Pourover (Cont.) | Outside Online

You Are Here:

Home >> Travel >> Pourover (Cont.)

Today's Question
Where should I camp in Switzerland with my kids? answer

What's the best volcano to hike up in North America? answer

How can I plan a trip around riding the biggest, fastest roller coasters? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine December 2001

Page:

Pourover (Cont.)


	In the maelstrom of Todo el Día

THAT NIGHT WE CAMPED on a bank of packed dirt edged with the stepped walls of ancient farm terracing. Gian Marco told me that if you pour water over these terraces it distributes evenly and flows from one level to the next like a fountain. There are many aspects of Inca technology that cannot readily be explained, he said. Take the Nasca Lines, vast depictions of animals scored into the desert in southern Peru. "They can only be interpreted from the air," said Gian Marco. "How did they do that?" I pointed to the sky and hummed the theme song from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Gian Marco smiled and shrugged. He and his two brothers, Duilio and Piero, had been given their first kayaks in 1981 by the Polish team that made the first descent of Colca Canyon. Since then they've paddled some of the most dangerous whitewater anywhere, so not much surprises them. Twenty-two-year-old Piero nodded as he built the campfire and listened to his older brother. Though he had a ready natural smile, Piero didn't talk much. Bearded and ox-strong, he rowed the heavy gear raft with complete self-sufficiency. Not once did he portage a rapid. If he got stuck on a rock, he never called for help; he'd just jump onto the slick boulders, pry the raft free, and leap back in, swiftly taking up the oars as the boat caromed away. The Vellutinos had paddled so much extreme whitewater together that they hardly needed to speak on the river. At the edge of a blind drop, Gian Marco would stand up in his raft full of passengers, look back at Piero, make a simple hand motion of the line he could see down the rapid, and disappear over the lip.

Just two weeks before this trip they had guided three Americans on the Moran River, a Class V and VI tributary of the Cotahuasi. One of the paddlers got pinned bow-down at the bottom of a long and dangerous rapid. Piero was the only one remaining upstream, and he could see the tip of the man's stern shivering beyond a rock sieve. He jumped into the river and swam—through Class V water—to the spot where the boat was trapped. Straddling two boulders with his long legs, Piero shoved with all his might until the boat came free, and then somehow swam to shore. The American escaped with a broken leg.

Above our camp, built into a mud cliff near the terraces, were some crumbling rock walls and alcoves. A few of us clambered up through the deepening shadows, the day's heat still pulsing from the dirt and stones. Twenty feet from the ruin we stopped cold. A human skull sat in one of the square niches. Another winked in the parched scrub like a giant egg. I felt a crunch beneath my foot and looked down at a long, splintered bone. Weathered bones lay all over the ground, along with shards of ancient pottery. I picked up a slender rib honeycombed with age then gently put it back. A couple of us crouched inside a barrel-shaped niche that had been stuccoed with river mud. On the floor of the hollow, emerging from the dirt, was a shape wrapped in stiff, ivory-colored cloth. It looked like a mummy, and we respectfully backed away. Marc Goddard broke off a piece of the cloth to take back to be dated by an archaeologist. He said he didn't think of it as despoiling the grave, because it is the intention with which an artifact is taken that counts. He didn't sound sure.

That night, lying in my sleeping bag, I watched the sparkling desert stars, the Southern Cross sailing down-canyon like a kite over a sea of pitch. There wasn't a single plane or satellite. The breeze was warm on my face, and I could hear the rush of the river. Now in the dry season, it was the sound of snowmelt. I'd never been in a place where every motion, every sound, followed only the slow wheeling of the earth and the insistence of the season. I thought how this canyon was full of spirits, and how it was best to have those spirits on your side. The next morning Marc told me he'd put back the piece of cloth.

Page: