[pct-l] "Real Food"and high trekking

[vichanson at juno.com (Vic Hanson)]

Re: 
"Ingredients: Organic Brown Rice Syrup, ClifPro (Soy Rice Crisps [Soy Protein Isolate, Rice Flour, Malt Extract], Organic Soy Flour, Organic Roasted Soybeans), Organic Rolled Oats, Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Organic Peanut Butter (Organic Peanuts, Salt), Peanut Flour, Chocolate Chips (Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Unsweetened Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavors), ClifCrunch (Apple Fiber, Oat Fiber, Organic Milled Flaxseed, Chicory Extract, Psyllium), Fig Paste, Peanuts, Natural Flavors, Sea Salt.

No wonder they taste so bad!!  ;-) I'll take Paydays any day, wish they were available here. I recently ate my last one that I brought down in February, it was a treat, found it in the bottom of a pack! I have to settle for my homemade trail mix, peanuts, raisins and fake M&Ms. I finally found some roasted almonds to add to it the other day, most nuts here are sold raw.

Hey, I grew up on a farm in the '50s and organic meant spreading manure on the garden and fields. 

Here in Peru we just walk in it - manure that is. Recently finished a 7 day trek to some remote villages up river in the Cotahuasi valley. We started at about 11,800 ft. and went up from there. Had a couple of passes just over 14,000 ft. and stayed at one village at about 14,400 ft. Often thought of you, Llama Lady, there were hundreds of llamas and alpacas (related animal) on the trails and grazing in the alpine meadows. At that elevation there is only 1 type of grass that grows that they can eat. Almost everything is transported in and out by llama trains, the burros, horses and mules don't like that grass. A traffic jam is meeting a llama train on top of the 14,000 ft. pass on a 1 llama wide trail! They don't back down, we had to cut a switchback to bypass them.

Beautiful scenery - rivers, waterfalls, rock walls just begging to be climbed for the first time, delicate wild flowers and warm, friendly people who welcomed us into their villages and who sat on hard benches or stood for 2+ hours, crowded into a small cold room to watch the Jesus film on a 5" DVD player. We played lots of games with the kids, jump rope, Frisbee and duck, duck, goose (both new to them but they caught on fast), jump rope and nerf football. We complained about the cold in our fleece, warm socks and boots and they ran around in slippers and no socks! The school yards double as pastures so there was a bit of sliding around the circle when they hit a pile of "organic". Other uses for it - at the higher elevations it is their fire fuel and the kids throw it at each other (we left them the nerf football!) Back down here in Cotahuasi (8883 ft.) we still have plenty of it in the streets from the horses and burro teams going through town.

I was the trekking leader for a team of 6 from Orange County who weren't used to the altitude, there was a bit of huffing and puffing going on and a little altitude sickness but overall it went well. Bringing it back to PCT related stuff, they had 3 MSR stoves burning gasoline, I was using my soda can stove, burning methanol. I usually had water starting to boil by the time they got their stoves pumped, heated and lit. One stove clogged (the gas isn't the cleanest here) and one plastic pump broke. Water filters didn't fare much better, lots of silt in the mountain streams, they had to be cleaned every 3-4 liters. I used Micropure tablets (by Katadyn) most of the time.

I'm getting my house fixed up, I should have a kitchen sink and water inside by next week (been in it a month), I have my electric shower head installed in my very small bathroom right outside my door, have most of the cracks and openings sealed up between the walls and roof and will soon have insulation on the ceiling to make it a bit warmer at night (corrugated metal roof). But the most amazing wonder of modern science is that I now have Internet access on my computer at home!! Just got it installed this evening (after waiting a month to get the installation CD). Oh, by the way, I pay $50/month rent and $35/month for my phone! That does include Internet access and unlimited use between 8 pm and 8 am and all day on weekends but only 60 free minutes (phone or Internet) during the day.

Enough for now, happy hiking,

Vic Hanson

PS  If anyone is interested in coming to Peru and wants a very reasonably priced guide, drop an email to my friend Marcio Ruiz at marcioruiz@hotmail.com, he speaks English and is a very good guide.