Tunari

“The mountains shall bring peace to the people” (Psalm 72:3).

Like the mountains themselves, so also with stories: there are many approaches, many ways to get to the top. Let me take a mostly chronological approach. 

I had stayed at Maryknoll overnight to make it easier to rise and get ready for the day. The evening before I attended the screening of El Profesor, also known as Detachment, which presented the sorrowful mysteries of adulthood, of being a teacher, of being a student, of simply being a human being, the futility of education, of being lost in the city, of being lost in our private pain and secret trauma. Appropriate viewing for Lent, I guess, but not a popcorn movie, I would say. During the discussion, a few folks who spoke up wept because of what they saw. Memories of their own education; fears for their own children and their neighbors’ children. I left the discussion midway through because I felt sleep coming like a slow train, and I didn’t want to miss that train. 

I’m glad I left the film discussion when I did; I went to bed at twenty to ten and fell asleep quickly. I awoke Saturday morning before the sunrise feeling fully awake and refreshed. Then, a bonus: a hot shower! I had not had a hot shower since leaving the United States over six weeks earlier. It’s almost enough to make me want to change my accommodations and bunk with the Maryknoll priests! Well, I exaggerate, but you get the idea. A light breakfast after a light dinner the night before; thank you, Maryknoll fathers, for making your home my home for an evening. 

Then, waiting for Team Tunari to gather for the expedition. Our guide Emilio, one of the laborers here at the mission center, was ready and waiting for us with the driver and van. Alas, we did not leave at 7 o’clock as advertised. Two, no, three, of our hikers were caught up in city traffic and got to Maryknoll 20 to 25 minutes late. One of my pet peeves! The later you try to leave Cochabamba on a weekend, the longer it takes. But this irritation passed. Sometime after 7:30 a.m. we were on our way into the mountains. 

How many of us were we? Thanks to our organizer Joshua, you had seven of the language school students; and you had two former students, the ones with the Mennonite Central Committee, now volunteering here in Cochabamba, plus one of their friends doing social work research on violence against woman and girl asylum seekers. But wait, there were more! On the way out of civilization, we stopped at Tiquipaya and El Paso, north of the city, to pick up four more people. I think they were all family and friends of Emilio. At least the girl who was calling Emilio Tío had to be family. And so there were 16 of us in all, representing Bolivia, Ireland, Kenya, Korea, Liberia, and the United States. A tri-lingual (maybe multilingual), multicultural team. And all of us rode in one van, a Toyota HiAce, cramped and without passenger seatbelts. These vans are typical of the taxi-trufis that make the circuits around here. Dios mío, how I was praying for a safe journey up into Tunari and back! 

The ride to Tunari Peak was two and a quarter hours. Over that time, we went from straight and wide paved roads on level ground to narrow stony roads that curved again and again, making so many U-turns until you lose sense of direction. (You also lose the feeling in your butt as the vibrations rattle your spine.) One of the Korean students kept track of our elevation with an app on his phone. I was keeping track with my eyes. At some point, rather suddenly, we reached a change in perspective. No longer were we gazing at the mountains. We were now in the mountains, gazing around us. Having left the valley, now we were beholding the valley from above. With each U-turn, we came around to the same view, only higher and further from the cities and towns. I prayed as we made each turn and saw, now on your left, now on your right, steep cliffs. And everything, above and below, green, green, green. Halfway up to the place where we would commence the hike, we came to a bridge and small cataract and stopped, fittingly, for a bathroom break. 

To this point we had scarcely seen other people, other motorists. The stony road that winds and weaves its way up the mountains inclines very gradually, but for a climber it is a rather rugged and steep ascent from the base until you reach the final 2,000 feet. For those of you who thought we would be starting from Cochabamba at 8,000 feet and clawing our way up from the valley, my apologies! We’re not quite that intrepid. You know who are the intrepid ones? The herders who tend their llamas and sheep and sheepdogs and horses, too. We began to sight the animals at over 11,000 feet. They are intrepid, too. They were not afraid of us. Some of them were only inches from our passing vehicle. White llamas, brown llamas, white-and-brown llamas, white sheep, black sheep. Llamas are bigger than you expect! And all they need in this life is provided by the earth: water and grass and air. Looking at the shepherds’ thatched-roof stone huts, I thought to myself, the post office doesn’t deliver here. Hopeless thoughts of a helpless city dweller. Anyway, we rode so high into the mountains, we could no longer look down. There was no more down to see. The mountains, steep as they are from the lower reaches, sprawl so much that once you are well above two miles, there are few vistas from which you can see into the valley. 

