English

14-Oct-2007 -- Después de una noche de fiesta entre las cervezas, baile y la resaca, partimos a conquistar nuestro anhelado por varias semanas atrás “punto”. Nuestra expedición estaba conformada por 01 camioneta, 04 mujeres y 02 varones; con botellas de agua, un poco de frutas, pan y chocolate y el GPS, nos enrumbamos hacia nuestra primera parada el pequeño poblado de Quinua, buscamos comprar algunas cosas para el camino y partimos a nuestra segunda parada el poblado de Tambo, en el camino nos detuvo un patrullero y un policía le solicitó mostrar los papeles del carro y el permiso de conducir de nuestro conductor y entusiasta conquistador René Deben, quien manifestó haber dejado olvidado el permiso en la casa de la fiesta de la noche anterior, mientras otro policía conversaba con Minna y Pauline, los policías nos recomendaron llevar con nosotros todos los documentos para no tener problemas.

Continuamos el viaje encontramos una laguna en el camino y bajamos a tomarnos fotos hacía frío alrededor, los niños estaban jugando fútbol, llegamos a Tambo y podíamos sentir el llamado de nuestro punto el GPS nos indicaba la cercanía de él; almorzamos y salimos rumbo a San Miguel en el camino encontraríamos nuestro “Punto” buscamos muchas curvas en el camino para bajar del carro y caminar; encontramos el primer lugar perfecto el GPS nos indicaba 1.2 Km. Subimos por un cerro y tuvimos la mala suerte de no había otra forma de continuar que bajando nuevamente y volver a empezar otro cerro mucho mas alto con pendientes muy grandes, terrenos recién cosechados que a veces nos hacía retroceder algunos metros abajo, después de escalar la mitad del cerro nos dimos cuenta que aun faltaban los 800 metros según el GPS, igual que cuando empezamos a subirlo y que era mas seguro continuar cuesta arriba que bajarlo, así que proseguimos cuesta arriba Greet GPS en mano junto con René comandaban la expedición seguido de Minna, Pauline, Martha y siempre muy atrás Toño.

Llegando a la cima el GPS nos daba que faltaban 450 m. pero, ups! nuevamente el mismo problema tomamos el camino equivocado, estuvimos frente al punto muy cerca, sin poder avanzar caminamos un trecho y encontramos una ruta segura para bajar el enorme cerro, eran casi 4 horas de caminata y el sol nos hacía acelerar el paso llegamos a la carretera y decidimos llegar a San Miguel, Toño no podía caminar mas y se sentó a esperar el carro, llegamos a San Miguel y decidimos buscar nuestro Punto la mañana siguiente, no quedando de otra que de buscar un hotel y comida, la comida de la noche nos diezmó, sufrimos la baja de Pauline y un Toño con muchas dudas de querer seguir caminando, llegamos al lugar de partida que daría el inicio de la nueva caminata eran 800 m. esta vez el GPS nos decía que cada vez estábamos en la dirección correcta en la misma dirección paralela y conseguíamos estar muy, muy cerca – alguien gritó- ¡ faltan pocos metros!, mientras seguíamos cuesta arriba el cerro que albergaba nuestro punto, y cada vez mas y mas cerca hasta que al fin faltaban 5 metros, pero encontrar el punto exacto fue algo confuso dimos vueltas en un mismo lugar tratando de que el GPS marque el 0 m. hasta que al fin teníamos la coordenada exacta conquistando así el primero de muchos puntos que tenemos por conquistar en el Perú, esta travesía nos la inspiró René y Greet después de retornar de su viaje a Cuzco, intentamos realizarla antes con dos grandes amigos también Europeos Mathieu alias mateito y Marc alias Shipimbito. Seguiremos contando mas historia luego.

Toñito

English

14-Oct-2007 -- Al punto (point in Spanish)… and what the … is that??? Yes that was the first thought too… but once you get into it, it’s just impossible to stop and by the time you reach the first one, you already start planning for the next one. I tell you; once you find one… you’re hooked. So, I am proud to announce that this is our first “punto” and we are officially hooked…

At this point an introduction would be at its place, don’t you think? We have Greet and Rene… a very sweet Belgium couple that got us into this mess in the first place. Then we have Antonio from Peru, a super trooper who had the toughest time of his life…..but in the end he loved it. The next one is Marta, also a Peruvian and a great person with a lot of energy. Then we continue with the invasion of the Belgians, which makes Pauline next in line. She is a nutcase that everybody wants to be around. Last, me, Minna a Finish girl who likes adventures.

Now to our trip, which took 2 days, but was a blast!

