Lessons from the mountains

Following a break of two months after an intensive period of mountain climbing, I have picked it up again. After all, you have to make the most out of living in another country; with so many impressive mountains and volcanoes so close by, I cannot resist the perfect escape from Quito's busy, CO2-emitting traffic into the crispy, fresh air of the páramo and beyond. Not only are the mountains home to such pristine nature that it makes you instantly forget about your daily sorrows, they also teach you valuable lessons for most big endeavours you may undertake in life, be they personal or professional.

The most obvious ingredient for success is no doubt passion. If you don't believe in your project, if you don't have a deep drive or if you don't feel passionate about what you are doing, it will be difficult to overcome the rough bumps on the road that leads to your final goal.

Second of all, a sound preparation is essential. You cannot reach the top of Ecuador's second highest volcano (Cotopaxi, 5894m) without a decent training - believe me, I have tried (and failed). That is, unless you are very lucky and external circumstances allow you to make it. No, before attempting to sweep away the big prize, you should start climbing some lower peaks to train you physically, and learn the basics of glacier climbing to train you technically. This way you get to learn your own body, how it behaves in different circumstances, and you grow confidence not only in your physical abilities, but at least as important, also in the technical gear that you carry with you. All this preparation gives you the confidence necessary to react pertinently in adverse situations and maintain your cool when you're staring into a seemingly bottomless crevasse.

Furthermore, this preparation gives you the intuition that allows you to identify people to guide you. Most likely, you're not the first to walk the road you're on. Rather than reinventing the wheel, you should learn to accept the guidance of others and trust them to lead the way. Experience and training help you to identify the various elements needed to reach your goal, and to recognize when people are skilled in those aspects.

Unless you are going it alone, there are more people involved in your endeavour. Some of them are literally tied to you, while others are walking just in front or behind you. You won't reach the summit if you don't learn to tolerate each other's characters. You're all on the same path, headed for the same goal, and you shouldn't let frustration and each other's deficiencies come in between of reaching that shared objective. Whenever you're having trouble with someone, spit it out in a clear and respectful way rather than bursting out. Suggest how you could make it work differently, instead of growing a grudge against the other person: you need to be able to trust each other, that you will do all it takes when one of you falls into a crevasse or lacks the energy to grab some hot tea. Only when you open yourself up for the people around you, can you learn about their motivations and their behaviour; understanding each other is the best way to team up your efforts and maximise your results. In short: tolerance, compassion and constructive communication are essential for a team to make it work.

Finally, it is hard to overstate the importance of having a support network of people who stand by you and your endeavour, whoever and wherever they may be. They will give you that little extra push in the back when you need it most, it's as simple as that.

On top of the Cayambe, Ecuador's third highest volcano (5790m); during the ascent in the night of All Soul's Day, I just felt lifted up by my three deceased grandparents who had my back and provided the perfect weather conditions to reach the summit.

Sacándole el jugo

I barely dare to look at the date of my last post... How time has flown! The reason is quite simple, though. As they put it here in Ecuador: estoy sacándole el jugo, which roughly translates into "I'm squeezing the juice out of it" - say, I'm making most of my time here. My job has become very busy and interesting, leaving me little room to let my thoughts wander around; I've been on holiday to the States for the wedding of a good friend of mine; went on an inspirational study trip to El Salvador, to learn about the participation of women's organisations in the local economy; and I had my brother over for a visit, to name but a few highlights of the last months.

But I have been also quite literally squeezing out juice here. One of the absolute delights of living in a tropical country (although there are few to no palms, beaches or crystalline seas to be spotted around Quito, don't get up your horses yet) is the fruit. It comes in a dozen different varieties, flavours and colours, and you pay but a dime for it in comparison with prices in Europe or the US.

I have made it my own personal ritual to stop by the weekly fruit and veg market on my way home every Monday, and pick up my weekly ration of vitamins. As you can imagine, by now I am on joking basis with Don Luciano and Doña Blanca, who provide fresh babacos, naranjillas, pineapples, papayas, pitahayas, apples, pears, uvillas, taxos, mandarines, granadillas, tunas, guavas, strawberries, raspberries (both all year long!) and many more delicacies to caseros such as me. (Other than simply meaning 'client', casero immediately brings to the mind the good husband/(house)wife garnering all the necessary ingredients to feed the many mouths waiting at home.) And as it bestows loyal customers, I always go home with a yappa, a little extra fruit - usually some mandarins, a small papaya or some bananas - to make sure you come back next time.

Last week's catch at Don Luciano's

I usually save up most of it until the weekend, when I have time to prepare my renowned super-jugo. This magic potion generally contains five different fruits, but I have made creations of up to nine fruits. For sure, a smoothy with just two or three fruits has the advantage of letting you savour more every single fruit you've put in it, but there's just something about these super-juices. They're unrebuttably massive V-bombs, injecting a dozen or more vitamins directly into your veins, boosting your body with every glass you drink. And they are simply delicious!

