The Andes - Lake Suches
We say goodbye to our driver amid the field. After several hours the car no longer can give more. Now we are the ones to do something. A snow curtain unfolds ahead. Another one, when we raised our backpacks covered with dust. Each pot hole in the road supposed to eat up a dusty puff. The cloud still respects us. Turning our backs to the snow-covered castles one stops to have the sensation of being in the mountains. Endless plain. Some small houses are there in the middle. There we go. Before retaking the direction towards the snow we want to go by the town Suches. Town? A square surrounded by houses, an abandoned church. A head of a child leans out of one door. And disappears immediately. Speaking spanish opens the doors. A men show us the way toward the lake. Toward the snowy castles. The white poles we leave behind indicate that we move away from the frontier. The wind punishes us for entering its domains; the territories of gold and not much more. We descend to the shore of the wonderful Lake Suches leaving the creaks of the mine that does not seem to be one. We camp looking for the protection of a stone wall.
The awakening is beautiful. The disc of the moon still suspended on the water, the absolute transparency of the air and the frost that wrapped up our tent during the night is being sublimated quickly under the radiant sun.
Walking we see the Suches Lake almost all time.
We also find abandoned houses and we see the lake again when surrounding it by the hillsides.
We leave the lake but the soroche doesn"t abandon us. The ascent is constant and slow. Very slow. We surround the lake from above and look for paths that can guide us toward Pelechuco. The sensation of a bond with the footsteps that we leave behind, which is more and more difficult to break, which drags, everytime more strongly while we ascend and forces to rest frequently. Starting from noon the sky becomes overcast and falls gray on us. Snowstorm now rules. One, two …, not far from here; thunders over our heads. We are at the highest altitude. We can only go down. A pampa and another one. We cross the hillsides. A pass that takes to Pelechuco remains on the left. The shades become longer. A houses on the other side of the valley, a dog barking and llamas moving away as we come closer. The neck of the valley is long, too long to walk through before the evening. And it is not the way our way goes.
A woman is almost running downhill towards some houses. I do not reach her but seems a good idea to know where we are. The houses are very low. The first one that I approach to is filtering a fine threads of smoke through the walls. Bluish, they surround everything where they float. In almost imperceptible way I am in front of a man who looms up… out of the smoke. He tells me that I must move further away to reach other houses. He does not speak spanisk but the sense of his gestures is beyond question and the work of the dogs-messengers to warn anyone who lives there about the presence of the strangers is quite effective. I do not have to wait too much to meet a boy who clarifies where we are. We take the decision to camp in the vicinity. See you tomorrow!
The water has a strange strong taste. It is like an infusion of a rotten grass. It does not matter either. It gives more substance to our Knorr soups. They are in themselves disgusting. We prepare some coca brews to hold on until feel sleepy. The night is long. The sun will not appear in the morning until eight.
Blinded by its rays and still more when we see the surroundings in the daylight. The pale gold of the hillsides and the blue of the sky mark out the universes. The air is so crystalline and so unreal the splendor of the tonalities is that everything seems a hallucination. The spell still persists when we chat with the boy that we knew the last night. He came to show us the way and can stay with us for a while and we take the advantage of the possibility of investigating on the future of the people from here. He is fourteen years old, his name is Hugo Quispe Lopez and the place where we are is called Ch´api Juku. Castilian exquisite speech. He is very different in his maturity from the childish Europeans. He tells us about his job, responsibility to take care of the animals; male llamas, alpacas grazing in the pampas, the basic that is cultivated and manufactured here (choclo - maize, papa - potato, oca - something between carrot and potato, chuño - elaborated black potato) is enough for an extensive family, that all are relatives here, the children go to the school every day walking two hours, leaving at the dawn. Wearing rubber sandals, I look at the Hugo's feet.
An ice layer covers the puddles. It took us time to have breakfast. It is the time to say goodbye to Hugo. We cross the pampas to go up to reach a hill that separates us from the route that takes to Pelechuco. Many cairns indicate the way. A power of the mountains that drive to climb. The Hugo's words resonate with our steps, makeing to feel a need of reflection. We cannot leave this valley without it takes place.
A feeling of loathe to what is called our well-being; a conceptualization that successfully instilled into the ignorant masses is used to create links of subordination to the pharmaceutical industry in the world self-designated developed. The Hugo's grandfather, Mariano Quispe Huanca, is 100 years old and his grandmother died with more than 100. They do not know about doctors nor they want to. They are sovereign until the death. Free in their dependency of the environment in which they live and they do not have to pay taxes to so it can not tyrannize them. We who are in the habit that the states exert like tutors of the citizens, take decisions from a badly understood paternalism, without any doubt deliberate, not even we notice how, leaning on the discourse of the sovereignty our most intimate rights are violated. How the coercion is exerted so that we remain in the state of ignorance about everyone's faculties to decide our destinies. Thus from the cradle to the grave we are taken in to consume drugs that supposedly cure us. The more we are to cure, the merrier. And if necessary new needs will be created. This is a perfect market that supplies itself with the consumers and thus perpetuates itself. The pharma, the biggest industry of biological weapons, makes that we conceive our health depending on the consumption of the drugs that they provide us. Devilishing the others that are not profitable for them. To make that every day millions of people administer themselves aspirins goes through the discrediting of other remedies that would not need their seal. The coca leaves. A food and a very effective remedy. The only drawback is that it reduces the need for doctors and favors a reflective faculties. Too much to be the access to this resource free.