Edgar

Edgar had the spirit of the mountains. Or so he said. He was a thirty-eight year old man who was born and lived in Huaraz, Peru. I usually make a rule of not accepting help or information from strangers in strange countries that offer it to me, but I made an exception in his case.

I had come to Huaraz to go hiking, and my original plan had been to find another tourist with a similar plan and to go with them, but I realized relatively quickly that his hadn't been a very practical plan. About when I realized this was when Edgar entered my life. At the time I was facing a dilemma. I was really looking forward to an authentic Peruvian mountain experience, which I didn't really think I could get on a group tour. And I couldn't really afford a private guide. As I was standing on a street corner looking at a tour agency, Edgar came up to me and asked if I needed any information. I told him my predicament, and he was able to offer a unique compromise between the two. He didn't have a lot of overhead expenses, as he was unlicensed and apparently homeless. He also hardly knew any English, which was an added bonus for me as it would be a good opporunity to practice Spanish. He seemed to be an alcoholic but I figured it would be difficult to get alcohol in the remote mountains so we would be okay on that front. I talked to him about the route and the gear required and he seemed at least mildly compenent so I decided to go for it.

So a couple days later I got onto a bus with Edgar for Caraz. The bus was a bit larger than a minivan and held between 25 and 29 people for the duration for of the 2 hour trip. When we ate dinner, Edgar had the people give me the bill as though it were my responsibility to pay for his meal as well as my own, which I didn't like but I didn't say anything. The next morning we got some more groceries, which I had to pay for. The original contract we agreed upon, before Edgar changed it, included the price of all the food for the trip, so I wasn't very enthused about this development either. Edgar seemed to sense that I was getting angry about paying for everything, so he payed for his own breakfast and we took a taxi to the beginning of the trail. Edgar had me pay him 70 soles for the taxi ride, and then he in turn paid the taxi driver. I saw him pay the taxi driver 60 soles plus some change, so it is very likely that he paid the driver less than 70 soles and kept the rest of the money.

Once we started hiking, the real fun began. In that area at that time of year it rains every afternoon, so the plan was to hike in the morning and rest in the afternoon. We did not get to the campsite the first night before the rain began, so all of our stuff got wet. I didn't really have a problem because all of my clothes dry quickly and I wore them until they were dry, but Edgar, it turns out, had brought about 20 pounds worth of cotton and wool clothing, which all got wet in the rain and he proceed to take off and put wet on the floor of the tent or in plastic bags. The next morning, surprise surprise, his clothes were all still wet. This probably doubled their weight, so I got to listen to Edgar complaining all day about how heavy his backpack was. I was carrying almost all of the communal gear, such as the stove, fuel, first aid kit, map, knife, etc. (I found out quickly that Edgar, my guide with the “spirit of the mountains” had not brought either a map or a pocket knife), because it was mine. When we started, however, because he had packed so many clothes Edgar didn't have any room in his backpack so I had to carry all of the food, which probably weighed 30 pounds. I had offered to go with Edgar to buy the food because I needed a special diet, but Edgar had turned me down. I decided later that this was probably to make it easier for him to screw me on the price of food. So he went by himself and ended up buying about 2 pounds of sugar, 0.5 pounds of salt, and about 5 pounds of tomato paste, among other things. What is special about the items I mention is that they have virtually zero nutritional function, meaning that I was probably carrying at least 10 pounds of dead weight.

Anyways, we started out again the next morning, but between Edgar's wet clothes and all the junk food I was carrying, we did not end up making it all that far, especially considering that this was the second day of going straight up the side of a mountain. Edgar had said that the route he had chosen usually took 12 days using mules to carry the gear, but since we were not going to be using mules we would be able to go faster and complete the route in 10 days. We he had first said it in the office it had seemed illogical to me but I figured he knew what he was talking about, but by the second night it turned out that he had been completely wrong and that in fact we were going much slower than we would have been if we had mules to carry all our gear. In addition to that, we did not have enough stove fuel.

Edgar felt that it was very important to have tea, both in the morning and at night. It was necessary for the cold; he knew these things because he had 10 years of experience. The thing was, however, that making tea requires stove fuel, and any stove fuel that is used to make tea cannot be used to make food. In addition, Edgar's method of cooking used much more stove fuel than was necessary. He would put a bunch of water in the pot, bring it to a boil, add vegetables, let them cook for a while, add rice, let it cook for a while, and then dump out the spare water. He also refused to use the heat reflector, stating that it had no purpose. The second night I endeavored to show him that there was a different way to cook the rice, adding the water and rice at the same time to avoid having too much water, because if you use the right amount of water you don't have to dump any out and you won't have wasted any fuel boiling water you wouldn't end up using. When I started to do it, though, he told me that I was doing everything wrong, and when I told him that there was more than one way of doing things he told me that I was wrong and that there was in fact only one way to cook rice. He then went to sulk in the tent and at one point when the wind blew the stove out he yelled out to me “it seems like you don't know how to cook!” In addition to this whole mess, he had brought dried beans, which take forever to cook and as such didn't end up getting completely cooked, which wrought havoc with our digestive systems for the whole night, which Edgar blamed on me. So I wouldn't have to put up with his bitching, I let Edgar do all the cooking for the rest of the trip, using fuel at a rate that was unsustainable.

