Chivay day 2
The next day, I stopped in on the Tourist Police and the walked with me to visit a local guide for possible mountain climbing and introduced me to a woman selling ice cream with an optional sweet whipped egg white topping. I just got the ice cream. In the afternoon I got up the strength to try to find a trail up a small stream into the smaller (16,000?) mountains east of Chivay. Following an irrigation channel which surged along one of the main streets I passed a small hydro-electric plant and on through fields mostly brown but some with fava beans and potato sprouts. Apparently the first crop of potatoes had just been harvested. The landscape was desiccated but signs of a wetter season were evident in the growth of lichens, small bromeliads, ferns and mosses; all parched and brittle on the rocks by the trail. Along the mostly dry stream there were moist places with grey leaved lupine coming into bloom. Other plants unfamiliar to me were also starting to flower, mostly shrubby compositeae with white snake root like flowers. At the head of the irrigation system where the stream flowed free, there were 2 species of Calceolaria with their curious puffy yellow flowers. On the way back down I met a couple of young boys, maybe 7 and 9 years old and we walked and "talked" ?till we ended up at the hydro-electric plant. It turned out that their father was working there and he let me look in. It was a small building maybe 20?square with a single turbine he said put out 150 kilowatts/hour. The back up diesel system was 5 times as massive. I noticed some concrete tanks below the turbine house and upon asking was told that the plant also produced trout for the local market.