Lying in bed at the Hotel Inca in Chavin, my thoughts slowly coagulated to alert me of the truth: don´t open your eyes or you´ll puke. Justine and I were both afflicted with the notorious sorroche--altitude sickness. We did not understand why, because Chavin is at 3200 meters and we spent more than a week in Quito which is at 3000 meters and we hiked up to 5000 meters when we visited Cotopaxi... why oh why do we feel sick here in Chavin? Surely, it is the curse of the disturbed graves at Chavin de Huantar, ancient pre-Inca ceremonial site...surely the spirits are angry. In that moment of nausea and delirium, I did not have the mental capacity to think about homesickness, or things that I missed, but if I had, I would have missed: hot water, cooking my own food, potable water, clean bathrooms, central heating, people who can give directions, toilets that flush, salad.
Flash forward several days to where Justine and I are sitting across from each other at the California Cafe in Huaraz, cradling our hot cups of fancy loose leaf tea prepared in mini french presses and flipping through National Geographics as we await the arrival of our yuppie vegetarian food. The California Cafe is half-cafe, half-library with good literature, most of which is in English. Next to the National Geographics there are climbing magazines. On the walls, autographed pictures of musicians I´ve never heard of (but would probably like, of course) are interspersed with climbing posters of places I will surely someday climb (when I climb 5.13c, of course). When I go to the bathroom, not only is it clean, and not only does the toilet flush, but there is soap! and hot water! and paper towels! We spend several hours in the California Cafe reading books, reading magazines, sipping soup, sipping tea, listening to Radiohead, listening to our stomachs´ feeble attempts at digestion.
In between lying sick in bed and portaling into creature comforts at the California Cafe, we decided it would be an excellent idea to join our new group of friends on a two-day 35km backpacking trip that starts in Huaraz, crosses a pass of about 5000 meters elevation, and finally drops down into Chavin. Chavin is where our advisor Prof. John Rick works, and our new friends are his vivacious young Stanford students that he brought along to help him excavate (he´s an archeologist). Therefore, the day after lying so sick in bed that opening our eyes was a mortal effort, we took a van to Huaraz with our new friends. The next day, we loaded up our packs with rented gear and trail mix and put our feet to the dirt. We hiked strong, keeping up fine despite the fact that we had only eaten one (small) meal in the past two and a half days. I marveled at my body´s ability to recover and gazed in awe at the jagged, snow capped mountains we were walking between. I felt like I was in search for a new favorite place, and maybe, just maybe I would find it on this weekend hike. The rocks on the path had surely started working their abrasive ways on my feet, but at this point I did not notice because I was floating and everything was perfect--
--then we ate lunch. Lunch was delicious, but soon after my stomach started aching, then it started stabbing, and then it felt like I had puppies growing inside of me and they were kicking and biting. And then it felt like I had an olympic gymnastics team inside me, and they were practicing very, very hard. Meanwhile, Justine´s stomach started hurting too. In our personal levels of pain, we trudged along, step by weary step, until we reached our campsite for the night. Our fun new friends made presumably tasty food on the camp stove, but we were cloistered in our tent ready for sleep to numb the pain long before food was ready. We wouldn´t have wanted any anyway.
The next morning, our stomachs were slightly better--for me, it was back to puppies. Anyway, we decided that puppies in our stomachs was no way to go about hiking, and since we were still closer to Huaraz than to Chavin, and since the second leg of the hike was supposed to be the steeper one, we decided to let our friends continue on and we would return (downhill!) to Huaraz at our own stomach-dictated pace. We got back to Huaraz that evening, had dinner, slept for 14 hours, woke up, looked for a place to eat brunch, and that´s how we found ourselves at the California Cafe, sipping on tea and reading National Geographic, while we awaited the arrival of our yuppie vegetarian food.
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A shorter re-telling of the same story: Blast! After a month and a half of absolutely perfect health, we finally got sick! Fail!
(Now, we are back in Chavin, still not fully recovered, but with enough energy to be awake at this hour --8:30pm-- and interviewing some people for our research. We will go back up to Huaraz in a few days and we will rent a bouldering pad from Andean Sky Expeditions and go bouldering!!!!!)
Later, I will tell stories of cursed towns, guinea pigs, and bones. But for now, bastante.
Con mucho cariño,
Anita
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