The bus finally came at about 1:30 in the A.M. That was 11 total hours of waiting by the side of a dirt road at over 15,000 feet. When the first bus got to us, they were full. The second bus, right on it's tail was also full, but being the last bus, they let us on. There were no seats so we layed down in the pitch dark aisle [To illustrate the effects of altitude playing with my brain during the original writing, both here, and below, aisle was referred to as an 'isle'.]between groggy passengers mumbling their annoyances.
After an unmeasurable amount of time, we came to a 'stop' and people vacated seats. I got an aisle seat and Joe got the way back.
At about 5:30 the onboard televisions blasted to life with, we guess, some sort of morning pep-wake-up show that consisted of scantily clad women singing various songs of a highly questionable caliber. Shortly after this we were ejected onto the early morning streets of Cotihuasi, left to fend for ourselves. After a few false starts we found a 'hotel'. For less than $5 (US) a night, I won't really complain. No hot water. However, tonight's accomidations make last night's hotel room seem etc etc. Apparently, the we are in tonight is free!? After crashing at Hotel Don Luga, and awaking at 9 thinking it was late afternoon, we did a bit of a walkabout Cotihuasi. We were immediately led, upon request, to internet access where I fired off a few 'we're ok' notes. Working at the internet place was a girl who insisted on taking us to the tourist office. She spoke english which was most helpful.
Anyway, she pointed us towards Pampamarca (pronounced pom-pa-mock), which is, 3 hours by bus later, where we are now. Joe is wicked pissed since we didn't hike and camp by las aguas calientes. I was all in favor of this plan, but the locals were against it on account of very steep cliffs in the dark. I tended to agree with them, but Joe insisted that we had climbed a 21,000 foot mountain. I tried to reason that such a feet is not insurance against a 4000 meter plunge--but reason doesn't always work. The ride up here on the bus, our first daylight-hours bus ride in Peru, was flipping amazing. Canon del Cotihuasis--whether, as the locals claim, it is the deepest (4000m ~ 13,000 feet!) canyon in the world, or not--is beautiful. Take the Grand Canyon, multiply it's dimensions by 2 or 3, add dense vegetation with a cacti hint to it, take out the Winnebagos and the youth groups, replace them with small villages connected by insane dirt roads and that is the short of Canon del Cotihuasis. Of course there is much more to it than that. These are just the impressions gathered from within a van-bus overfilled with people. I am regretting that we didn't climb Nevado Solimana--we could see the rout we would have taken from the bus as we wound up countless switchbacks, scaring bobcat, wildcat, and sheep dogs, llamas and various other mammals and non-mammals.
I guess I should talk about the climb, that being the impetus for our Peru trip. I barely slept the night before and we set the alarm for 4 in the A.M. It is quite cold at 4 in the morning at seventeen and one half thousand feet above the statistically determined sea level. We roused ourselves into our gear and exited the tent, quickly strapping on crampons, donning gaiters and packs, and we were off. The day before we had done a short hike up to just over 18,000 feet where we had turned back due to possible late afternoon avalanche danger. So now, in the glimmering pre-dawn, we followed our trakcs up to the side of the soft avalanche snow. We decided that an avalanche wasn't likely just now, so we blazed ahead. Following the previous day's progress through the soft snow was difficult. But when we reached the end of our tracks it became damned near impossible. 5 or 6 thrashes was enough to exhaust. Higher on the mountain, depending on the grade, climbing was done via counting. 10, 15, or 20 sometimes 30 steps. But never 5! That made this (Hell Hill I think Joe dubbed it) the least pleasant part of the climb.
