One item I bought in Peru was a cardigan (see right) which was sold to me as being made with a mixture of vicuña and alpaca wool. It was relatively expensive and is really warm and it is very light in weight so I’m prepared to believe it – it’s been used so much it is now falling apart!

Now as we descended into a deep valley and the road had a whole series or serious curves, my first introduction to what would become rather routine later in the work, only with me driving.. We did stop from time to time to examine the geology as we went along, so I had the opportunity to take photos as well. Here are links to one or two of them but there are more on the photos page. You can see in the photos with the Land Rovers featured that the SWB still has the detector mounted atop the tripod but….

After maybe 90 kilometres we stopped, as we could hear serious rattling from the roof and the readings were becoming erratic and one of the detectors then ceased providing readings. So we stopped at San Juan de Lucanas (now down at 3,500m) for a drink and a chance for me to sort out the problem.  So I had to get on the roof of the Land Rover and remove the detector on top of the tripod, having established that part of the problem was the gas cylinders that had been strapped to the roof rack that had become loose (you can see the gas cylinders on the roof of the Land Rover in this picture from previous day). The ultimate cause of the damage was the state of the road, far from smooth now we were away from the main highway and climbing into the mountains, the road was unpaved, rough and dusty. The shaking had not only caused the detectors to be damaged but also the roof rack as the shaking had been so bad. Lesson learned! Since it was unlikely that the roads would get much better during the work, it needed a rethink about mounting the detectors on the roof.. The high tripod initially used was not going to work, so a lower mount was needed.

We carried on through Puquio, (3,200m asl) climbing again, round some very twisty roads through valleys before climbing up to over 4,400 m before eventually descending into a deep valley. The delays caused by rejigging the equipment and roof rack on the Land Rover delayed us rather, so we ended up driving into darkness (remember at this latitude darkness falls pretty much as 6 o’clock), descending into a large valley to around 2,900m ASL and arriving at Chalhuanca around 9pm. We found a ‘cheap restaurant’ (that’s what it says in my diary!) and stayed in Hotel Zegarra, Chalhuanca on the main road (described as ‘cheap hotel’ in my diary see photo of the room Uisdean & I shared – still exists, and still described as ‘basic’)

Note – climbing to over 4,000m often leads to severe headaches and some loss of function thanks to the reduced oxygen levels. However, on this day I don’t remember being affected probably probably thanks to the relative gradual ascent. Later on in the work I did get affected, but the circumstances were different.