We started from a town called Ayacucho early in the morning, to drive 4 hours up to a town called San Miguel. It was a very beautiful journey up and down the mountains with views that can only be imagined in the wildest dreams. The condition of the road after Quinua didn’t make it easy for Rene to drive, but as he is a good driver, we made it all the way.

Once we got closer to San Miguel, we also got closer to the famous “punto” that we were searching for with so much enthusiasm and eager. More or less 5-8 km before the town, we noticed that we were getting close to our target. We parked the car and started walking up the hill on our left side. At this point our altitude was about 2800 m and the GPS told us that our destination was on an altitude of 3200 m, which made us realize that we had to climb quite a bit. After a while, we got up to a hill, and for our disappointment we could also see a big canyon in between us and our target.

So, what did we do?! We walked back down another way to then climb back up on the other side. This made us go back to the same road we parked the car but a little bit further along it, which made us see that we could have driven a little bit further before climbing, but it was to late for that now… so looking at it the positive way, we just warmed up for our big journey! What we didn’t know was to come… by knowing it now, we can really consider the first climb a warm up.

We began to walk up the hill again, but this time on the right side of the canyon. The start was not bad… beautiful views and amazing vegetation around us. Like a jungle. After a while the hill was getting steeper and steeper, and our so called jungle started to fade away. Before we knew it, we were standing in front of a hill that was steeper than steep!

So what did we do??? We started climbing it of course, since we all had decided to find our “punto” that day, and at that point the hill didn’t seem that high, we thought!......but the reality did hit us in the face once we got up some hundred meters climbing with both our feet and hands…..this was not a hill, it was a mountain! Super troopers as we are, we didn’t stop, but continued further up towards our goal. Half way up some of us were already ready to quit, but found the energy from “god knows where” to continue. Once up at the so called “hill”, we continued walking along the top towards the right direction… but only to find out that we were up for another disappointment for that day. Can you imagine… another canyon, and it came up out of nowhere! How much more were we supposed to take???

At this time the clock was already 5 pm and the sun would set in 1 hour, so we all knew there was no way to get to the other side in time and back down again before dark. We walked back down, and headed with the car towards San Miguel. We were not going to give up… no!!! The next day would be a new day with loaded batteries.

We woke up early for our final attempt to concur our mountain… Unfortunately the dinner of the night before had made a trick on one of our stomachs… which made it impossible for Pauline to continue. It was really the third disappointment of our journey; we wanted to reach our final destination all together… Also Antonio was in doubt… the day before he was going through the toughest time of his life and felt more like joining Pauline than climbing another mountain. But again, he got strength and energy from “god (again) knows where” to come along for this final squish.

Yep, so up we went again… this time hoping for no more canyons or other impossible road blocks… because this time we had a time limit. We had to be home before dark… The first climb was easy… we were heading to our point quickly. On the way we met a big bunch of working men, who decided to greet us girls with some nasty words and whistles……but yeah, we all know how construction-workers are, don’t we… At this point we took a right turn up instead of going to the left where we came from the day before… this was a smart move… We continued walking up with lots of vegetation on both sides of the path... we had found a jungle again. We followed a small stream that we knew was sooner or later to become the canyon itself. The views were amazing; a stream with small water falls every now and then, birds singing, the sun shining and views of beautiful mountains on both sides… what more can you ask for??

As the day before… our jungle faded away and again we were climbing up a steep mountain with only dry grass and trees… Fortunately this time we were much closer to our target, the famous “punto”. Our GPS was showing us that we were almost reaching our destination; we were walking straight towards it. The eager to concur our point made us almost run up the last part!

Except for Antonio, his energy boost was finished; he sat down and looked like he never would get up again. Well, luckily for him, once we started to search for the specific 0 point/m… we were getting closer and closer to where Antonio dug down his roots… At this time we all started laughing… Is Antonio sitting on the “punto”???!!!

In the end… the spot was more or less 1-2 m from where he was sitting…Wuhuuuuuuuu!!! We made it!!!

Next we took a picture of the GPS showing the right coordinates and 0 m to go… and sat down happy to eat some chaplas (Peruvian bread), fruit and drink some water… which was needed after this 2 hour climb up. After gathering our strength again…we started going down. The route was totally Indiana Jones and adventure… We climbed down in the canyon. It was amazingly beautiful, but it also had a few pretty steep drops…

In the car we found a very sleepy but happy patient, whose day hadn’t been a waste of time… she had some nice talks with the local people from the village that had been taking great care of her…

After some pictures of all of us at the car… we said goodbye to the local people and started up to drive towards our next destination… home sweet home and a warm shower.

I can tell you…we were VERY dirty…

Finally we arrived back in our home town, Ayacucho, at 4 pm… very happy, dirty and tired.

THE END

Minna

Dankjewel Christoph (!13°S 72°W) 't Was de MAX!

Greet en René