A Journey to Middle Earth

I remember when I was a little girl and I would play “make believe” with my friends on the playground. We would imagine that we were like “Robinson Crusoe” and get shipwrecked on a deserted island and or like “Homeward Bound” and get lost in the woods and have to find our way back home. (I was a very imaginative kid). Well this past day, my fantasies came true…more or less.

This past Wednesday, I met up with my friend Barbara and her socio Elly in Cabracancha, a small pueblo outside of Chota where Elly works and which is also close to Barbara’s site. The plan was to meet up in Cabracancha for a meeting and then go to Barbara’s site for the night. So, I walked up to Cabracancha with Elly, as Barbara met up with us with her health promoter. After a fun morning of learning about how to build a vivero (tree farm), Barbara and I were getting ready to head back, but small problem...Barbara didn’t know how to get back to her site, and her health promoter left without us. Well what did we decide to do? Find our way back ourselves, of course. Easy enough right?

This was probably our first mistake in hindsight, seeing as how Barbara has lived here 3 months and still doesn’t know the trail. But it was 1:00 pm and Elly wasn’t leaving until 5:00 pm. “Come on Barbara, It’ll be fun, “ I said. (I love finding new trails and seeing where they lead). So we thought we could at least try. Worst case scenario, we get lost and invite ourselves in to someone’s house, which honestly wouldn’t be a problem in Peru (especially with our gringa status).

And so off we go to the forest with Barbara and her staff and me, her trusty sidekick with all the supplies. (Mom, I had my first aid kit, snacks, and water, so don’t you worry :-D) As we traversed through the forest down hills and through streams, I couldn’t help but feel like Frodo and Sam (minus the hairy feet) headed through middle earth to destroy the ring, only our task wasn’t as dangerous or long (or so we hoped). But just like Frodo and Sam, we took a few wrong turns and had to stop for direction, but we eventually always found our way back to the trail…except when we didn’t.

A neighbor girl had told us the trail was over the stream and to the right, so we did as she said, but couldn’t find any said “trail”, yet could see one in the distance. So Barbara had given me the task to find a way to the next trail, since I was the tree-hugger from Oregon and she was from the Jersey hood. She just pointed in the direction and I found a way to get there. This was probably our second mistake, as anyone who knows me knows that I don’t do directions. I can barely tell east from west. But all we needed to find was the carretera, and then she knew how to get home. So off in the distance we could see the trail, and decided to hike through some chacras when we were suddenly met with a small creek to cross. With some special tree-shimmying abilities, we made it down and across the creek to the other side. Then, the rain started.

First sprinkles and then more steady rain. And then before we knew it, full blown rain storm complete with thunder and lighting. At this point, it was about 3:30 pm and we still hadn’t found this elusive carretera that Barbara was talking about, so along we went trudging through the rain. Thankfully, in the not-so-far-off distance was a house where we could seek shelter from the rain, so again, off we went.

Once we arrived, good news at last: we found the carretera! But bad news: we were still about 2 hours from our destination. I couldn’t help but laugh as I was remembering how much I loved to play “lost” as a kid, and here we were…lost. So we sat there waiting out the rain and thinking what next move was, when up the hill a short distance, a moto-taxi was honking at us. Could it be? Were we saved?!

Up the muddy hill we went to meet our mysterious rescuer when lo-and-behold it turns out to be Barbara’s moto-taxi “friend” (aka. Her Peruvian crush) there to offer us a ride! Finally, some rest for our poor legs and some eye candy for Barbara to boot! Haha. What luck! He said that he saw us seeking shelter at the house and thought we might be needing a ride. And boy was he right, as we still had more than an hour’s walk to go. Putt-Putt-Putt up the hill we went, when Barbara’s “friend” dropped us off free-of-charge. What a gentleman. “Wasn’t he cute?!” Barbara asks. “I give you my blessing,” I replied.

But alas, our journey was not complete as Barbara lived even farther up the hill off of the road. During this last leg of our trip, we met up with some fellow travelers…kids heading home from class. We journeyed together through checkpoint 1 (barbed wire fence), checkpoint 2 (trees), and went our separate ways at checkpoint 3 (water reservoir). When finally, in the distance was our “Mt. Doom,” aka Barbara’s house. Once we finally approached the house, we just sat and smiled, as our journey had finally come to an end. Next time, though, best to have a guide.

(This blog is dedicated to Linsdey Kane)