Colca Canyon Preview: There Can Be Only One

Magge has a lengthy post coming in the next day or two on our trek into Colca Canyon. To whet your appetite, I will introduce a key character in our weekend's travels.

Parental guidance advisory: The following post contains adult language and a reference to drug use.

 Magge and I were lucky to get in a small group for our trek into Colca Canyon, as there was only one other person. He was a 50-something German named Highlander (I presume his last name was actually something like Heilande, but Highlander proved to be ironic and funny, so Magge and I stuck with that name), and is probably the greatest character we've met so far on this trip. I would call him a caricature, but I have yet to figure out what he is a caricature of.

His attire consisted of a ballcap that said Seguridad (security in Spanish), coke-bottle sunglasses, a t-shirt with a picture of a gun and the words "AK-47: When you positively, absolutely need to kill every mother****er in the room" (the shirt was not censored), and hiking boots that a clown would wear with mismatched teal and purple laces.  His English is a mixture of subject-verb disagreements and Spanish phrases (odd, considering he was German).  Amazingly, he speaks English better than he understands it.

One of his greatest skills is being able to fall asleep anywhere, anytime.  To paraphrase his discourse on the subject (I tried to maintain his grammar, read in a German accent for full effect),

"I fall asleep anywhere: next to discotheques, next to festivals, next to any noise.  I sleep after coffee, after coke, it doesn't matter.  I always fall asleep.  The only way I does not fall asleep is cocaine.  I only does it once, in La Paz, Bolivia.  There it is so cheap and so much.  I does it for three days and does not sleep."

His ability to sleep is only surpassed by his ability to smoke.  It's been a habit of his since he was five years old ("I smoke before I go to school") and he had the teeth coloration to prove it, and his personal record of cigarettes smoked in one day is 160 while he was vacationing in Cuba.  While hiking into the canyon, at 3,000 meters above seal level, he was taking smoking breaks every thirty minutes while proclaiming that cigarettes are his vitamins and that, "I never has problems with health!"

On the way down, the trail was hard on the knees, but not on the lungs, and Highlander was able to keep up a good pace.  However, once we hit the canyon floor, it was time to ascend the other side, and I was very curious to see how the German would handle the climb.  The first portion was very steep, and he was stopping every three minutes to catch his breath.  After twenty minutes, we reached the crest of the trail and Highlander sat himself down, completely breathless.  He looked terrible, and Magge and I tried to get him to control his breathing and drink some water, but he refused our advice.  We asked him how much water he drank, and he said two 1.5 litre bottles, but when we looked at his bottles, they were both nearly full.  He tried to get up, and before I knew it, he was sprawled out on his back in the middle of the trail.  The guide came running over to check on him, and pulled leaves from a tree to prepare a natural remedy, and rubbed it all over his face and arms.  We stood there, at least two hours from the nearest medical help, and looked at Highlander, with his shallow breathing and leaves all over his face, and thought "Holy crap, I think Highlander might die."

He eventually recovered to the point that he was able to ride a mule to our lodge for the night.  We did not see him again that night as he did not bother coming out for dinner.  He did make it to breakfast the next morning, and followed Magge's and my discussions of how sore we were with, "It's veird, I'm not sore at all!"  I told him the mule probably was, but the comment went over his head.

The next day, he again took a mule for the entire ascent.  As the guide, Magge and I got into town thirty minutes after he did, he was waiting for us outside of our hotel, smoking.  He waved to us smiling and exclaimed, "I already smoke six cigarettes!"  Highlander: there can be only one.