Pieces of Sky

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Up and Down the Andes in a Tuk Tuk

Samuel had a map of the world on his face. Creases ran east and west like deep, dark rivers. The twin ridges of his brow rose up like the mountains on which we were standing and his chin sprouted cactus spicks. The years had almost bent him double and he turned his head back over his should in an effort to look me in the eye, smiling with an empty mouth as dark as the creased rivers of his neck. I thanked him again as he passed me a couple of bags of food that had remained lying in the road as the three of us tipped the tuk tuk back onto all three wheels and began to load her up again.

Anna, as we'd christened the tuk tuk had begun to make this into something of a habit. To lull us into a false sense of security as we stepped away from her for a rest. As we'd driven out of the plains of the Amazon and up into the foothills of the Andes, we'd scavenged a few stones and pieces of wood to use as chocks under the wheels for whenever we wanted to get off for a moment. I'd stamp on the rear brake peddle and use the full force of my aching hands to hold the tuk tuk stationary on the flattest bit of road we could find and Liz would hop out to slam the chocks home under the wheels. She'd kick them in, jamming Anna to the spot and tentatively I'd relax the pressure on the breaks. With a sagging wheeze she'd settle and I could finally nurse some feeling back into my vibration-numbed hands. There was a fine balance between gently rocking the tuk tuk to check that she was solid on the spot and inadvertently pushing her over her chocks and sending her into the nearest ditch or cliff face; if there was one to stop her that was. Samuel had very nearly been the latest victim of another example of Anna's bad behavior. We'd stopped in the middle of the empty road beside a small cold stream for some dusty cheese and bread, quietly watching Samuel drag a bent leg and a mountain of silver grass towards wherever home was. Anna timed it perfectly, giving a barely audible clue to her intentions to jump her chocks. With the sound of sails being filled with wind and stretching rigging she creaked out a lurch and she was away. We both spun and dived for the air where she'd been, but there was only the air now. Liz was ahead of me and sprinted for the handlebars of Anna in an effort to grab the brake. With an inching reach she missed her target and Anna slammed her front wheel to the left as it collided with a pothole. I looked on with closed eyes as she cascaded backwards down the Andes and Anna shot across Samuel's face on two wheels. Anna reached out and took the silver grass with her in consolation for missing his bent frame by an inch. Liz was on her knees in resignation of what was to be would be from this moment on.

The quickly gained momentum of Anna was abruptly killed in a lurching reverse U-turn. She spilled her grass and broke her straps, dumping bags of food, clothes and the precious canoe on the gravel of the road. As quickly as Anna had bolted it was all over. Three individuals checked themselves over before reaching for the courage to check each other over too. Liz looked back up the hill at me with an expressionless face that said everything. "My God, that was close this time." The lack of colour in her cheeks said it all. It had all happened so fast and there hadn't been a thing we could do about it. Worse, someone else had nearly got court up in this momentary misadventure this time. Samuel had lived all his life in the Andes. A place of landslides, Russian roulette bus rides and cheap lives. Nevertheless, he knew it had been close, just as we did. But, typical of any Quechua gentleman he only showed concern for Liz, ignoring the hay that he'd been working to bring up the mountain all day. I watched it dance in the sky before it disappeared over the cliff in a fiesta of fun. Old, strong knuckled fingers helped Liz up like a little girl.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she kept on saying but Samuel just smiled with sad eyes.

He reached down and scraped up a fist full of dust. "Gracias Pacha Mama" ‘Thank you Mother Earth’ was all he said. He wasn't angry with us, or at having lost his hay; he was just thankful that this time wasn't his time. The Quechua know how to look on the bright side of life. To make sure there was a bright side I came over with the kettle of coca tea that we were about to have before this little episode. He accepted the tea gratefully and we resigned to sit in the road on our bags where they'd landed. Anna gave an indignant groan as we left her on two of her three wheels against the cliff side. It was a position that we'd got used to seeing her in.

