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By: Andrew Wexler
Nineteen ninety nine was not a particularly unusual year
for Ecuador. The President was about to be thrown out of office,
the country was defaulting on international loans, indigenous
groups were rioting in the streets and the value of the local
currency was falling faster than a 10- pound Loonie. As a
first year guide with the Spanish verbal skills of a rock,
the situation was not quite ideal for my South American debut.
“Mountains are mountains; it’ll be fine,” I reassured myself.
Of course, I was wrong. What I learned quickly enough was
that in South America, guiding the peaks was the simple part.
Logistics, health and the reality of political and social
chaos would end up presenting much greater challenges to a
northern guide and his innocent flock.
What skill-set best serves a guide when working in an environment
as reactive as Chernobyl and as unpredictable as a harridan?
How does one operate effectively in places where roadblocks
pop-up like ground squirrels, where baggage disappears faster
than a pickpocket, where every morsel of food is a potential
time bomb, and where the answer to every question is: yes?
Obviously, guiding clients to the summit of a 6,000-metre
peak requires basic skills: glacier travel, crevasse rescue,
short-roping, ice climbing, hazard assessment and good route
selection are all part of the job. But a skill-set will only
get you so far in South America. What The Freedom of the Hills
fails to mention, and what every guide new to the region soon
learns, is of course, how to dance.
The Dance begins when the organized planner, the well intentioned
if naïve guide, meets the indifference of a continent that
seems committed to a state of perpetual chaos. The Dance involves
a curious, if not baffling, mixture of improvisation, madness
and demonic possession. It’s what a guide does when a roadblock
pops up on the way to an intended mountain, and there are
10 clients looking at you with an expression of, “Okay, now
what genius?” Where the only appropriate response is to mirror
yourself on the chaos that you wish didn’t exist. The Dance
happens when it’s midnight at high camp, and you find yourself
lying in the snow, curled in the fetal position, purging violently
from both ends, and a client asks if you’re going to be ready
for the summit in 20 minutes? “Aww, this is nothing, just
a little uncooked meat in the system,” you say as you drift
in and out of consciousness, determined to lead the group
to the heights. And if it isn’t already clear, dancing like
a monkey is the only response when the airline loses your
bags, the hotel loses your reservation, the bank has no change,
and the ATM machine eats your card all within the space of
a few hours.
If I had to bet on one time and one place being particularly
challenging, I would put my Bolivianos on Bolivia’s Festival
de San Juan. This local celebration occurs in late June and
like any noteworthy party, the shindig involves back-to-back
days with a surfeit of fire and alcohol. Traditionally, the
fires are lit outside, in the hills, in order to keep evil
spirits away on the coldest day of the year. But in 2006,
the rules of the game were suddenly changed. In that fateful
year, the staff at the hotel we were staying at decided it
would be prudent to light a massive bonfire in the hotel basement.
I have no idea how many evil spirits fled the establishment,
but I do know that every hotel guest was successfully smoked
out of the building. “Andrew, what the hell is this?” I was
asked by more than one client as we huddled together in the
street, fighting to stay warm. “What kind of a staff lights
a fire in the basement of an occupied hotel? Why the hell
are we staying here?” The Dance happens here, at the moment
when the guide is confronted with the impossibility of translating
the chaos into a coherent narrative.
There is no single word in the Spanish language that will
get a guide’s attention faster than "Bloqueo," (roadblock).
The mere thought of this word is enough to make a guide's
back hair stand on end, for it embodies all that is out of
the guide's control. Steep snow, hard ice, challenging clients;
all these can be dealt with safely. But the Bolivian Bloqueo
is a stubborn situation that often refuses to be tamed. So
when our private bus rolled to a slow stop on the outskirts
of La Paz one day, and our driver sent his son outside to
scout, I didn't know what to think. When the scout returned
moments later and climbed aboard, shaking his head and muttering
"bloqueo, bloqueo...." I cleaned out my ears and
asked him to repeat himself. "Roadblock," he said,
"the bus drivers from Coroico are striking...."
At this moment, faced with only one choice, I stepped off
the bus, put on my dancing shoes, and began to move to the
beat of an imaginary tribal drum. In this lucid and flexible
state, I spent the next hour gathering intelligence from various
sources: the local ice-cream boy, the llama man, the soda
lady, the chicken kid and other drivers, before formulating
an ad hoc plan. Once it was determined that we could not A)
ram our bus through the road block or B) take a side road
around the obstacle, we decided on option C. Carrying nothing
but our day packs and flanked by our local staff, we walked
stealthily through the angry mob, around the roadblock, and
hailed a cab once on the other side. Of course, that cab ended
up breaking down but the next one we caught managed to work
out.
You’ve got to be in the right frame of mind for South America.
If you’re hell bent on promptness and organization, you’re
probably better off going to Switzerland or Germany where
you can spend your Sundays marching around the local parks.
The Southern Continent has a unique ability to ratchet human
folly up to the highest level, and the only surprising thing
is that the Locals never seemed miffed. Don’t expect to manage
the chaos. The best you can hope for is to ride it with grace.
If you try to mould it or make it bend to your wishes, you
will fail. Relax, enjoy the ride, and come ready to dance.
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Backcountry Body Language
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