Turning fruit into liquid gold...

Most people laugh at first, for it is not common to find such rich smoothies around here. That is, until they taste the liquid gold themselves, and get hooked on this papilla-titillating treat. My Ecuadorian friends still laugh at me for my craziness, but I don't care. As long as I have all this natural wealth at hand's reach, I'll keep on abusing the blender for my weekend breakfasts. Intrigued? Just come over and try it for yourself!

Naivety vs. disingenuousness on the streets of Quito

The weirdest story happened to me this week. I was on my way to work, just a block from my office, when a man on the street asked me to help him find a road. It turned out to be the very road we were on, but I wasn't able to locate the pharmacy he was looking for. He identified himself as coming from the province of Azuay, illiterate and a first-timer in the city of Quito (henceforth he shall be called province-guy). When I told him there was another pharmacy three blocks up the road, another man walked by, whom province-guy asked the same question. That man was on his way to run some errands for work, wore a tie and a leather jacket (henceforth he shall be called tie-guy), and told him the same thing as I had.

Then the story began: province-guy had to ask Dr. Luis from the pharmacy for help with a task his boss had given him, he explained. To which tie-guy asks if he has some address, which could help us locate Dr. Luis. Province-guy gives a small piece of paper, addressed to Dr. Luis, with the request to help province-guy to cash the cheque he has, but only to give him a third part of it, and split the rest between the two of them. That was weird, to say the least, so tie-guy asks province-guy to show what the cheque is all about. He pulls out of his jacket a lottery-ticket, triggering the reaction from tie-guy that we should check the results of the ticket in a shop nearby. Province-guy asks us for help in this endeavour, as he cannot read. He also tells us that when he got the ticket last week, his boss had tried to buy off his ticket for 10,000 USD, but that he had refused, to which his boss had cornered him and started to hit him with his leather belt. Now he was in Quito, on his own, without any acquaintances or any knowledge of the city.

I accept to accompany them to verify the lottery ticket, thinking province-guy doesn't fully trust tie-guy and wants a third party to witness. Tie-guy leaves us a moment alone to fetch a copy of the lottery-results of July 31st in the shop around the corner, while I stay with province-guy waiting in the street. Province-guy marvels at my ability to read and talks in the meantime about how his grandmother kept on insisting he'd be careful in Quito, because the city is full of malicious people, and that he was grateful to us for helping him. Tie-guy returns with a copy of the results, and my-oh-my, it turns out to be the winning lottery ticket, for the grand total of 200,000 USD! This made province-guy feel somewhat uneasy, what to do now, so he offered each of us 3,000 USD to accompany him and cash the prize money. Before accepting our help, however, he needed to know if we were able to provide for our daily meal, because his grandmother had told him only to trust people who can provide for their own daily meal. To which tie-guy says that he owns a shop nearby, in which he has 1,500 USD, and that he has some 5,000 USD on his bank account. I said that it was no-one's business how much money I had, to which province-guy replies that this is they way people in the province know how to truly trust someone. In fact, before coming to Quito, his grandmother had shown him how to do it, while pulling up her mattress and reveiling all her savings. Tie-guy backs up the story, urging me to understand that this is how people from the province reason, and that he'd go fetch his bank-records to proove his solvency. That was enough of fun and frolics to me, so at that point I wished them the best of luck and bode them farewell.

Now you see it, now you don't! Probably the second oldest profession in town... (source)

The two men really pulled of a great piece of very convincing theater, I must admit. There were always new elements added to the story that appealed to my goodwill and sense of empathy, such as the illiteracy of the province-guy lost in the big city, his boss hitting him with a belt, fear of being scammed by Dr. Luis, the hard-working shop-owner who offers to help province-guy. It took me a while to digest the whole story, but looking at it with hindsight, there were so many inconsistencies in the story, which I didn't take properly into account at the moment itself due to a feeling of compassion and the urge to counter the general tendency to consider any person asking you for something on the street as having bad intentions. But of course: why would the family of province-guy send him on his own, they sure must have some relative who can read and who could help him? Why would province-guy trust his boss and his pharmacist friend, after what his boss had done to him? Why telling he got the ticket last week, when the 31st of July was two weeks ago? Why insisting on me accompanying them, while it is obvious I don't know anything in relation to the matter presented? And for sure, the lottery results turned out to be a fake, a quick search on the official lottery website revealed.