So anyways, by the second night it had become apparent that we were not going to finish in ten days and that we were going to run out of stove fuel before we got a chance to replenish it. I suggested that we might have to stop making tea. Edgar seemed to think that this would be a fate worse than death, but luckily he did have a backup plan. That afternoon we were to pass by a pueblo in a valley and he had in the past rented a mule and an arreiro (mule driver) from there to carry gear for a while, and he was hoping there would be a mule available again this time. When we got there there was no mule available but luckily there was a horse and one of the villagers was willing to guide it with our gear starting in the morning.

We stayed that night in the village, which as an experience in itself pretty much made the whole trip worthwhile. There were about 5 houses, all made out of adobe with straw roofs, plus a schoolhouse which was probably also made out of adobe but with a ceramic roof and painted light blue. There was no electricity or running water except a river and a stream that intersected at the village, and each house had a wood fire burning in the corner of one room to cook on. There was no containment of the fire, it was just burning on the floor with no ventilation system except a hole in the wall near the peak of the roof. We stayed in the house of the man who was to be our arreiro. He was 20 and his wife was 18. They had 4 kids. I took a picture of the kids and it seemed as though they had never had a picture of them taken before.

Before we had started hiking, Edgar had told me that he expected a tip if the trip went well, which I was okay with. The night before, however, he told me that he had made a mathematical error when he made our contract and that he really needed another $50. He said that if I gave him another $50 he would be much more at ease and able to work hard for me, but I took it as a threat that if I did not give him $50 he would leave me stranded. I told him that we would discuss it after the trip was over. The night we stayed in the pueblo, however, he brought it up again, saying that he really was going to need another $50. I really didn't want to give it to him because I knew that if I did he was just going to keep asking me for more and more money. I deferred him again but then I found out that the mule driver was going to be going with us all the way to a town two days before they finish and it was going to cost me $55. By this point I was really starting to get sick of Edgar because he would not stop talking about how great of a mountain guide he was and how he knew everything and how many foreign girlfriends he had had and about how much better his trekking skills were than mine or anyone else's he had ever met. He would also throw a tantrum whenever I would disagree with him and at one point said “I have ten years of experience, boy, don't try to tell me what to do” during one of our multiple discussions about how to correctly use my stove. Anyways at this point I was really not looking forward to spending another six days with him, so I offered that we could go with the mule driver to Vaipiuria like the mule driver wanted and then we would just take a bus back to Huaraz from there. That way Edgar would have gotten 10 days of pay for 8 days of work, I wouldn't have to put up with Edgar for as long, the mule driver would have enough money to feed his family for a year, and everybody would be happy. Additionally, Edgar had found more opportunities to weasel money out of me than what I have described here, and spending time with him was starting to have a noticable impact on my financial situation.

Edgar, however, didn't agree, and decided to take the opportunity to make a scene in front of the campesinos. He started yelling at me about justice and how I needed to follow my conscience and how a contract was a contract and how the extra $50 dollars was just a part of his pay that he had already earned and it really wasn't that much money anyways and that he didn't know how contracts worked Europe or the United States but we were in Peru and in Peru by God a Contract is a Contract and Men are Honorable and Obey their Contracts.

I countered most of this by repeatedly calling him a liar and telling him that I didn't believe him and that I knew his story wasn't true because it kept changing. And also, of course, that I didn't think it was especially fair that he could change the contract but I couldn't. Eventually it became clear, however, that this was an argument that I was not going to win as in general I needed him more than he need me. So I agreed to give him $25 but I ended up giving him $33 because I didn't have correct change and I figured that if I gave him extra money now he wouldn't ask for any more later. Sometimes I don't learn very quickly.

I should mention that I have been told that in Peru is considered very rude to argue about money in front of strangers. In fact, I imagine that it is considered rude pretty much everywhere. Edgar, however, chose that moment to throw a tantrum because although his behavior at any other time would have been completely inappropriate, because he was asking for money from a gringo it was okay, and in fact the man of the family (who was the only one who could speak spanish) did end up subtly taking Edgar's side.