At quarter to ten we reached the landing where we would begin the hike to Pico Tunari, the topmost peak of them all in Cochabamba. I estimate we were somewhere between 14,000 and 14,500 feet where we started. Having got here, what did I bring with me for the final ascent? Five layers of clothing, for starters: an undershirt, a brown sweater, a thin brown hoodie, a thicker, insulated brown hoodie, and my 25-year-old blue raincoat. On my feet I wore my rugged brown construction boots with good treads. I brought gloves, too. All of these were useful; all of them got worn. In my backpack I had a liter of Powerade, a half-liter of water, and crackers and chocolate cookies. I also carried my breviary, a pocket-sized New Testament, and a notebook. I had taken two 12-hour altitude sickness pills, one the night before and another at sunrise. Others carried their water and food, too, as well as sunglasses, moisturizer, sunscreen, and the like. Emilio, who has made this ascent about 20 times, had packed the least and wore the least. (He related to me that after his first ascent, he got lost on the way down, arriving at the landing at sunset, and the van had departed on him!) 

Having disembarked from the van and gathered our supplies, we started the hike. This is an ascent for almost everyone in good health and enough vigor for the journey. No prior experience was necessary for this expedition. There would be no special equipment or gear for our ascent. Just our feet, our bodies, our guide, and our God. 

Where the stony road ends, the hiking trail continues for about half the distance up Tunari Peak. Like the stony road before it, the trail has a gentle grade. And but for the peaks in our midst, the terrain off the path was also of a gentle grade. Thus we enjoyed a wide visibility and gorgeous views from every point of view. Early in the hike we saw several lagunas, all of them natural but for the first one that was filled with the fish called trucha that is sold everywhere in Cochabamba. There is still enough water for every creature who dwells at these heights. Though there are dry streams, we saw many running streams. We saw cascades and cataracts. There is dry ground, but also moist ground. At every step of our journey up and down, our footing was excellent.

Once you reach the end of the trail, it’s up to you where you want to go; the peaks are all around you, with plenty of paths of ascent. Our mind was set on Pico Tunari itself, which, although the highest peak, is much easier to ascend than the others. Emilio made a beeline for us through the terrain, now more grassy, now more rocky, here moist, here dry. 

Here I should note that we were breathless not only because of the fantastic landscape, but also because of the thin air. You should know that it took the team three hours to get to the top because we made frequent stops along the way. Sometimes you would go only as far as 100 meters (that’s 330 feet) before pausing. You could feel your heart beating hard! We could go only as quickly as the most winded member of our team. And we would leave no one behind unless they chose to stay behind. (A couple of them chose not to go forward to the top.) There were coca leaves aplenty to stimulate the hikers, and sorochji pills for the dizziness and headache, but everyone was going to feel the lack of oxygen if they pushed too far, too fast. Emilio knew when to pause for us and when to say continuamos, vamos. I trusted him implicitly and stayed with him at every step. Funny enough, I came to enjoy the pushing and pausing. I liked feeling the heavy beating of my heart, and I liked the feel and sound of my lungs pulling in pure oxygen and expelling exhausted air. My body felt good for working hard. As we pressed on I felt my body improving, refining its movements. The lungs breathing in and out more frequently, the legs stretching and making full strides. And the closer the peak loomed ahead of us, the more I wanted to get there. 

The higher we got, the more we were rewarded with spectacular, unworldly views. The clouds rose like smoke from below us and hung around the peaks, the vapors looking like smoke from a volcano. I became aware of the utter stillness, the utter silence. The only sounds you could hear, faintly, were the air stirring and the water gurgling. The quiet was as powerful a presence as the mountains. But, people being people, we punctured the stillness with our whistles and cries, waiting for the rebound of the sound waves. Sure enough, we got an impressive delay of echo. But it wasn’t all foolishness. As our team got spread out up the vast rocky terrain, Emilio and his niece would call out so that others who were trailing behind could keep following in the right general direction. 

The weather almost turned us around when we were a couple hundred feet from the top. What kind of weather do you get at 14,000 feet? All of it! The sun is with you all the time. So are the clouds. It gets warm one moment, then very cool the next, depending on where you stand. Anyway, shortly after noon, a freezing rain began to fall on us. It wasn’t heavy, but all around us the vapors were getting thicker, and a mist was rising from the terrain ahead of us. Emilio brought us to the side of a little escarpment and said it looked too dangerous to go up any further, what with the clouds and the slippery ground we would find. We were prepared to call it a day, thankful for how far we had come. But we waited anyway. And five minutes later, the rain was done, the mist had lifted, and there was more sun than clouds. We decided to go on. 

