Beautiful and tormenting moments

Beautiful moments

Travelling has its ups and downs. Now for the ups.

Climbing a mountain face in the Andes bordering Chile and Argentina, about 100m off the ground, and this black condor starts circling overhead, literally a few meters overhead. I can see its head craning forward as it stares down; its wingspan is probably twice my arm span.

A few days later, on a higher route, we’re looking down on a pair of condors, with different wing patterns - one a jagged brown wing tip. A lovely couple. I looked back over the route we had climbed that day - about 2 miles from our camp at 2700m above sea level, for a gruelling hour and half up a steep scree slope (for every step you take up, the mountain puts you back half a step), topped off by a vertical climb of about 150m, taking us to an altitude of 3200m. It had taken about 5 hours in total. The condors covered this ground in about 20 seconds.

There are many lizards here, crawling easily over the rock faces that we labour over for hours. It was a beautiful place to camp. In the mountains, alongside a stream. The sky was so clear at night and packed with an inconceivable number of stars. It was a full moon whilst we were there, and some guys went climbing by moonlight. It was noticeable how every day the moon was an hour later than the day before when it crept up over the opposite mountains.

The power of the sun continues to amaze me. Bathing in the stream was a glorious and freezing experience, yet even without a towel, we would dry within minutes. However, when the sun drops the temperature plummets, and the shorts and t-shirts are rapidly exchanged for full thermals, several jumpers, a hat and a campfire.

I’ve pushed my climbing standards. I’ve been able to move my body in ways that I didn’t know I could do, and also my mind - putting myself into daunting situations, and having the composure and control to pull myself through. I love this kind of self awareness and development.

This morning I saw a tiny black frog, so slimy looking. Yesterday we saw lots of large butterflies, with dark bottom side of wings, but bright blue (almost fluorescent) upper side, so that it looks like they are flashing when they fly. A humming bird, glistening green as it hovered in front of its flower.

We also learn to appreciate the little things: the taste of good food; a little bit of meat in our mostly vegetarian diet; water clean enough to wash in; water clean enough to drink; the first shower in 10 days; the first laundry in 3 weeks.

Tormenting moments

This is my attempt at a half Spanish pun, as “la tormenta” means storm in Spanish which is the cause of some of the anguish.

Sunday gone, we went to find a climbing area walking for about 90 minutes. About half way there, the scorching sun disappeared to be replaced by a fierce storm. Thankfully, we were prepared unlike the day before. We’d gotten so used to good weather all the time so that we didn’t carry waterproofs anymore. We’d walked to a roadside café for a few beers to while away a Saturday afternoon. We experienced this sudden change of weather there. All of a sudden it was hailing all around us. Fortunately we had a bar of soap on us, so stripped off our t-shirts to make the most of the opportunity to get clean. It was a long and cold walk back.

So on the Sunday, we got out macs on as soon as the storm began. They didn’t help much. We were crossing some very marshy territory so got wet from above and below, feeling the trickles of cold rain running down inside our macs and our shoes. After bashing our way through a bit of jungle, we arrived at the cliff faces which were overhanging and so sheltered from the rain. We built a fire out of any dry wood we could find, and spent the next two hours, stripped down to our boxers, drying our clothes over the fire. We stunk of smoke but we were dry, and we fed ourselves as well. It was a pleasant couple of hours. Once dry, we were full of enough spirit to begin climbing.

Two days ago I managed to do some laundry and had it hanging to dry in the truck yesterday as we drove. It was fully dry in the afternoon and so I put it away in my locker. However, unbeknownst to me, my locker leaks in heavy rain, thus soaking my newly dried laundry, as well as my dry shoes and some of my travel documents and money. Very vexing.

This latest storm began yesterday afternoon. We were at a service station when the sudden change came. The sun went, the sky brooded then flashed. The thunder felt like it shook the building - or maybe it was just me jumping in my seat. The rain started, the hail started; cars were trying to shelter under the roof of the forecourt. The wind whipped around, catching all those still outside under the shelter of the patio. Even the locals seemed amazed at the ferocity of this storm. Then water started gushing down the inside of the walls, soaking the goods inside, and flooding the floor. It started running from the light fittings - quite scary until the power went down. The storm lasted half an hour before dying away. Since then we’ve had fairly constant rain, making camping less pleasurable than usual and making climbing not much fun either. This is about our fourth day of rain in a row - it will be interesting to see how the moods in our group develop if this weather continues - we’re cooped up in any dry spaces we can find. Privacy is scarce.

The spider. I awoke in the night needing the loo. It was still raining so I didn’t really want to get up, but I had to. So I dressed and opened the inner tent. Sitting right on the zip of the outer tent was a spider, large and very ugly. Now, I’m not a fan of small nice looking spiders at the best of times so this beast sitting on guard of my outer zip, and perched nicely to fall in to my inner tent was not at all welcome. There were other bugs as well, flying directly towards my face where my head torch was placed. Some cricket like creature inside, jumping around but unable to get out. There was a stick in my porch so I opened my inner tent only wide enough for my hand to reach through, and used this stick to try to move this spider. I could feel the spider’s weight on the stick. He deftly stepped over my stick and stayed where he was. I was busting for the loo. After a bit of tug o’ war, I managed to wrestle the fiend to the ground where I lost site of him. My rain coat was also on this ground, so I headed into the rain with no coat for a bit of relief. On returning to my tent Sid was now taking shelter on my rain coat. I grabbed a corner of the coat, took it way from the tent, held it as far away from me as I could and gave it a shake. I didn’t see him fall, but I inspected the coat and couldn’t see him any longer. I rushed back inside my tent and zipped up, taking the coat with me. I tried to sleep, but wondered if the critter had somehow managed to hide in the sleeves of my coat and was now making nest in my tent. Grrr.

This final tormenting moment is for the protagonist rather than myself. Camping by a farm in the countryside, five bulls were herded past us by a few local gauchos who gestured to us to follow them. We spent the next hour watching these bulls get castrated - noticing the fight in the bull as the farmers lassoed and bound them, in contrast to their more docile response after the deed.