Sunday, February 10, 2013

Field Trip: Cerro Negro, First Attempt

Took me a few blocks to flag a cab, as things are always slow on Sunday morning.  Finally, I caught one headed the other direction.  He did a quick U and pulled up to the curb.

"Quire me lleve arriba a Las Lagunas?"  No, he didn't mind taking me as far as the Lakes.  Most drivers don't since you can pick up a couple of hours worth of fares in an hour.  It's usually twelve bucks to go all the way up to the lakes, 15K of bad cobble.  Not that there is such thing as good cobble, but the road to the Lagunas makes other cobble look like blacktop.  Beat up by washouts, sinkholes, and potholes, it has got to be rough on a car.

Half way up, the driver tells me it will be fifteen bucks, and I realize I've committed the cardinal sin of forgetting to ask and/or negotiate a price before the ride.

"Solo tengo doce dólares," I say -- I only have twelve bucks.  I tell him that's how much I always pay, emphasizing the "always."  He laughs, shakes his head, asks another question.  I figure he's either going to drop me three bucks short or take me all the way, but I'm pretty sure he knows he's busted trying to weasel an extra couple of dollars out of a tourist.  Doesn't seem to faze him though, and I don't hold it against him.

A couple of kilos uphill, he asks me how Ecuador and the States compare.  Fishing for something real, I tell him that family is more important here, and I think it's true.  Of course, it's not that we love our families any less, but work in this country is a distant second place, if that.  We are always running around and running out of time in the US.  Here, if you have a kid obligation, you don't go to work.  Simple as that.

"Why do you think it takes so long for anything to get done?" Ornella, our landlady, once said.  She'd made the statement perfectly matter-of-fact, not a criticism at all.  Your kid's school gets out at noon because of testing, a meeting, or a holiday?  If you're at work, so do you.

And as for children, Ecuadorians have infinitely more patience for their kids and kids' shenanigans -- even other people's.  There is no shushing, and there are no annoyed glances when the kids get loud in a restaurant.  Of course, we're conditioned to shush our kids, especially in public.

"They're kids.  They jump, run, play, and make noise.  That's what they do," says my driver.  I've heard this a dozen times from different people.  Or if I apologize for a kid's behavior, I'm always met with something like, "they're kids -- that's what they do."  This has to rank among my favorite aspects of Ecuadorian culture.  I can't wait to return to the states, let my kids run amok in a public office or restaurant, get the hairy eyeball from someone, and say, "tranquilo, man -- they're kids."

Just about at the top, my man stomps the breaks, barely avoiding a 3' deep, 6' wide sinkhole in the middle of the road, near the outflow of the Lagunas.  He laughs, shakes his head, and tells me "estamos aqui" -- we're here.  As if there were any question.  I fork over my twelve bucks, glad that I'd left the emergency ten in my pack, and hopped out of the car.

My target was Cerro Negro, since I had not been over there before.  Just 9' shorter than its sister peak Fuya Fuya, and a whisker under 14,000', Cerro Negro is on the opposite side of the biggest of the Lagunas de Mojandas.  And if your ride drops you off at the main lot from Otavalo, it requires an additional hour to two of road (on foot) to get to the trailhead.

Also, I didn't know where the trailhead was.  I could, however, make out what seemed to be -- and turned out to be a trace.  So I aimed for it, down the road.

The birds up in the paramo are sparse, but rewarding: Mountain Caracaras on summits, Andean Snipe exploding out of the grass, and Tyrant-shrikes disappearing into the brush.  But today, I'd catch the Great Sapphirewing, a spectacular blue hummer about the size of a chickadee.  It hung out feeding on flowers for about a minute, and was gone.  Didn't need binoculars to catch the iridescent blue wings.

After an hour of walk-running, I'd come around about a quarter of Caricocha, the big lake, and I found what seemed to be a trail.  I swung myself up into the paramo, looking for the human track.  (The only mammals up here are rabbits, mice, and fox -- hardly anything that would pack out the grass enough to see a trace.)  It was easy enough to make out, clearly beat down by foot traffic, but also covered by tall grass.  Wet grass.  And now I realized that I'd forgotten pants.  After a couple dozen previous trips to the high grasslands, you'd think I'd remember the pants.

No matter, I slogged into it, up a bit, but mostly along the contour.  Avoiding rabbit holes, I finally made it to a larger trail.  I also had my first look over into one of the other Lagunas, Yanococha.  By this time, the clouds started to roll in.

Turning towards the summit the trail, such as it was, became abruptly vertical.  I found that I had to search for the greenest tufts of paramo grass for handholds.  Finally, I made it to a vista of the big lake, the old trout farms, and Yanococha.  I also discovered that the road I'd left for the paramo continued up through the pass, and on to Tabacundo (roughly a quarter of the way to Quito via the PanAmerican Highway).

After a break, I continued tuft-swinging, slipping backwards, and occasionally scrambling over volcanic rock, until I found myself face-to-cliff with a wall.  There was one slippery looking route up around this wall, but the only handholds were vegetation.  I know enough not to depend on them.  Since I'd been out for three hours, the clouds had dropped visibility between 50 and 0%, and because I was alone, the father of two small children, I turned back.

Didn't take long to slip-n-slide back to the road, and jog back to the main lot.  There, I found the usual vendors in a half a dozen tents selling food, gloves, bags, and carnaval spray foam.  Figuring the food was the best idea, I settled on one spot and asked what was best.

"Esta todo bien," the lady said -- it's all good.  And now I was committed to this stand, so I ordered up a plate of gizzards, chicken tails, boiled corn, toasted corn, a little "salad," and good old chochos.  I actually like gizzards, though my mother and aunts had a monopoly on them for holidays, so growing up, I was gizzard-deprived.  The food was good, especially with the aji sauce.  (I declined the mayo.)  Chochos are a leguminous thing, a hugely important source of protein for people in these parts.  Growing wild in the high Andes, and now also cultivated, it comes from the seed-pod of a plant related to our Lupine, and you can see the resemblance.

I cleaned my plate, paid, and focused on the next problem: making it the next 15K down to Otavalo.  I've found that I like looking for rides, whether uphill with a bike or headed down on foot.  In the end it took one truck, 2K I'm guessing of jogging, and a second truck.  Not bad at all.  The first guy refused money, but the second guy accepted -- it's always good practice at least to offer something.  It took all of three minutes to catch one more cab for home, and that was that.

In total, from 9 til 1:30, I gained 4,000m or so, and shed it too, thanks to my feet and some friendly people driving trucks.  I'll try a different approach for Cerro Negro next time, and I know where to head.  Ideally, it will involve a bike as well.


 *****

As always, the pictures look better as a slide show -- click on one to start it.  Thanks for looking!


Looking back toward the main Otavalo entrance
It rains daily up here in February/March.
They did get this Toyota up the hill.



The road from the Otavalo side

Laguna Yanococha, my first view
The "trail"


Cliffed out




Chochos

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