Only for braves

The few accessible Laguna Negra has more mysteries than people dare to tell.

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

    EL CARMEN DE LA FRONTERA, Peru – The worst way getting to Laguna Negra is by walking. The best is hiring a horse or a couple of them for overcoming 11,761 feet altitude and enjoy the trail. The problem is we did not pay attention to this detail and we chose to trust in the power of our legs the same like the ancient habitants of this zone who hiked often to praise for some grace to the different lakes forming Las Huaringas Complex.

 

Salalá is a town located two hours by a clayed-dusty road from Huancabamba City. It’s the last stop to buy groceries and think seriously if going ahead. The main way-out to the north goes to Shimbe Lake, one of the most occidental nascents of Amazon River. For going to Laguna Negra (Black Lake), we have to go across the middle of the town to the northwest. The path to the first one has imperceptible climbs and steps amid a loveable landscape, but the second one… is a neverending uphill climb.

 

Here we are after travelling eight hours by bus from Piura to Huancabamba, where we arrived at 4:00 in the morning, and we have taken an old van almost quicly to awake and have breakfast in Salalá. The menu is not very varied neither attractive, despite the high prices the people charge, acostumed their way to have tourists from around the world.

 

    The climb

After lasting half an hour having breakfast and consulting our local guideabout the plan to follow, we start the way to Laguna Negra with the best weather ever, and a maximum journey of four hours to walk. We begin to leave Salalá, which is 8999 feet altitude, and I feel while going up the slope, the evident dicompensation effect caused by the atmospheric pressure. The unaclimated person uses to tire very fast and reports cardiac tension problems in some cases.

 

The crew is formed by seven people – enzo Jibaja Cruz, an Piura City-based agrindustrial engineer, who dedicates his spare times to research lost civilizations.”We’re going to visit The Mother Lake,” he repeats along the way. After all, he was who started up all this coverage after having news of strange carvings very near the water mirror.

 

My struggle against the slope was relatively won until just at the middle, the base of my hiking boot broke from the rest of the leather and left useless to advance. “There’s ever a gift for those climbs,” I said Carmen, one of the two women who accompanied us in this expedition.  Enzo, Juan Lozano Quesada, his mate, our guide, and my partner Carlos had sseparated from our group and went ahead 330 or 660 feet uphill. The only solution I had to advance was loaning a pair of sandals made of old tires and reaching somehow.

 

While we hike, the eucalyptus of the slope mix up to the cape yellowwoods, native vegetation of this ecosystem known as the cloud forest, a kind of vegetal cover that absorbes it the moisture of the air, transports down, and fixes into the soil breaking out little streams those turn in big rivers downhill later.

 

The cloud forest of the Andean Range is a unique ecosystem in the worldand it is only located in the middle of the Ecuadorian Southern and the Peruvian Northern, right there where the majestic mountains chain sinks into the Earth crust and, after reaching altitudes over than 16,500 feet, here we just get 12,870 – it’s about the Huancabamba Deflection.

 

    The páramo

The slope became steeper and harder. There was no time to get out the forest. In the other hand, four hours of trail had run and no traces of any lake except the same cold water irrigation ditchwhich we crossed once and again. At 11:30 in the morning, almost to regret all the effort, we got to a big stone gate what we trespassed, and it appeared like a magic act.

 

After a relief whisper, we had got to the páramo, that according to the scientists, in Piura’s case, it shouldn’t call so because unlike Ecuador’s or Colombia’s, here there are not a couple of flora and fauna species that configures such as that. In fact, the Piura’s páramo is a great scrubland of golden herb, less than 1.5 feet height, planted on the black mud formed by sulphur oxides as the result of an intense volcanism during the Cenozoic Age. The lakes appeared after the last glaciation20,000 years ago. At least, the Geology says that.

 

But the Piura’s people called it páramo for their lifetime, and they also call páramo to the violent in-extreme cold and wet blizzards , caused by the low pressure fronts formed when the winds of Amazon and the Pacific smash just at this zone.

