travels - bolivia

The Andes - Pelechuco

We go up again. When reaching the hill the spell extends. The sky diving in the lake Cololo that by the right side points at a distant horizon and by the left mirrors the whiteness of the Apolobamba glaciers. Down there our way meanders. The water is present in all possible ways. Cascades, little streams, pools. Fills the atmosphere, suggests. The majestic peaks dissolve in the valley, end in the lake.

At noon the clouds begin to appear and the wind gets up. We watch the sky route through which storms pass. This time they do not affect us.

A cairn that dominates over the pass on the way to Pelechuco makes us to bow down to the frozen giants.

Pelechuco, that from the times of the Incas (and even before) until well into the 20th century, was a part of a macroterritory of the complementary ethnic economies and of the contacts that reached, on the one hand, the Amazonia and, on the other, Cuzco. It was a badly understood modernity the one that left it out of the official maps and of the state policies but not out of the illusions of the humans. An end of the world whose fatality resides in the ins and outs of its historical past, an inheritance of the incaic royalty and a future that is forged destroying this legacy. This future can be seen following the construction of a highway that in the stretch between Queara and Pelechuco means to bury a pre-Hispanic route. A very high price for what is to be obtained however. What value need to have the excuses that sanction the destruction to become obvious?

The Pelechuco's nights are still illuminated with candles. Although the meals already are marked by the requirements of the gringos what, unfortunately, are tried to be satisfied. Still the tourist infrastructure shortage protects this zone from a predatory tourism that looks for comfort.

Meanwhile we will have to accommodate our plans to the prescribed requirements.

We are here without having passed through the immigration procedures. Crossing a symbolic border without nobody to record our destination. It is like a pipe dream of which we will have to wake up to continue the trip in Bolivia. We will have to make legal our presence. Maybe crossing the border once again: we must return to peruvian side. The Chejepampa fair seems suitable for this purpose. Fridays a bus leaves there at 3 a.m. from Pelechuco. So we have two days.

The route to Illo Illo. It is in the way towards Curva. Frequented by those that yearn for living experiences of an expedition. Although for the villagers it is a two-days walk, the gringos sort it out with mules and muleteers and take the double of time. Thus those athletic bodies, perfectly muscular for the purposes that an opulent world offers them, to consume more, are less efficient under the conditions where the value is not measured by the consumption capacity. But their vestiges remain. The children who go out to welcome us request chocolate and money. They define themselves as poor. And they aspire to be muleteers.