Higher and higher. We stopped more frequently. The slope was getting steeper, more gray than green, more rocky than soily. We saw three condors high in the air. We turned over rocks and found little lizards, who scurried away. Emilio found rare birds, a mother and its child, and showed his niece. These last steps were giant steps, up a 30-to-40-degree slope of rocky chips in which your feet sank a good couple of inches. I didn’t look up or down; I looked only at my feet and Emilio before me. At these latter stages of the ascent I found myself thinking of everyone back in the United States. I was making these giant steps for my friends, my loved ones, all who were dear to me. 

Here came the final giant steps. Emilio’s helping hand reached out to mine and pulled me up onto the peak. Made it! After Emilio, I was the first one there. 

Three miles high. I had never been at a higher elevation outside the cabin of an airplane. I cannot say that during the ascent or at the moment on top, I got a new consciousness of God. But I felt a serenity similar to the day a few Saturdays earlier when I walked out of my room into the rain and got wet in the cloister garden. Also, I felt at peace, with myself and with others, beginning with our hiking crew. As they arrived, I shared with them my crackers and cookies. Well, I had done so in the van and on the way, too, but now I felt more free to give away what I had. We had in a few hours formed a fellowship from the solidarity of breathing hard and pressing on. We had conversations with the people on our team we did not know. It was a long and lazy lunch as we luxuriated under the big sky. I lay on the ground, gazing up; I could have napped right then and there. Someone brought a bottle of champagne, and there was a toast. What was not consumed was spilled onto the ground in honor of Pachamama. Before we left the peak, the clouds below us dispersed from the south side of the peak, letting us see the city of Cochabamba in the valley. 

Going down Tunari Peak was easier than going up. After a kind of swift stepping, skipping, dancing down the first steep slope, we continued at a steady pace back to the place where the hiking trail had ended. Even with some members suffering from sore knees and dizziness, we made it back to the van in an hour and a half. God bless Emilio for taking one member by the hand and guiding her until she could continue by her own strength. Looking behind us, we were awed at what we did. We made it to the top of that peak, the very highest in Cochabamba! We did that? Yes! And many of us never broke a sweat in doing so. Well, we had stopped too often to break out in perspiration. At the van, we took a group photo, after team members had snapped probably thousands of pictures on the ride up and the hike up. I hope in a future post to share some of these pictures, if my colleagues are kind enough to e-mail them to me. 

On the ride down, as many of us were brought to silence by the exercise and the amazing views, I thought to myself, as I was getting another look at them, these are the most beautiful mountains in the world. Then, as if God was saying, you ain’t seen nothing yet … a rainbow, arcing for miles over the sky, across the valley, joining two peaks. My heart was full. 

I wish I could tell you more uplifting things than this. Alas, the rest of the journey back to civilization was anticlimactic. As we plodded down into the city, 16 of us in one van, I realized that I would ache more from sitting in the cramped van for two and a quarter hours than from hiking in thin air. We let two passengers off along the way. After the second drop-off, in Tiquipaya, just outside Cochabamba, the driver inspected the vehicle all around, returned to the car and grabbed a gallon-sized bottle of water. I could smell something burning like rubber or hot metal. The van had overheated. How long before it was safe to keep going? Not five minutes; more like an hour. Well, some members of our team had had enough camaraderie and exited to hail a taxi. As it became clear we were going nowhere fast, all of us left the van. Not a glorious parting of the ways. Joshua, Charles, and I hailed a taxi-trufi going our way, the two of them to Maryknoll, me to Convento San Francisco. Twenty minutes and two bolivianos later, I was two blocks from the convent. But I was hungry right then and there, and I had told the brothers I would not be at dinner, so I had a small cheese pizza at a restaurant on Avenida Heroinas. Nota bene, New Yorkers: they don’t seem to do pizza by the slice around here, so you have to wait as they make you a fresh personal pizza. Tired but satisfied, I returned to the convent. I looked in the mirror and was surprised at what I saw: totally windswept hair and a suntanned, almost sunburned face. Ultraviolet rays will get you at that altitude, cloud cover or not. The next two and half hours I said evening prayer and night prayer hastily, jotted some notes about the expedition, finished my crackers and Powerade, and went early to bed, at nine on the hour. 

Even now, after ten hours of rest, I feel the fatigue of our outing, and hungry, too, but it’s a good kind of tired, and a good kind of hunger. As I wrote briefly yesterday, I did something few people get the privilege of doing or have the daring to do. And the experience is going to continue to sink in. What will it do to me in the long term? Will it awaken a desire to climb other mountains? Will it teach me to persevere as I surmount the challenges in my life, emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual? Will the peace and serenity I received at Tunari Peak carry me through the valleys of la vida cotidiana and the occasional bout of timesickness? Will this experience bring me closer to the God who made the mountains and calls us to rise above them? I hope I can say, I hope I will say, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.