I went and sat on a ledge for a while and contemplated the Evil of humanity, because really, we all have an Edgar in our hearts. After a while Edgar came over and offered to show me some Incan ruins in the valley as if by doing so he would actually be earning the $33. We went over there and he made a big show of pretending to know all about the ruins and saying “See, look how hard I'm working for you. You're the boss!” as if that made everything all better.

Later that night, Edgar and I and some of the members of the community ate dried guinea pig boiled with rice, potatoes, and onions (quite good after three days of rice, tuna, and tomato paste), drank tea infused with cane alcohol and had a discussion about, among other things, machismo in Peru. From the men I learned that if the day ever comes where women make all of the decisions in the world, it will shortly be followed by the “Apocolypsis”, and that machismo is part of the Peruvian culture and that all visitors to Peru, including women, should respect and defer to Peruvian culture, including machismo. I also learned that any man who lets a woman choose the color of the walls in his house is, if I may take liberties in translation, a pansy.

The next morning we loaded up the horse and walked a while. We went over a pass at 4,900 meters (16,000 ft) that was covered in a foot of snow. I thought I was unlucky because I had left my gloves in my bag on the horse but I found out later that the mule driver had crossed it in sandals. His feet had looked more or less like Frodo's before we started so you can imagine what they looked like after that day.

That night we camped in a valley and the next morning when we woke up it was raining. Edgar was like, “well, the weather's pretty bad, we might as well quit. There's a town about 16 miles from here that we can make it to today. You've already seen all the good parts anyways”. At first I argued with him because I was in fact really enjoying all the parts of the trip where I wasn't arguing with him and it really pissed me off to think of him getting 12 days of pay for six days of work. But, the truth is, when I woke up that morning I had had a mini breakdown trying to figure out how I was going to put up with his ass for another three days, so eventually I agreed go down out of the mountains that day. After we made that decision I didn't have any reason to stay on his good side so I told him what I thought of him. I told him that he was a pendejo and a racist and a liar who had no respect for me as a client, only for my money. He seemed to take most of it as a complement and really didn't seem to understand why I was so angry.

Towards the end of the hike we went through a couple more pueblos that must have seen more hikers the one I had stayed at because all of the children shouted “Give me a candy! Give me a Candy! Give me a candy!” as we walked by. Eventually we got to a village that had bus service. There was a fiesta in the village that day, which consisted of 12 people sitting cross legged in a straight line. One of the ladies was using her teeth to pick meat out of the eye socket of a cow skull. We asked the group where to wait for the bus and how much it cost. The replied, “Three soles, but five for gringos!”

We took that bus to a larger town, and I watched as adobe buildings gave way to adobe buildings with political grafitti on them, which gave way to adobe buildings with electrical wires going to them. Yomabamba, our destination was a very pretty town, if you ignored all the garbage and diesel fumes, but with very little to do. It is situated in what I believe is called a cloud forest, a kind of jungle in the mountains. We went to lunch and Edgar tricked me into paying for his meal. I almost punched the motherfucker in the face because when I gave him the $33 I specifically told him that I would not be paying for any more of his meals or bus rides. Edgar then spent about two hours trying to secure us seats on a bus back to Huaraz that night. He eventually succeeded, which was the only useful thing he had done in the last several days. I know he only worked that hard because he was probably afraid that I would strangle him in his whiny, snoring sleep if we spent another night together but I was grateful enough to have a time frame to being rid of him that I wasn't mad when he held out his hand for money for his ticket.

The bus ride back to Huaraz was a real bitch. Nine hours through the night of gravel-paved switchbacks in a bus designed for people six inches shorter than me sitting in a broken seat. I was able to sleep more or less when we were going uphill, but whenever we would go downhill my knees would bang against metal part of the seat in front of me and it would be too painful to rest. Edgar also scammed me out of another eight dollars. He said that he had negotiated with the driver to let me pay 8 dollars directly to the driver instead of paying the $25 park entrance fee. I honestly didn't have a problem paying the entrance fee but I found it easier to give him the money than to look him in his gap-toothed face. We, of course, were exiting the park, not entering it, and we never went through any type of checkpoint so I'm sure he just pocketed the money. Several times during the ride he asked me what my future tourism plans were and creepy questions like what bus line I was planning on taking out of Huaraz but I just glared at him and asked him why he wanted to know. We got back at 4:30 in the morning and he followed me back to my hotel but then I turned around and glared at him until he left.

Later that day he came to my hotel room with my student ID card, which I had left with him as some sort of guarantee for renting the tent. I honestly would have rather foresaken it than seen him again but there he was. He asked me what I was doing the next day and I said “going back to Chiclayo” and glared at him. Then he uncomfortably asked “Are you okay?” and I glared at him without responding and then he left. Goodbye Edgar.