I felt pretty stupid afterwards - after all, I had sensed from early on something wasn't right; I should have just walked away from the start. I was very lucky, indeed, that nothing bad had happened to me, because at some point in this story they would have pulled out scopolamine or some other rape drug, in order to rob me or inflict whatever other calamity on me. But I just couldn't help fighting the common-place scaremongering not to trust anybody on the street asking you for something. I guess this is one of the toughest parts of living here in Quito, the fact that your first reaction with inter-personal contact should be that of distrust instead of trust, also in circumstances that should generate trust. Even a secure, licensed taxi ride can turn into a secuestro exprés, taking you on a millionaire tour to get as much money as possible out of ATMs with your bank cards (true story!). I refuse to become paranoic, distrusting every single person on the street, because that would make life unliveable to me. I just hope there's a guardian angel out there inspiring me in time to run when I have to...

The sum of steps is more than a summit reached

It was a chilly and clouded morning, that Sunday the 5th of July. We had been climbing for almost 7 hours in the darkness of a windy Ecuadorian summer night, our steps lit by ice-topped headlights and our hearts pumping to fight the lack of oxygen. I had fallen several times into glacier cracks en route. Climbing out of them demanded an extra toll on my already low energy levels; staring into them and seeing nothing but a black void made me appreciate even more the special training we had received in glacier-climbing. It was 7am on the dots: we had made it to the top of the southern slope of the Cotopaxi, Ecuador's second highest and still active volcano. 5860 meters above sea level, and all I could do was drop dead, exhausted by this supra-humane nocturnal effort.

Camera freeze at 5860m - summit reached!

I had always enjoyed hiking in the mountains. At high-school, two teachers used to organise ten-day sports-and-hiking camps in the Austrian Alps, which I joined several times. I hadn't been much in the mountains since, but it only felt natural for me to join a group of friends who wanted to climb the Cotopaxi three weeks into my fresh arrival in Ecuador. I thoroughly enjoyed that experience - although unsuccessful due to rather harsh weather conditions - but I also quickly realised that climbing at 5000 meters above sea level is a different cup of tea from hiking at 2000 meters.

Inspired by the ever-present mountains and volcanoes that I can see from my office on a clear day, and the unique páramo-ecosystem typical of the Andes in this part of the continent, I decided to continue the hiking and step it up to the next level. So I joined the Rocks meet ice climbing programme of Ruta Cero, a local agency that organises these kind of adventure trips. The goal was clear: get yourself prepared, both physically and technically, to reach the highest, snow-capped tops of Ecuador's awe-inspiring volcanoes. The remaining third part required to reach this objective - mental perseverance - was something you had to come up with yourself.

Although we started off with a huge group, only 18 of us made it to the first big challenge, the Cayambe volcano (5790m). There we got our final lesson of the programme, taught to us by Mother Nature herself: when the volcano doesn't let you to reach her summit, there's nothing you can do about it. Relentless stormy winds of up to 120km/h, gently carressing our faces with icy hail, and temperatures of 15 to 20 degrees below freezing devoured our energy levels in a whimp. At 300m below the summit, mildly hallucinating from exhaustion and the lack of oxygen, our team decided it was safer to head back to the refuge instead of continuing to fight a battle we could only loose. The Cayambe had thinned our ranks to a core group of 7 die-hards - three of whom women! - who would attempt to reach Cotopaxi's southern crown...

After a three-hour hike from the refuge, we set up our tents at base-camp, at 4700m. Fortunately it hadn't started snowing yet, so it was fairly easy to do so. Meanwhile, our guides started preparing dinner in the kitchen-tent. As we joined them to warm up with a cup of tea, the atmosphere couldn't have been better. We had known each other now for quite a few trips. These kind of extreme experiences - and, honesty abides, Halli Galli - had made us bond pretty well, so we had plenty of stories and banter to share. 

Base camp 

The crew in the kitchen-tent

Being at 4700m is no excuse not to keep up with your dental hygiene!

At 6pm it was time to hit the tents and try to get some rest, for we had to rise and shine at 11pm. The biggest challenge was to get dressed in that tiny tent - think of heavy skiing shoes with laces, three layers of clothing, a climbing harness and gaiters. After a quick breakfeast - let's be honest, your stomach doesn't hold much at that time of the night - and filling up our thermoses with hot water, we were set to go at 12:15am. It wasn't until the glacier began that we put on our crampons and formed teams of three (two lunatics and a guide), tied to each other with a rope. We generally took a rest every hour and a half or so, unless something unexpected happens, such as falling into glacier cracks - a trick I turned out be quite good at.

Time to get the crampons on

The toughest part was no doubt keeping up my energy levels - and along with them, morale. Some five hours into our ascent, I didn't have much energy left. I had been eating energy bars and sucking panela for some energy boosts, but after a while exhaustion becomes so omnipresent that whatever rest I got, I literally wanted to fall down and do nothing but rest. The thin air was not only affecting my ability to breathe normally, it also got me a headache (or was it from the exhaustion?) that pushed my morale down. At that point, it was just a matter of climbing step by step, relatively straight forward when on ice, but less so on snow, where every step you make turns into half a step you slide down.

