May
14th,
2018
Hot
and sunny, no cloud and very hot again
It
is quite cool in the shade of the deep valley as I cycle downhill
away from Quichuas. The stunningly beautiful scenery continues as the
road descends adjacent to the river. I stop frequently to photograph
the view in both directions, upstream and downstream.
There
are more vehicles on the road today, it being a work day. They cause
a cloud of eye stinging dust every time they pass. They are nearly
all very friendly though with waves and shouts of Buenas dias or
Hola! Getting into the sun the temperature immediately changes and it
starts to get hot. I stop at a tiny roadside cafe and watch the
Disney film, The Incredibles with a toddler. It is in Spanish but
that doesn;t matter, I know the story well. I am served a large cup
of some sort of coffee and make sandwiches out of an avocado and two
bread baps. The avocados are not long off the tree for the cafe has
an avocado orchard behind it. Cost for my breakfast, four Soles, just
under a pound.
Carrying
on, I stop when a small bird goes into a tree by the roadside. Up to
now birds have been few and far between. There isn't even any song or
calls except for Scrub Blackbirds, which up to now have been the most
frequent bird. Red-eyed
Vireo
goes onto the Green year list! Brilliant and very unexpected, I feel
thrilled to have a bird that I have seen in Britain, despite being an
American bird.
The
valley stretches out in places allowing room for maize crops and
avocado orchards. Here the river widens and large gravel banks
appear. In other places there is massive erosion of the hillsides and
the road has parts where muddy, gravel-filled slurry covers the road,
possibly the aftermath of Saturday's thunderstorms. Lorries and other
vehicles have flattened these parts somewhat but they are still
awkward to pass. One such area is quite long and the only way to get
past it is by pushing the bike through muddy water and thick mud. It
covers my ankles and leaves the bike's wheels caked in mud. I get to
wash it off at a ford about a mile later where a lady is washing her
clothes in the river.
All
of these long sections of gravel deposits in the river makes for a
useful resource for building and road repair and I see three places
where large diggers and lorries are collecting gravel of different
sizes, sorted by a large metal grid. One of these places has a
machine that sounds like an old steam locomotive as it takes gravel
up to a conveyor belt. I stop here because despite the noise of the
engine I can hear parrots. Then I see them, large red-headed parrots
are in the trees on the other side of the river. I struggle to get a
photograph of them as they fly across the gravel collecting area and
are gone. Red in the wing and the call, a repeated single syllable
note tells me that this a flock of around a dozen Scarlet-fronted
Parakeets.
Later two soaring Black-chested Buzzard Eagles fly high overhead.
Their tails seem to merge into their wings in the way that I saw
Fan-tailed ravens do last year at Masada in Israel. An American
Kestrel starts to mob one of the them and they drift away.
A
very sad sight awaits as I come around a bend at one very large
landslip area. In the river at the base of it there is a bus, upside
down wrecked in the water. I ask some workers what happened and they
tell of the bus trying to negotiate the landslip before the local
heavy diggers had arrived to deal with it and here was the result.
Only the driver was in the bus and he was killed. The passengers had
got out while he tried to get through.
It
is quite a shock to see the wreck and to know that someone died in
it. I imagine what it must have been like for the driver. Further on
I come to a section of road that takes a very steep and seemingly
never ending course to avoid the huge, eroded areas from the river up
the hill. My day has just got harder as I start the long push. On
either side of the river there are large areas of eroding rock. On
the west side to my right, the rock is a soft sandstone type, bright
red in colour and the erosion goes back all the way up a valley with
a steep incline cut into gullies in a striking manner. There is a
strong, muddy waterfall within it and a delta of debris as the stream
nears the river. On my side the rock is a mixture of colours with
some reds, some greys and some dazzlingly white deposits. All the
rocks are quite soft and the road, especially where an inland bend
occurs, has rocky debris that has totally destroyed the surface
veneer of tarmac. By now I am back up at 9,000 feet, the height I
started at at Quichuas. Occasional cars and lorries pass and nearly
everyone gives a friendly greeting. One car slows and a hand comes
out to give me . . . an orange! Muchas gracias! It is hot so must
have been on the dashboard but I wolf it down and rejoice in the
timing of the gift and the nature in which it was given. I needed
that. No pips. It's my lucky day.
After
an hour and a half of pushing the road descends but only to go
through a small village of two occupied houses and a dozen or so
empty, ruined ones. Up again for another couple of kilometres and
then a long, twisty downward stretch that aches my wrists as I brake
hard and avoid fallen rocks, potholes and severe bumpy sections. All
the time there is a dizzying drop just off the edge of the road that
precipitously goes down to the river, hundreds of feet below.
Turning
a large bend I come across three small shrines. I have seen quite a
few of these, around two feet high each with a gabled roof and a box
like structure, usually empty but sometimes with flowers or a toy.
These are particularly poignant as they all occurred on the same
date, last Boxing day, the 26th
of December 2017. Maybe the three were friends returning home when
disaster struck and for some reason over the edge of the road they
went. The cliff here is very high and any error would be fatal.
Diego, Carlos and Yuliana would have no chance.
From
this sad point and after a tricky narrowing of the road where, once
more, water has eroded most of it away and where I wait as a large
lorry safely negotiates the awkward bend, the road rises for a while
before descending into the village of Anco. At last, after a hard day
and around twenty five miles that seems like fifty, I have reached my
destination village. I quickly find a hostel and once in the
courtyard wait for the proprietor. A young ten year old boy, Hose
arrives to wash the sheets taken from the hostel's beds. Hose has a
helper today, me and together we pummel the sheets in a large stone
sink with cold water and detergent, rinse them out, squeeze out what
water we can and put them all on the various washing lines. Two other
children arrive, younger than Hose, his sister, Diana and his
brother, Marco. Diana has cheap rubber shoes that have large holes in
the toes and she enjoys showing off by climbing the stair railings
and using the balcony railings as a climbing frame. Diana looks about
six years old. Marco could be a twin. He looks around the same age as
Diana and he joins in with the railing antics. They have a sort of
competition over who can stretch the furthest between railings and
make their way down the stairs with the least touches.
They
all leave after telling me that their father will come after he has
returned from his work up in the mountains near to a large lagoon.
Three hours later, around six thirty in the evening, a young man of
around fifteen arrives on a motor bike, asks me for twenty Soles for
the room and at last I have a bed. He leaves and I shut the door of
my room in order to go and find a young couple who had been asking
about having a room about an hour ago. Realising that I need some
cash for a meal and having put the bike in my little bedroom, I go
back to get some. The door is locked and I have no key! Oh great, if
no one returns I will have to sleep in another of their rooms and get
my stuff in the morning. After searching for the young couple with no
success I lie down on a bed in an adjacent room and wait. An hour
later the whole family arrive and I am reunited with my incarcerated
bike. By now I am too tired to eat and I go quickly to bed.
Green
Year list : 193 birds average new birds to list per day : 4.39
birds
Distance
walked : 28.85 miles
elevation
: up 5,336 feet, down 6,164 feet
altitude
: 8,040 feet
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