Educational

We set off for the intrepid trek and got back by the next morning. Christy was struck down with altitude sickness at the base camp and spent the whole day at the campsite being ill. I hiked up to a lake high in the mountains, it was a test to scramble up at the end at that altitude and it felt like my head might explode. It was strange to think that I was at around the same altitude as at the top of highest mountain in Europe. The lake at the top was beautiful and well worth the headache!

When we finally got back to base camp Christy wasn’t any better so we decided that it would be best for her to go back the next day to recover. We had a very long and cold night in the tent and woke up to ice on our boots. We then walked back to Huaraz and rested for the next few days recovering.

Whilst Christy was recovering I amused myself by playing Columbo. When we were first dropped off for the hike I realised that I had forgotten the plate which attaches my camera to my tripod and it was therefore useless. So, I asked what I thought was the agency driver to take it back to the hostel for me. He agreed to do so and left his driver’s licence as security, along with his number plate details. When we got to the hostel it was not there so I contacted our trekking agency who then said that they had no idea who the taxi driver was and that they just grabbed him from the street. Thus started the epic tale of the tripod. I went along with the hiking agency man to the main police station. After much handshaking and waiting we were admitted into the hub of police activity in Huaraz, which consisted of a small room which was half filled with boxes of red wine and a few very jolly looking officers. We sat down on wonky chairs and waited for the police commissioner to finish his demanding work of looking through an album of football photos. Once he had finished this important task he turned to us and we discussed what had happened. He decided the best move would not to be to ask his force of several hundred traffic police to look for the taxi, but to ask us to stand on the main crossroads (next to where the police stood already playing with their phones, blowing their whistles for no reason and chatting amongst themselves) for two hours trying to find the taxi amongst at least 1000 other taxis. So we did that and by the end my head was filled with number plates, but not the correct one. We gave up for the night and the next day the hiking guy did some of his own private investigation and found out the taxi drivers cousin’s address. The following morning we went and collected the police commissioner and, in a taxi paid for by me (apparently Peruvian police cars are not for hunting down criminals, but for more important business like doughnut and ice cream collection), drove to the cousins house, picked him up and then tried to find the house of the taxi driver. The cousin wasn’t sure exactly where he lived and everyone on the street seemed to know nothing and denied everything. So we gave up and as we were walking back towards the station I spotted the number plate of the thieving taxi and we hailed it down. It wasn’t the same taxi driver and it turned out that 4 people shared driving the one taxi. Either way it was a lead and we were all chuffed that at least we now had a free taxi which we could finish the investigation with; the taxi driver didn’t share this enthusiasm with us. We all piled in, me, Christy, trek man, police commissioner, and cousin. The taxi driver took us to a house next, unfortunately the thief wasn’t there but a small girl was so we apprehended her and crammed her into the car. We then drove up to a market where another woman was also piled into the car, along with a sausage dog and a rare breed of pig. By this point the car was struggling to get up hills with the weight of everyone in the car. We then drove back to the very first house we had knocked upon and been told he didn’t live there, only to find out the woman must have forgotten that her husband indeed DID live with her, an easy mistake to make and one that didn’t seem to bother the commissioner. After some time the tripod stealing taxi driver appeared from the house, he was drunk and apparently had been for the last 4 days at a party which explained the absence of the tripod. We piled him into the car too along with my tripod and headed to a cafe where over a coke the police commissioner explained that he would give me back my tripod in exchange for 50 soles for his hard work, the taxi driver was set free and law and order was restored in Huaraz. Police work at its best!!!