8/7/10, Day 7: LLanganates National Park

Today is Saturday, but it began like every other day except for the fact that we got to have breakfast this morning. Lew and I headed over to PAE as usual and worked on all the animals for the morning. Sandy came to pick me up and we, along with Diego’s brother Dani and his family (Ali, Manu, and Emma), headed up the mountainside for a day at the national park.

In the car, Sandy informs me that we are going to make a BBQ lunch and that they have never done it before. Do I know how? Of course I do, but not with the things they have brought for me to start a fire at 14,000 ft in the wind, rain, and below freezing cold. They give me straight black carbon (like our charcoal, but no lighter fluid), a few drops of gas, and some tiny little matches that make matchbook matches look like giant brutes. There is no small grill for the charcoal, so it lays on the ground between two logs we found. An oven rack (from Sandy’s new oven) bridges the logs for food. It took us 2 hours to get the fire going enough to cook on and even then it was pretty weak. Finally, around 4:30 pm (we started making our fire around 1:30), we get to eat. We cooked potatoes (cut in half over the fire), chorizo sausage, small steaks, and a huge slice of pork fat. We ended up eating the potatoes raw, due to the lack of heat put out by the fire… it was fairly comical.

The park was pretty spectacular. It offers wonderful views of the valley below and has several large lakes. There are streams and waterfalls, and the mountain ranges here are nothing like those in California or Colorado. These are lush, green, and extremely high elevation. We spent most of our time above 13,000ft, and I could feel it in my energy level as we hiked around after the meal. Their parks are not like ours… there is a fee, but that is the only similarity. There are many abandoned houses and no “real” roads. The roads we drove would be considered primitive at best in the US. Many people have food animals that roam in the park and they walk the 10 miles straight uphill from town to tend to them on a daily basis.

Around 6:00 the fog and rain roll in and we decide to get going, but we can’t find Dani. Finally someone spots him fishing down at the lake and it takes another 30 minutes to get him back to the car. He caught 2 fish and had them in his pocket when he returned. We slowly made our way back down the mountain and headed home for the night.