Samuel never asked but we gave him a few soles as compensation for nearly killing him and he set off up the hill, accepting that his llamas would be hungry tonight and we watched him go, thanking our lucky stars. The last town we'd passed had been two days ago but we could still see it in the bottom of the valley, several thousand feet below us. Every vertical foot had been hard won in these last few days. The clutch had started slipping almost as soon as we'd reached the hills and the new brakes that should have bedded in weeks ago had only got worse. My hands constantly screamed with pins and needles and it was a struggle to straighten each finger beyond a claw. Liz's hands and knees bled from where she'd met the gravel of the road having pushed Anna as hard as she could, as far as she could, to get her to gain a few more feet up the mountain until the tuk tuk breathed power into her one driving wheel and took off without Liz, leaving her to fall to the ground gasping for the air that wasn't there at this altitude. It wasn't much further to the altiplano but we both knew it was just too far.
"This is crazy." It was a statement; not the opening to a discussion. "If we carry on like this we're going to either kill ourselves or someone else. I'm tired. I hurt everywhere and I'm not enjoying this anymore." I felt like I was giving up but I knew Liz felt the same.
"I know. Thank God Anna didn't hit the old guy. What the hell would we have done. " Liz didn't look at me as she spoke. She was talking to herself every bit as much as me.
Indeed, what would we have done? Two Brits in the middle of nowhere with an old man that we'd just run over. Whatever the circumstances of an accident in Peru, as a foreigner the accident is your fault. If you hadn't have been there in the first place it couldn't have happened because you wouldn't have been there to make it happen. And that's that. In this instance though, it would have been our fault no matter which way anybody looked at it, and we knew it. There was no other way of looking at it. And it had been the same the day before. And the day before that and the day before that. Everyday had had some near miss. And if it hadn't been a near miss it had been too close for comfort nevertheless. We'd run into ditches; we'd flown down hills backwards when the breaks failed to hold. Collectivo mini buses had pushed us out of their way because we couldn't move fast enough, or move at all. As soon as we'd reached the foothills it had all started to go wrong. Liz spent more time pushing and walking across precarious bridges than sitting in the back and I'd spent more time fixing the bloody thing than riding it. Enough was enough.
"There's no way on earth that we're getting to the top of this bloody mountain in this and I'm not risking getting a tow. Those Peruvians 'll have us over the edge in a second. Its just too dangerous. I call it quits. What do you say?"
"I've had enough too. Do you think we can make it back?" I presumed Liz meant back to Puerto Maldonado.
"It's a couple of hundred miles but we've got two choices. Get back to PM and see if we can sell her and at least get some money back or we just get back to that last town and dump her and get a collectivo to Puno or Cusco. What do you want to do?"
"What do you recon?"
"I say we go for Puerto Maldonado. Its more down hill than up and if we don't sell her we can't afford to do anything but go home now."
"PM it is then." And that was that. We'd both been thinking the same thing ever since the last town but neither of us wanted to give up. We'd realised before we'd even set off that the chances of reaching Nasca or even Cusco or Puno in Anna were between extremely remote and nil. We just wanted to see how far we could get and now that we were as far as we could get we didn't like giving up. Even though we’d known for days that the time to give up was fast approaching.

For once Anna had done the hard work for us and was already facing pretty much down hill. We righted her and loaded up the last of our torn bags and the canoe and climbed in. There wasn't any need to kick start the tuk tuk. I just pulled in the clutch, let her gain a bit of speed and let the clutch leaver go again. With a lurch the engine was screaming in second gear and I began the hard work of trying to stop the thing now that it was already going down hill faster than was comfortable. On our way back to Puerto Maldonado we remembered every bridge, every ditch and, importantly, every safe place to rest. On the down hill return the painfully gained miles receded in a quarter of the time it had taken on the up hill journey. We almost began to wonder why we'd given up but the aches kept on reminding us.

Five days later we were just 30 miles outside Puerto Maldonado, circled by 8 black uniforms of the National Police. Bags and possessions once again littered the road as the Officer in charge asked us yet again where we'd come from.
"Quincy Mil Senor" I said.
"No. Es Impossible" He was incredulous that we could have come all the way from the Andes in Anna.
"Si Senor, we came from Quincy Mil and we're going to Puerto Maldonado"
Shaking his head he moved on with his questioning "Where are you from?"
Inglaterra" we replied.
"Well, you're crazy. Enjoy the rest of your trip." Having not found any drugs or contraband his seven subordinates repacked the tuk tuk in a fit of laughter while slapping our backs and shaking our hands. We'd obviously brightened up their day a little.
An hour or two later we were fighting for space with the other tuk tuks and motorbikes of Puerto Maldonado and the central plaza soon loomed into view. In a final disappointed celebration of limping back to where we'd started from we pulled up outside the ice cream shop in a cloud of back-firing smog accompanied by the smell of burning and ordered two large ice cream sundaes. A traffic policeman eyed us up suspiciously as we sat on the pavement with skull freeze. His step faltered but then he thought better of it and walked on realising that if he asked us a single question he could be with us all day listening to some unbelievable tale. We wouldn't have shared our ice cream with him either and I think he knew it.

As chance would have it, the owners of the hostel that we moved into were in the market for a tuk tuk. Their son and daughter-in-law had recently had a baby and Granny wasn't keen on the 3 of them riding around town on two wheels. So Anna is now a baby bus, or at least she will be once the engines rebuilt. We flew out of Puerto Maldonado a few days later in the disguise of two normal tourists bound for Juliaca and onto Bolivia once again for another adventure of another kind. That was even more scary than our days with Anna!