Kassel Esta En Peru!: I Climbed My Mountain (a la Sound of Music—except not really because I literally did and the Mother Superior was being metaphorical)

From the main highway up to my little ole town of Huantar there is a 200 meter gain in altitude. In some ways, like at sea level, this is nothing, but in other ways, ways like lung capacity, this little ole altitude gain is a force needed to be reckoned with—and after about a month in site I decided that by golly, I was going to reckon.

Walking down the hill is about 40 minutes of relative ease. Yes, your knees occasionally ask if so much continuous down is truly necessary, but down in the key word there. Gravity is working in your favor, and every step downward brings the slightest increase in oxygen saturation. As it turns out, walking up does the exact opposite. Your knees are fine, but your thighs are cursing you to kingdom come and your lungs are so busy sucking up the available oxygen to deliver to your cursing thighs that they can’t be bothered to respond.

As a coping mechanism, I divided and named the various segments of my walk as a way to measure my distance.

Part 1: The road

The road is easy. It’s incline is reduced so that thirty-year-old cars with treadles tires can drive up without stalling. You walk along thinking, this ain’t so bad. You’re right. It’s not…yet.

Part 2: The swamp

You leave the road briefly to cut the distance off of a switchback. You delicately hop, skip, and leap across the less-swampy bits to reach the lightly marked goat trail. You start to go up and it hits you, you’re climbing up. But this portion is relatively short and before you know it you’re back on the road—but just to cross it so that you can come to

Part 3: Mordor

Black stones and rocks mark this barren landscape. There are few clumps of grass to reduce the chance of your boot slipping and yet you know there is nowhere to go but up. The ring must be destroyed after all.

Part 4: The part you always forget

Mordor thankfully is short (don’t Frodo and Sam wish they could have said that [last LOTR reference I promise, maybe]) and soon you’re back to the road only to remember that damn, you forgot about this part. It has the subsections of “False sense of security flat part” and “I think the road is just around this corner, oh wait no its not.” Once you get through this bit you reach the road for the last time until Huantar proper. You pause here. Casually you glance downward, not looking to see if a car is coming up, of course not, you don’t actually want a ride, this is good exercise, this is character-building, this is FUN, but just to stretch your back. In the back of your mind though you know. This is your last chance. You take one more step and there’s only one way up to Huantar—on your own two feet.

Part 5: The long part

This part is long (shocking). The first bit is steep and you pass such memorable points as “that place I saw a dead, bloated donkey,” “that place I got stabbed in the armpit with a thistle,” and “that part where I regret my decision to walk up.” Before long though you reach The Straight and Narrow. It is a long portion that is straight and narrow (I know that my naming abilities are simply astounding you all). It’s kind of awful though because there are no curves in the path so that you can wistfully imagine it will be easier just around the corner.

After the straight and narrow, you come to The Slides. Steep and rocky, you will inevitably slide down them a little bit. And in one of the great mysteries of the world, there is always one more segment than you remember.

Finally you come the top of the portion of The Slides, and it blissfully, mercifully “flat” (in comparison). Even better, the wall of the cemetery is within site. Home is so close you can almost taste it.

You pass the field that reminds you of a painting of Russian peasants working a field, you walk briefly under the shade of tall eucalyptus trees, you pick up a stone to deter a barking dog, you push yourself, huffing and puffing, up the final steps up the last hill, you ignore the women pointing at you and your red, sweating, stinking body, and at long last are walking the paved streets of Huantar.

I was too busy trying to breathe properly to take pictures of this particular hike, but enjoy some shots from other, less arduous climbs

Besos!