25.05.08 The trail ends (in a shambles)

I was up with the sun and admired how the corrals and thatched houses, built from the rock, seemed to complement the mountain they made of. The village was noisy with the sounds of birds waking, llamas sneezing, pigs rooting, kids shouting and gnarled herders rousing their stock and clearing their passages.

Before my breakfast, I watched the admirable llamas chewing: top lip resolutely unmoving, bottom lip dropping and sweeping to the right exposing a line of fine gnashers, before centring and mirroring the process.

As the clouds cleared to reveal distant mountains, the herds were ushered to their grazing across the village football pitch (a community of 10 would have a full-sized pitch in Bolivia). As fuel, llama and alpaca waste is a precious resource, which they thoughtfully deposit in the same spot. Hundreds of them passed, performing their morning abolutions on the centre spot and rolling in the dust where the corner flag would be.

Our gang of five (Susi, guide, small girl herder, donkey and I) followed a river valley towards our final destination. Throughout the morning our surroundings became progressively greener and readily liveable. As the air warmed in the sun, the fertile land was increasingly agricultural, made up of fields and terraces. Chicken, goats and cows replacing the alpachas, who find don't find the warmth and low altitude (3,300 metres) to their liking.

A band was playing in the pretty town square where our bus was to leave from. We left the women dancing, while the men were drinking and had lunch. It sounded like children had been given bells to accompany the band. Drunk children.

After some days without washing, our trip to the hot springs was keenly anticipated. Condors wheeled overhead as we wallowed in the hot green water trying to ignore the drowned flies.

We returned to the square to find a hotbed of comedy drunkeness: they were now speaking the universal pissed language of pirate noises, while guffawing, hugging each other for support and singing tuneless, wordless songs. I should not find this quite so amusing.

24.05.08 Picadilly Circus

Today our donkeywork was done by a donkey, he was accompanied by a friendly old boy with a huge wad of coca in his cheek. With our guide, we walked down the Valley of the Condors to some romantically overgrown 1,000-year-old ruins at the meeting point of three valleys. They’ve been untroubled by archaeologists and anthropologists, and are still used for ceremonies.

In January, the three local communities meet here to celebrate the new year and pray for good luck. A ceremony like the one we had seen the evening before is performed but on a much larger scale in which a llama is sacrificed and buried. This has been taking place in the same spot for generations and bones strewn in the area bear witness to its grisly purpose.

Today’s destination felt much more like a successful, functioning community. At the end of their working day we watched as llamas, alpacas, donkeys, sheep, dogs and herders of both genders and all possible ages filed past and made arrangements for the night. The story of mothers and their separated young being reunited was played out by the different species. Clouds settled over distant mountains at the end of a long valley forming a white plane and the sun set.