with the whole show, saw me in my predicament, and saved me by the skin of my teeth. I feel so relieved and go to give her a big hug when the dogs start to growl. I kindly thank her and proceed on to the station.

“Hey J, I am at the station and see the problem. Need to switch the battery out and be on my way back.”

“Hey man, you’re still alive. So, what happened?”

I tell him the scoop, and he laughs. He then checks the system and finds that we are all good, giving me the go-ahead to head back.

“Just another day at the office. You had it with this?” J asks.

“Hell no,” I reply. “I wouldn’t trade this shit for anything.”