I knew I had to get into shape, if I was going to keep up with these kids on a backpacking trip at high altitude. Or at any altitude, for that matter. I put a heavy backpack on and walked the steepest and longest hills in Arkadelphia, daily. As it turned out, I was put into a group going to a village that could be driven to, and we only backpacked through the airport. But I was in shape, mostly, except for the knee I nearly ruined getting into shape.
We arrived in Lima early in the morning, and loaded on a smaller plane for the flight to Cusco. This city is at 12,000 ft. altitude, and planes only go out and in during the morning. Has to do with thin air. Not enough lift. Well, If I'm going to fly over these mountains, I sure do want some lift!
A group of young women from Peru got on our plane at Lima, and I was totally relieved to see that they spoke perfectly good English. We had been told a lot about the language barrier problem, and it worried me a lot, but listening to them made me feel better. “Hey, guys! These Peru people speak great English!” One of our kids rolled his eyes. “Uh, Pat, they're our interpreters.”
We had been told, in pre-trip planning, that these Indians who live at high altitude prevent altitude sickness by drinking Coca tea every day. Well, since Cocaine is made from that plant, we had quite a discussion about using that at all. After all, this WAS and OBU trip. Finally, our nurse who was going along just said, “I've done it both ways. Without Coca tea, I got very sick. With it, I was fine. This is NOT Cocaine. It has to be refined, refined, and refined to get to that point.” We drank Coca tea.
That first day in Cusco, we just took it easy, to make the altitude adjustment, and drank Coca tea.
The next morning, we headed out to our Indian village, a couple of hours out. We traveled in a hired taxi, a van. All our stuff, mountains of it, was piled on top, and the driver found a little short piece of rope on the ground, and tied it down with that. I don't know how he did it, but he made it all stay on, over some of the roughest mountain roads I had ever seen. I'd heard the story of Jesus stretching the loaves and the fishes, and I think God must have stretched that rope a LOT to handle the job that little piece of rope handled. The country was totally beautiful, with green fields sloping up to great mountain tops, speckled with fields of corn and potatoes, and villages of little mud houses with thorn fences around them, keeping the animals in. Herds of Llamas and goats wandered about, driven by women who wore hats just like my Indiana Jones hat.
Halfway out to our village, There was a major landslide across the road. A little path told us at least someone else had crossed it, so we followed. At the peak, we met another van. No way to pass, and nobody was anxious to back down. The driver, and the taxi owner, got out. A couple of men from the other van got out. They held a true SUMMIT conference, concerning which van was on the most important mission. Finally, our driver told them he was carrying a great team of missionaries, who came all the way from America. He pointed out that big man with gray hair, and I felt my first guilt attack. The other men could not argue with that, and they slowly backed down the landslide. Being “big” and gray headed, I began to learn, carried a lot of weight with the Indians, because they were very small, up to my chest, and very few of them lived long enough to get gray hair. I felt like the fake I was the whole time I was there, because I got a lot more respect, God knows, than I ever deserved, having impure motives for even starting this trip in the first place.
When we arrived at the village, we unloaded our gear, and stashed it in the church. I t had been built years ago by another missionary group, and was a small wood and mud structure with very short benches inside, and with its two doors open, it was mostly being used now as a place for hogs and chickens to lounge in. One of my first chores was to filter a lot of drinking water with a hand operated pump. Although we did have access to one of the few faucets in the village, the water had lots of specks in it, and, we were told earlier, 30% of us, at least, were destined to lose a lot of weight the quick and hard way, when their terrible stomach bug hit. A young boy, about eight, quickly latched onto me and was a great help in filtering water. I showed off some of my four or five Spanish words I had learned over the last 3 weeks by naming him, “Aqua Amigo.” My water friend.
Sure enough, when I got in front of a small group of Indians, with my two interpreters ready, (first into Spanish, which the kids understood, then into Quechua, the only language the older Indians knew)
God and Jeremiah came through for me, and the words just poured out. I had lots of time to think up the next paragraph, while the interpreters did their thing. I think God just had it planned out that way, because it took every spare second to think up the next line.
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