Book Review: Three Letters from The Andes

Safe in the mess-tent the beginners listened wide-eyed to tales of thunderstorms in the high arêtes where the electricity makes one’s hair stand literally on end and the ice-axe hisses in one’s grasp like a snake…

This week we are transported to Peru! As it's summer and I long to travel, I have decided to live vicariously through the travels of others. The book this week is a series of letters to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s wife about the inexplicable highs, and occasional lows of exploring the Peruvian Andes. There is humour, campsite tales, altitude sickness and the small probability that they’re being followed up a glacier by the Peruvian secret police.

A group of travellers, some experienced climbers, a poet, a botany-loving duke, a social anthropologist and a Swiss jeweller and skier make up this rag-tag group of explorers. We start in the gloomy world of London before being carted across the Atlantic to Lima, before embarking to the Andes! The imagery is spectacular, one can almost imagine they are there, climbing through the mountains of the Andes, watching shepherdess miles below herd her sheep, or the quiet horror of slipping on the ice of a glacier and falling several feet. Their climbs are hazardous, but lots of whisky is involved – I’m still not sure if that was to help with circulation or because we Brits like a drink. He rather coyly leaves that ambiguous. However, the Andes, by all accounts, are stunning. The deep valleys and rivers are unrelenting; the steep climb, sometimes too much for their ponies carrying the load and for the climbers who are novices, must stay behind. Then, falling asleep to tales of adventures past under a million stars. Perfect.

The interactions with locals are interesting, most of the conversation is held in the indigenous language Quechan, whereas our explorers rely on that of the conquistadors: Spanish. There was one particularly biting piece where the group are returning to Lima and staying at the best hotel in Puno, only to find the food horrendous, the promise of hot water an utter lie and the manager next to useless – until one of the group forgoes the British ‘stiff upper lip’ and throws his eggs at the wall. THEN it’s all smiles, hot water magically appears, eggs are cooked to perfection and transport to Lima magically appears. Go figure.

Looks like I need to book a flight to Peru soon. They clearly had the time of their lives; hay life is short and life is for living. I’ve never thought about climbing a glacier, but I am now.