Andagua the road to the past (future?)
Andagua, how do I describe my 3 days in this town on the crossroads of existence? One can set things in motion which half way through begin to seem a mistake. Yet after all, when calculating the challenges against moments connected in some deeper way beyond the normal commerce of human interaction, the equation collapses. I chose to go to Andagua to see a more remote town, in the "Valley of Volcanoes," near a trout stream, and a reputation for being tranquil. What I found was both more and less.

The road to Andagua starts off well enough. The Pan American Highway leaves Arequipa in good condition and as far as the surface is concerned remains a fine road, with a few curves thrown in. The scenery is grand. Desert with irrigated terraces, every field is walled and terraced, whether 100 yards wide of only 20'. Fields we would never bother to level either because they were already tolerably flat to begin with of too steep to bother with, are here all terraced. Water being at a premium, slope is extremely critical to allow the water to soak in father than run off. Yet it is hard to justify the time and effort spent in the narrow terraces with 6' walls and 12' of surface. In the time before the conquest they may have served a different economy as indeed today some of these narrow fields have been left to the gradual decline of time, untended. Yet, their crumbling state points out the time spent in maintaining those that remain in cultivation.

After about 4 hours of good road, the climb over the shoulder of Nevada Coropuno, 21,000' at its summit. Starting at about 2,000' the road changes to gravel more or less, and climbs to 16,500' before descending to 10.500' at Andagua. What would be 45 miles in a straight line is a 6 hour mission improbable. By now it is night and though a gibbous moon is some help in appreciating some of the landscape, most of the landscape is out of sight, though to some degree inferred. Switch back after switchback, the road almost parallel with itself most of the way the bus climbs the mountain. At first there a few scattered towns cut into narrow valleys, surrounded with terraces. I note fig leaves in passing. Higher up the villages give out and the real climb begins. Several times the bus has to back up to get around the corner. Quite nerve racking as you might imagine though only slightly more so than the corners the bus squeezes around without backing up! One isn’t sure even the driver knows how close the wheel is to the edge. Across the wide flattish shoulder of the mountain there is a half hour of relatively relaxed travel, the white snowfields of the massif drifting in the distance as the bus turns left and right. Again on the decent there are several times the bus has to reverse to make the corners and many more time one might wish the driver had. It's 3 AM when we pull in to the Plaza of Andagua