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Outside Magazine December 2001

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Pourover (Cont.)


	Piero Vellutino strong-arms the cargo raft

Dusk was lovely and unwelcome. It pooled in the bottom of the gorge and magnified the already immense solitude. Ranks of shadowed buttresses caught the last light on the upper rim. Sounds grew louder: the thresh of the river and the clicks of hoof on stone. The mare had a keen sense of what was not in her contract. She judged so much of the trail to be terrifying that it was easier just to lead her. We came out of a side canyon onto a bench of parched grass and tall cacti, and I dropped the reins and sat down. We'd wait for the mule train.

The Cotahuasi has been inhabited for hundreds of years. The canyon was once the link between the fishing town of Puerto Inca, on the coast, and Cuzco, where Inca royalty liked their seafood fresh—never mind that they lived 300 miles inland, at 10,000 feet. The Incas may not have had writing or the wheel, but they lived among shrines paneled with gold, and their idea of express mail makes FedEx look effete. The subjugated Chasqui people ran the Cotahuasi trail night and day at full tilt, relaying baskets of fish. Shrimp netted Thursday morning would be served on gold plates in Cuzco Saturday night.

The mule train came up onto the bench in a long string punctuated by a few headlamps and cries of "Burro! Burro!" As soon as the mules hit the flat ground, the driver, Rene Urguiso, declared that he would go no farther; anyone could see it was now night and too peligroso. He began to strip the animals of their loads—kayaks, raft frames, paddles. Gian Marco Vellutino argued that most of the group was ten miles ahead at the put-in and without any camping gear. Rene kept yanking at the lashings, bags dropping to the grass. Donkeys and horses drifted off into the dark. "Don't put me in this position," Gian Marco finally yelled, "or I'll put you in a position." Then he added, "I won't pay you."

Twenty minutes later we were back on the trail, leading the animals through the pitch dark. Every time I shone my headlamp over the edge of the canyon and saw the beam absorbed in a black vacuum, every time I slipped a little on the loose sand, I thought about Francisco Pizarro. In 1532 he led 150 conquistadores on horseback into this same country. He drove them relentlessly, sometimes at night. In a matter of weeks, in a storm of ruthlessness and greed, he conquered a military nation of ten million. And not one of his men fell from a cliff.

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