Across the Andes

by Charles Johnson Post

At Sorata we changed mules and took the regular trail, not this time that rarely used, but shorter back trail where the sullen, hostile Aymarás have their homes, and on the third day were once more above the valley of La Paz. We looked down on its warm red roofs and the little green patch of its park with the masses of low dobe houses through which there ran the feeling of rectangular streets with pavements and the lazily drifting throngs with actual stiff, starched collars and shoes with soles and laces instead of the patch of leather with a pucker string around the top, and thick crockery plates instead of enamelled tin, and pastry and roasts, and twice a week a real band in the plaza—all the effete accomplishments of civilization. It is no wonder the Bolivians solemnly assure you that La Paz is the Little Paris of South America. When you approach it from the eastern slopes of the Andes, it is a little Paris, a little London, a little old New York.

Two weeks later I was on my way back into the montaña while the chief engineer was on his way to Iquiqui or Callao after machinery. A Mr. and Mrs. Jackson had their headquarters in Sorata where the former represented a rubber company and they, together with Drew, a wiry little Englishman, who had packed into the country with nothing but a blanket and the ragged clothes he walked in, and myself, combined to charter a tiny stage-coach, the “mosquito” as it was known. This, with six horses to haul it to the top of the alto and then with horses in relays at each tambo would bring us to Achicachi on the southern shores of Lake Titicaca in one single day of from before dawn till sunset. From there it would be muleback over the first pass and down the trails into Sorata.

The mosquito was just big enough for four and a tight fit at that. This was fortunate for the little coach—from the outside it looked more like a packing case—with slits of side windows slung above a pair of axles on top of which perched two barefooted Aymarás, one to drive and the other, a boy, to sling the long thonged whip pitched and tumbled in the steady gallop over the rough trails of the plain like a motor boat in a choppy seaway.

At the mud walled tambo of Cocuta the first change of horses was made. Before we reached Machicomaca, the next tambo for new horses where we ate breakfast in a mud walled, windowless room, the brake broke or fell off and had been lost somewhere on the rough trail. The steady gallop of the tough, rough mountain horses kept time to the steady singing and punctuating crack of the whip. And yet rarely was a horse struck. An Aymará will drive a crippled animal or leave it to die of starvation on a lonely trail without a thought, but it is rarely that he will abuse a beast with actual violence.

After the change of horses at Copencara there came a steep descent something under a mile long. The driver stopped just over the crest and pointed to the broken brake. Drew spoke a little Aymará, but the sight of the broken brake and the steep hill was enough. We began untangling ourselves to descend. Drew climbed out stiffly and was followed by Jackson, this freed his wife, but she had scarcely put her foot to the step when the mosquito gave a lurch forward and we were off. There had not been even time to jump. It happened in an instant; the door was banging with the plunging coach; Mrs. Jackson was thrown in one corner and above the noise of flying stones and rattling of the coach could be heard the Aymará yelling at his horses and the crack of the whip.

Unused to breechings, these mountain horses, half wild—at least as far as harness was concerned—had felt the mosquito press forward against them. They were off in a flash and jumping down this hill with an unbraked coach bouncing at their heels. If the horses could not outrun the coach we stood a certain chance of piling up in a wreck, horses, Aymará, coach, and two perfectly good and useful Americans. So it was that the Aymará held his horses at their top speed.

Never was there such a ride—not even in the rapids of the Ratama. In one instant of lurching we looked fairly down upon the swift, blurred ground over which we sped, and in the next there flashed past the rim of snow-capped mountains and then the cold, deep blue of the high heavens. The flying stones from the horses banged against the mosquito in a vicious storm. Inside my voice could not be heard above the uproar. I had somehow wadded all the ponchos and blankets and wedged Mrs. Jackson in one corner of the mosquito in very much the same way as one packs china; if we smashed the wadding might help a little. Then I braced myself with my feet against a corner of the roof with all the purchase I could secure and pushed against the bundle I had made. It was the only thing I could think of, and at any rate, it held us both firm against the terrific bouncing.

Never Was There Such a Ride—Not Even in the Rapids of the Ratama

Presently,—though it seemed an hour—we could feel that the bottom of the hill was reached and then came the slow lessening of speed as the Aymará brought the horses gradually to a stop. We climbed out, the Aymará got down off his perch and looked over the horses curiously, and waved his hands in expressive pantomime at the mosquito and back at the hill, a steep water-worn trail of ruts on either side of which the ground dropped in rough slopes. Luckily it was straight, the lightest curve, at the pace we had gone, would have shot the outfit halfway across the gorges before we struck the ground. One horse was lame and the others sagged until we made the last change at Guarina, another old time Aymará village.