The Adventures of Natividad and Toledo

The mountain children really value the chance to learn at school. Some walk many miles to get to school and back home each day.

Quite often there are more children wanting to attend school than there are places for them. So half the children attend the school in the morning, and the other half attend in the afternoon.

Children who live in the more remote areas are so far from a village school that they cannot make the journey at all.

There have been many changes in the years Nati has been exploring the mountains. A glacier is a vast mass of ice, that forms high on a mountain, and very, very slowly slides down. Nati has seen the glaciers melt and shrink to be smaller and smaller, as the Earth becomes warmer. This is because exhaust gases from cars and factories damage the air around the Earth and let the sun's heat through more easily.

Natividad is also saddened by the increase in mining, that leaves ugly red-brown scars on his beloved mountains. He hears that the mines belong to foreigners, and give very few jobs to local people. Many big mines have their own shops, so the miners do not even spend money in the shops of the local people.

Worse than this, there are sometimes accidents in the mines, and poisonous waste pours out into the streams and flows into the lakes. Then the mountain people have no good water to drink. The fish die, and their cows and sheep fall sick. Their difficult existence becomes impossible. The people say the mines do nothing to help them at such times.

Natividad and his horse have often rescued people in trouble in the mountains. One very sad time they were too late.

They found the body of a mountain climber who had fallen to his death. The family of the dead climber would want the body for a proper funeral. But the local villagers would be frightened to see the dead body of a foreigner passing through. So Nati tied the body upright on the horse, to pretend the climber was still alive and riding. Then he led the horse through the villages to the big town.

Another rescue had a happier ending, at least in part. A party of foreigners had set out to climb Yerupaja.

Nati and a friend of his were sharing the job of chief porter (jefe de porteadores in Spanish). This involved climbing high on the mountain, even though the foreigners had only given them old-fashioned climbing equipment. There was a lot of fresh loose snow lying on the ice.

Some days were spent establishing Base Camp at the foot of the mountain.

Then some of the foreigners and the porters started the climb, carrying heavy loads of equipment. Another camp (Camp 1) was made higher up the mountain. On the morning of the fateful day, six gringos and Nati and his friend awoke in their tents at Camp 1.

Three of the gringos were chosen to carry loads higher up the mountain, to set up Camp 2. They were to spend the night there, then come down the next day to rest. Those waiting in Camp 1 saw the three figures seem to become smaller and smaller as they climbed higher and higher - 500 feet (150 meters) up, 1000 feet (300 meters) up and across .....

Then the watchers heard a great cracking noise, followed by a monstrous rumble and roar, like the loudest thunder you could ever hear. Giant blocks of ice the size of houses (called "seracs") had broken off the glacier higher up the mountain. Now they poured down in an immense avalanche upon the three climbers with their heavy loads.

In a minute it was all over. The mountains were still again. A deathly quiet. The watchers in Camp 1 peered anxiously up the mountain. But there was no sign of the small figures. So they hurried to put on their own climbing gear, and set off up the mountain to search. They knew that another avalanche could come at any minute and sweep them all away.

They were lucky - there was no second avalanche. As they searched through the chaos of ice rubble, they found one of the climbers - already dead. Almost despairing, they searched on and on. They finally found another, very seriously injured, but still alive - just. Close by was the last of the three, in a similar condition.

The nearest telephone was several days walk away. In any case, Peru has no official rescue services. So there was nobody to telephone who could help. Any rescue attempt would have to be carried out by the remaining members of the expedition. But how could the seriously injured men be brought down the mountain?

Nati and his friend quickly climbed back down to Base Camp. From there they ran down to Lake Jahuacocha, the nearest place where any mountain people lived, at 13,300 feet (4050 meters). This descent loses 6500 feet (2000 meters) of altitude, and normally takes 10 hours to walk over very steep and rocky ground.

Here they stripped quenal wood and thatch reeds from the roof of a house, and wove these into three stretchers in the shape of ladders.

Then, carrying the crude stretchers, they ran back up to Base Camp, and climbed up to Camp 1, and beyond to where the casualties lay.

They tied each injured climber and the body to a stretcher. With the remaining foreigners, they then set about lowering the stretchers with ropes down the face of the mountain.

Waiting at the bottom was Nati's trusty horse, and some donkeys. They had been led to Base Camp carrying loads over the very difficult ground from the lake. The casualties were loaded on, draped over the saddles, and tied down.

Then Nati and his friend led the horse and donkeys, down and down, down past the lake. They walked for two and a half days until they reached Chiquian and the nearest road. Here trucks could be found to take the injured and the body to the nearest big town of Huaraz, spread below the looming bulk of Huascaran, the highest mountain in Peru. (Can you find this on the map?) There was a hospital here.

Later they went another 8 hours by road to Lima, the capital of Peru. The expedition was abandoned. The two seriously injured climbers survived and eventually recovered. Natividad does not know if they ever climbed again.

From his experience of many years, Nati knows that it takes a lot of hard work, great care and some good luck to reach a high mountain summit and return safely. He also knows that this is easier if you have some good friends to help you, like Toledo. In his long life, he has reached many summits. He hopes that you, too, will overcome challenges and reach your own personal summits, of whatever kind.