Reaching the summit was just a momentary experience. It was clouded and everybody was pretty freezing, making it a matter of resting a bit, grabbing that camera to make a few shots (they came with a natural frost effect) and climbing down to a more sheltered part of the slope, so we could get a decent rest before rushing down (it took us just 2 hours and half to reach base camp). As the sky started opening up a bit, we got a sight on the vast plains surrounding the Cotopaxi and we could catch a glimpse of Ecuador's highest dome, the Chimborazo. Despite the majestic sights, all I could think of was my bed and how much I wanted to rid myself from that terrible headache. (Note to self: next time just ask your companions if they have a pill for that with them.)

Reaching the summit, on two or four feet (courtesy of Diego Villacres)

Back down at the lowest part of the glacier (courtesy of Diego Villacres)

The true, lasting experience from these adventures, however, has no doubt been the companionship of the whole group. I did not just reach the summit on my own, we had all made it together. At every moment there has been someone to lift up spirits, to share your agony or to grab your thermos out of your frosted backpack. The ultimate goal is not to reach the summit, for it doesn't tell much about how you got there. No, the true challenge is to make sure that your team stays safe while crossing mental and physical boundaries you had never imagined you would cross. The reward the mountain spirits offer you is the unique experience of sharing these life-altering moments with like-minded people. They make you forget all the hardship and suffering you experienced, making you long instead for the next summit to be shared.

(I know, I shamelessly breached my five-at-a-time rule. The experience largely exceeded my self-imposed space, and this way you got a better impression of it, I hope...)

You can't drink gold, so just swallow bullets

Last week, Ollanta Humala's government has marked another black page in the history of Peru. In a country that has been marred by social conflict as a result of mismanaged extractive industries - a sad continuum across governments of the past two decades - five people have been killed during a peaceful protest march in the town of Celendín, Cajamarca province. One day later, some 20 combat-armed policemen threw Marco Arana, one of the figureheads of an indefinite strike against a huge mining project planned in the province, brutally off a bench in a park of Cajamarca city. He was forcefully grabbed by the head (a jaw was broken), pushed to the ground, hit several times in the kidneys (having passed a severe kidney operation earlier this year) and then abducted to prison [see video below, in Spanish], where he was held without charge and further beaten. His lawyer was refused due access to her client by police officers who could not present any credentials, upon which the officers maltreated Arana's lawyer as well. Apparently, Arana's only crime was to have worn a cardboard sign around his neck saying "Yes to life, No to gold" in a public space during a state of emergency.

Once again, peaceful protest has shown how powerful it can be, considering that the regrettable answer of a seemingly powerless government has been to resort to lethal violence. To be honest, it really takes my breath away to see how far governments are willing to go to safeguard investment commitments made by extractive industries in a region that has patently objected such environmentally damaging investments in its livelihoods. Even more so, when the current president was elected by promising Cajamarca's electorate to respect their decision not to support mining projects in their region, for "you cannot drink gold, so it is of utmost importance to protect natural water sources such as your beautiful lakes and prevent their contamination".

All these lofty promises have been mysteriously forgotten, as President Humala is fully committed to have the infamous Conga mining project started, a Newmont Mining Corporation investment that will affect four precious lakes - essential sources of clean water for the nearby communities - by converting them into depositories for toxic mining waste. Of course, promises have been made to treat the water and turn it into Peru's purest drinking water, but evidence of such practices are scant, not to say inexistent, in the country. Even one of Peru's star projects in terms of social and environmental responsibility turned out to be a fraud, deforming newborn lamas and contaminating nearby rivers.

What strikes me most is how the government has unequivocally sided with private industry, instead of being the gatekeeper that veils over the balance between the public's and the private sector's interests. How else to explain that national police officers are being transported by buses from the Yanacocha mine company (daughter holding of Newmont Mining)? Human rights violations as the ones described above, committed in plain daylight, in front of twenty cameras, while the region's provincial and local authorities have been drawn away from the scene to the capital, do not occur unless they are sanctioned from the highest level downwards.

I cannot even figure how these policies go down, from top government figures into the heads of the national police. It sure is no bed-time story material, judging from the police man's reaction to a Cajamarca inhabitant asking him why the police is treating citizens in such a horrible, irrespectful way: "Because you are a bunch of dogs, you son of a bitch!" And then to figure that this has been happening at a far wider scale over the past year in Syria, under the all-seeing eye of the international community, as world leaders are belt-tightening their way through domestic crises and smother their electorate with election-proof foreign policies...

For those interested, here is more information on the criminalisation of social protest and Marco Arana, and the social conflict as a result of the planned Conga Mining project. There is also a petition running on Avaaz, in case you would like to support the communities of Cajamarca in their struggle.