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We spent one night in Chuquibamba, with our friend Señor Benavides, the sub-prefect, and once more took up the well-traveled route to Arequipa. We left the Majes Valley in the afternoon and, as before, spent the night crossing the desert.
Drawing on us for six gold sovereigns, they smilingly added the new mule to the pack train; only to discover on reaching Chuquibamba that they had purchased it from thieves. We were able to clear our arrieros of any complicity in the theft. Nevertheless, the owner of the stolen mule was unwilling to pay anything for its return. So they lost their bargain and their gold.
There followed two days of resting and waiting. Then the smiling arrieros, surprised and delighted at seeing us alive again after our adventure with Coropuna, arrived with our mules. The Tejadas gave us hearty embraces and promptly went off up to the snow line to get the loads. The next day we returned to Chuquibamba.
Here there was an abundance of peat and some small gnarled trees from which Chuquibamba derives part of its fuel supply. We climbed slowly around the lower spurs of Coropuna into a bleak desert wilderness of lava blocks and scoriaceous sand, the Red Desert, or Pampa Colorada.
Our route led us out of the Chuquibamba Valley by a long, hard climb up the steep cliffs at its head and then over the gently sloping, semi-arid desert in a northerly direction, around the west flanks of Coropuna. When we stopped to make camp that night on the Pampa of Chumpillo, our arrieros used dried moss and dung for fuel for the camp fire.
The climate here is delightful and the fruits and cereals of the temperate zone are easily raised. The town is surrounded by gardens, vineyards, alfalfa and grain fields; all showing evidence of intensive cultivation. It is at the head of one of the branches of the Majes Valley and is surrounded by high cliffs. The people of Chuquibamba were friendly.
It was not until we opened our specially ordered "mountain grub" boxes here in Chuquibamba that we found, alongside of the pemmican and self-heating tins of stew which had been packed for us in London by Grace Brothers, the two precious aneroids, each as large as a big alarm clock.
After a few days in the delightful climate of Chuquibamba we set out for Parinacochas, the "Flamingo Lake" of the Incas.
George Bassett, I secured a thousand feet of stout fish line, known to anglers as "24 thread," wound on a large wooden reel for convenience in handling. While we were at Chuquibamba Mr.
The following day a short ride brought us past another pictographic rock, recently blasted open by an energetic "treasure seeker" of Chuquibamba. This town has 3000 inhabitants and is the capital of the province of Condesuyos. It was the place which we had selected several months before as the rendezvous for the attack on Coropuna.
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