 

Walking over mud without convenient shoes, wearing sandals and socks, I mean, is not the most recommendable especially because the soil is too flabby that somebody’s leg can sink until the calf. Did I mention you that the soil is constantly wet?

 

Actually, Piura’s páramos work like sponges catching the moisture of the air and keep into the soil, indeed, making it to flow underground. Right where the land depresses and the humidity gathers, a lake appears. In this spot of Piura, there are around 50 lakes at least located across the provinces of Ayabaca and Huancabamba, and more continuously at the so-called Real or Huamaní Sierra, where, under my understanding, is the point where the Andes lose its whole logic.

 

    Warning on the rock

Nobody lives at the páramo. I mean except many hummingbirds, some mices, and insects wherever, there are no many human communities at this zone.

 

Our soul refreshes at noon looking at a regular-size small lake. False alarm. We are not arrived to our destination yet, but it’s about Laguna del Pato (Duck’s Lake), that can be considered as the most southern nascent of Quiroz River. In my respect, this lake means the limit of the Basins of Pacific and Atlantic.

 

Juan, who has some skill to perceive hidden things, warns us to look aroundfor out-of-order stuff.Of course, I’m more interested in advancing and not losing the northwest direction, although I begin to suspect we are already lost.

 

30 minutes after Laguna del Pato, my water finished. I was thirsty and tired. As the groups joined again, I asked the lead guide to bring me a sip of an old ideal remedy to deal the decompensation by the altitude. It’s the cañazo or sugarcane schnapps. Because of the constant effort, the blood pressure decreases, so the cañazo reverses the effect, gives a warm sensation, and avoids other typical symptoms to appear like headaches, dizziness, and chest pain.

 

    Just at that moment, I see Juan and Carlos leave the group and walk to a nearby slope that the guide identifies as Cerro Negro (Black Mount – actually, there are at least seven locations in this area with the same name). There both find a rock with a rare drawing carved on its surface. There’s no word but a perfect circle intercepted by an acute angle, like a trapeze.

 

There are no researches about this sign in particular, neither other two elses we find some feet ahead with similar patterns. The only reference of civilization in 15 miles around is the lost town of Caxas, that is at the south of our location and which remains just some rocks today. The Italian researcher Mario Polía assures the town was built by the Incas. However, many local researchers don’t believe this version because the Incas liked to build over firm soil, and this one is not.

 

Enzo Jibaja has another theory defying every historic knowledge as we know it. Based upon certain data he could gather with Juan, he says it could be attributed to the Shacsha people who lived at this zone11,000 years ago, and who was dedicated to supervise the normal storage of Las Huaringas and the spill of their water to the lowlands.

 

Regarding the rocks, there is no explanation about the meaning of their carves. However, Carlos applied the formulas of surface and perimeter of circumference and found two numbers: 60 and 42. It’s probable if mathematical formulas are applied to all the patterns, those petroglyphs would make more sense.

 

    Bath time

When we finished to examine the last rock, we got back our way and almost from nothing (it was the fatigue, definetly, Laguna Negra appeared. It was around half a mile beyond, but to reach it, we had to go down a little vallyand go up again to a promontory where it locates, kept by four little peaks.

 

Then, I realize we had good weather and The Sun jumped from cloud to cloud, trying to give us heat. The last time I came to one of the Huaringas, in 2004, I simply entered and the lake was fully covered by the clouds. The guide of that time said that ever before coming into those sacred places, it is necessary to grant a gift to the land.

 

I commented this to the crew, and the guide decides to stage a little pago (gift) ceremony with a few cañazo and Florida Water we had carried on. He takes some sips and sprays to the four cardinal points like an aspersor. This is the famous shingado. The hypersensitive Juan confesses us we are not alone. Then, Enzo rises a ecumenical praise to the eternal binomial of those lands – God and Mama Pacha (Mother Earth).

