Down in the jungles it was the season of rains and floods. In Chachapoyas, the barren Sierra town about 8,000 feet up in the Andes, there were also rains, cold and dismal, falling from clouds that billowed up every afternoon to incredible heights.
I had flown to Chachapoyas from the low-lying jungle town of Moyobamba—a journey of perhaps forty-five minutes by air, but which Sandoval, my Indian guide, had traveled on foot, up from steamy forests over high mountain passes and glaciered punas. One sleeps in caves on the journey and eats gracefully what meagre food one can buy on the trail. Food in this remote region is not plentiful, an suspicious, if not downright hostile, Indians are reluctant to sell.
Sandoval’s journey required ten days, and he arrived in the Sierra town thin and tired, needing food and rest.
My days of wailing had been unhappy; the populate was unaccustomed to Gringas—I think I was the only one the newly inaugurated little airline had ever brought, except perhaps a missionary whom the mixed blood Peruvian (an Catholic) populate could understand. My reputation got off to a bad start from the moment I arrived.
The tiny one-motored plane deposited me on a ragged field on the top of a mountain. On the top of another mountain in the distance was the town of red-tiled roofs, gleaming brightly in the late afternoon sun. It looked a little like a Chinese village, and I was glad to be out of the jungles. Our expedition was dragging on to unforeseen lengths up and down and across the Andes, into remote corners of the Amazonas. It was delicious to be in cold mountain air again.
An old, ponchoed Indian picked up my stained and battered duffle bags and a sheaf of feathered war arrows I had collected in savage Indian country. He led me to a saddle waiting pony. I hadn’t foreseen riding that way from the plane; so, as I mounted, my skirt quite naturally went up over my knees, which were bare. (I hadn’t seen a pair of stockings in something like a year.) A handsome Guardia Civil, Indian and hawk-like, muttered,“Que escandalo! Showing her knees!”
All the way down the mountain and up the next I kept vainly pulling my skirt down over my knees, and so did the old Indian—disapprovingly. By the next morning my reputation in the little town was gone. The mountain Indian women, whose costumes stem from the court of Louis XIV—huge gypsy skirts and innumerable petticoats—thought my short ones indecent. Perhaps I was a little mad; also, I might be a witch because the feather rumor got twisted into a story that I wore them on my head. Fancy! Feathers on her head!
The only available room in the lone inn was the most cheerless place it has ever been my lot to spend two weeks. It faced a barren courtyard through which there was incessant traffic. The whitewashed room had a large door, but was completely innocent of windows. It was rather like living in a Fifth Avenue show-window. And the food was, to say the least, indifferent.
It was with great anticipation that Sandoval and I, after he had rested, made our plans for departure. On his way over the mountains he had heard that the rare silver-grey bear which we sought was to be found about a week’s journey to the south, on the edge of a great, unexplored territory. A sub-prefect of a wayside village had told him that, sin duda, if we made that journey, our weary search would be over. News had come to him that a campesino, a peasant, had captured a baby bear and was bringing it up in his own house.
So we planned the two weeks’ mule trip. Food, of course, was the first consideration in that remote region. For two days we haunted the open market, rising in the cold of early morning to get the best of anything obtainable. We bought flour, dried beans—the big kind called paillaires and the small, black, spotted ones—from old, bright-eyed Indian women in brilliant skirts and striped shawls, over which fell long black braids. We stocked up well on the ubiquitous fideos—spaghetti—as that, like the beans, was something easily carried without spoiling. That factor had to be considered, since we should shuttle down to the jungles and up into the mountains again many times before the journey would be finished, running the gamut of many climates. What a boon American dehydrated food would have been to us then!
Rice and onions were a good stand-by. Rock salt, the hot red pepper known as ahi, and aho, which is garlic, we bought in small quantity. A little dried mutton was available, which even when cooked a long time defies the stoutest of teeth, but does impart a sort of flavor to beans and spaghetti. There was a curious item of which we bought a little as an experiment…dried frozen potatoes. The Indians peel and quarter them, then leave them on a convenient glacier to freeze. It seems not to matter to these hardy souls who play futbol at 14,000 feet that their Frigidaire may be a matter of many miles away. We didn’t care much for this delicacy, finding it rather flat in taste. We did buy goat’s milk cheese—a white, spongy kind with a mild flavor which was really excellent. We risked taking this with us in spite of the warning that unpasteurized goat’s milk might carry Malta fever.
Finally, the afternoon before we were to start, we purchased a supply of round, flat buns, and a large chunk of beef which we took to the inn and persuaded the Indian cook to pot-roast for use in a clay olla. We spent a long time in consultation over the question of eggs, but neither of us could devise a way in which they could be carried in saddle bags, or in the mule packs.
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