 

At 2:00 in the afternoon, we got to the lake’s rim. It ran a little windbut Enzo and Juan were undressing and preparing to join a blessing ceremony into the cold water led by our guide, who played as shaman. Carmen was the next one despite herself.

 

I was the following next one almost pulled into, and I confess it’s necessary to have much adrenaline for sinking the full body inside the cold water – your senses say you can die by hypothermia but your heart demands you to be part of the ritual and put your body in contact to this vital fluid. When I came back to the rim, semi-naked, I assumed I had survived 41°F of cold water and I brought myself to the cool wind of the highlands to be an only one with the rest of Nature now.

 

Carlos, who had a light altitude sickness attack, was the last one to get into after continued requests, then he sat down with the rest of the crew to take the cool wind at the rim.

 

It was there when our guide explained us a detail that convinced us it was not about a simple lake but a being with a soul: as we went into and out of the water, the fog above it cleared or gathered, and this was an indicator of health or disease of every bather, what eased a fast diagnose of the physical or spiritual illness of each one.

 

    Survivor

The plan of Carlos and mine was climb up to the lake to take some data and get back that same afternoon to Huancabamba, or waiting for the rest of the crew in Salalá. Enzo and the rest had arrived intended to sleep overnight, so they invited Carlos to stay with them. This was one of that rare occasions when my partner ended to accept and we had no more choice that joining the camp. The detail was that our sleeping bags had left in Huancabamba and we were not prepared to spend overnight in those conditions.

 

A local and his wife have a shack near the lake where they sell food and a shed under what the diners can sit down and rest. At the last moment, we arranged with a peasant to bring us three horses for leaving it out the next day. After eating, we decided to fix for spending overnight with the few coat we had available. Some light showers fell and the cold began to intensify.

 

There is a kind of U-shaped valley just to the west of Laguna Negra through where a little stream runs down forming Quiroz River much lower. This valley leads to a Cliff from what the mountain range where Ayabaca City or Aypate Ruins are visible, and I understand the preference of Andean people for worshipping the heights.

 

At 7:00 at night, everything was dark, and just over the lake’s surface, a strange show started surprising all us – strong color lights began to rise and were overflying the whole sector of the valley and even rounding the shedunder what we tried to protect of a violent rain just outbreaking.

 

The dance of the lightballs lasted for three hours and left us perplexed knowing we couldn’t get out anywhere, neither communicating anybody because our equipments simply had no signal. I asked not to photograph anything of this by fear, but it was evident something was happening just in front of us.

 

We tried to sleep unsuccessfully amid the rain and the cold until it awoke, but no trace of the peasant neither the beasts of burden we had requested. When we were preparing to get out there by foot (despite everything), the man and other two guys appeared, put us on the horses, began the way back. It took us just a couple of hours returning to Salalá. The rest who had coming on their feet, arrived one hour later.

 

When we got back to the van we hired from Huancabamba, the locals passed next to Carmen, Carlos and me looking at us like extraterrestrials, but no one dared to ask us nothing.

 

The voice was already spread across the town about a bunch of foreign folks had gone to spend overnight at The Mother Lake for having contact to the strange lights. However, no one dared to ask. Only an evidently heavy drunk man approached us and said that we were special and we were chosen to protect the lake. We tried to leavetaking him so kind because the only one we had  in that moment was fatigue. The noon of Catholic Holy Friday was coming on.

 

It’s not the first ttime that the people of this zone match to the lightballs, what use to locate in apparently strategic places including the site where the mythical golden town of Chicuate seemms to be sunk. That night, already back in Huancabamba, I was thinking that effectively our work was to spread and protect what this lake means. On the beside’s bed, Carlos suffered with continued nightmares what did not let sleeping good for the rest of that week.

     

This story was produced on April 5th, 6th, and 7th, 2007. Originally published in Spanish, August 2008, it was adapted for teleplay by History Latin America Channel what aired in July 2013.

The Association of Ecologist Youth in Huancabamba collaborated with the local productionof this story. Original edition by Lucía García.

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