Andes Adventure
LEADING A HORSE 1,000 MILES THROUGH THE ANDES TAUGHT ALEX KING MUCH ABOUT LIFE, ENDURANCE AND MENTAL FORTITUDE
What trekking 1,000 miles taught this MF contributor about endurance and fortitude
When I left university, I ew to Argentina, spent my savings on a horse, and rode it into the high Andes. A friend rode alongside me, but we didn’t want a guide: we wanted a test. Two months later, we spilled back out through the foothills, dazed and bedraggled, about 1,000 miles north of where we’d set o .
Along the way, we both vacated the saddle and began to walk – fearful that, at over 4,000 metres above sea level, our horses were struggling for breath. So our horseback adventure was really a long string of high-altitude endurance walks, threading for miles between ancient volcanos and across blinding salt pans in search of water to keep the four of us alive.
I now accept that it was a feckless journey into a lifeless wilderness. But the experience revealed to me the limits of my own endurance, and o ered a glimpse of what motivates people when they set themselves a challenge that will take pain and hardship to overcome.
INTO THE UNKNOWN
When we rst planned the trip, I didn’t think I had much more to learn about endurance. In my school days,
I’d been a good long-distance runner, captaining my cross-country team, representing my county and winning a handful of big races. And though at university my running trainers worked their way to the back of my cupboard, I still reckoned that endurance lingered in my makeup, imprinted there after years of hell-for-leather training runs.
But as a student, clocking marathon stints in the library was no substitute for the special thrill of nishing a race. I found the endless studying banal and meaningless, which fed an impulse to do something radically di erent as soon as I graduated. By the nal term of our nal year, my friend Marc and I had booked one-way tickets to Buenos Aires, inspired by a photo of galloping gauchos I’d seen in a travel brochure. It took us a month to nd suitable horses. Argentina didn’t seem to be as abundant in equine resources as the travel brochure had led us to believe, but the weeks we spent criss-crossing the country on night buses, and chasing after rural contacts we’d been o ered by incredulous city folk, gave us enough time to buy equipment, pick up a smattering of Spanish, and learn how to look after a large animal. e last name on our list was Javi, a no-nonsense gaucho who owned a sprawling ranch in the lap of the Andes. Javi didn’t even pretend to have faith in our practical skills, but he must have had faith in our determination. After some deliberation he sold us Garry, a towering grey horse with a gentle soul, and Pancho, a squat brown colt without one. We were ready to enter the wilderness.
SADDLING UP
Our rst week in the saddle, covering 15 or 20 miles a day, went o without a hitch. Weaving through the foothills, berets tilted against the sun, the gentle clip-clop of progress lulled us into a kind of trance. Every time we reached a summit, a new, more spectacular panorama was there waiting for us. en we’d plunge into the next valley, lush with grasses for the horses and scattered with rewood we could use to cook up our nightly wok-full of rice. But we were climbing towards an altogether less hospitable place. Somewhere between three and four kilometres above sea level, the creases of the low Andes spat us out into a series of gigantic desert plateaus that know only the ferocity of the sun and the relentless shriek of the wind. Our brief spell of serenity was shattered by a constant face full of dust, and for the rst time I felt myself dipping privately into my reservoir of resolve. It wasn’t long before I was a regular at the reservoir. is felt both familiar and unfamiliar. I’d been here before on painful runs, and I knew how to slap away the temptation to slow or stop. But this was not yet a physically painful experience – it was psychological. And anyway, in this vast sepia void, where the only sign of life was the occasional clump of tumbleweed spinning across our path, stopping wasn’t really an option.
DIGGING IN
We pulled our reins to the right and began heading north. We had maps, and they foretold villages and rivers – even a hot spring or two – somewhere beyond a horizon it would take several days to reach. In the meantime, we’d rely on tiny springs, signalled by little clumps of grass on the hillsides before us, to water our horses and ll our bottles. With the howl of the wind rendering attempts at conversation futile, Marc and I sank into quiet contemplation – and neither of us gave voice to the nagging feeling that perhaps we ought to turn back. In spite of the conditions, Pancho was still sprightly beneath me, and I actually came to enjoy the solitude. I thought about university, about friends and lovers, and about
whatever I was going to do after all this was over. And there were highlights to the rst month. We did nd a thermal bath, where we soaked in blissful joy for a full 24 hours. Each village we passed through meant corn for Garry and Pancho, and Malbec for Marc and I. It felt important to extract as much relaxation from these stops as possible: they were crucial short-term goals, and we desperately needed these pitstops to recharge us for the road ahead.
UPPING THE STAKES
e second month was di erent. Motivated by a perverse desire to push ourselves still further, we climbed another kilometre into the heavens and entered a region of the Andes known as the Puna. e villages here were abandoned, the rivers largely dry. is was no longer a wilderness to romanticise; it was a vision of a world parched by a malevolent sun, deformed by the tumultuous forces of plate tectonics. At this new altitude, and with water sources now spread 50 miles apart, we decided to stop riding our horses, leading them on foot instead. Pancho had started hu ng harder, hoo ng the ground with the air of an exhausted runner. And the few people we now met had never set eyes on such an animal. is was what their Inca ancestors had called the kingdom of the mountain gods – but it was clearly no kingdom for a horse.
“e creases of the low Andes spat us out into a series of gigantic desert plateaus that know only the ferocity of the sun and the relentless shriek of the wind”
We were now regularly walking two marathons a day at an altitude three times that of Ben Nevis, a feat that felt somehow unimpressive: we just didn’t have a choice. e last time my feet had carried me anywhere near that far, I was collapsing on the Mall at the end of the London Marathon. Whether from the fatigue of walking, the fear of nding no water in prophesied rivers, or the sheer violence of the landscape, my thoughts quickly assumed a darker tint. I felt a dull and undirected fury that I couldn’t nd a way to channel into anything useful. Nothing in my running experience could have readied me for the Puna, which made a mockery of the long-distance runner’s mental strength I thought I could always rely on. Marc and I began to give each other a wide berth. We were no longer a team. is seems to be what full survival mode does to you: it shifts your entire psyche, making you sel sh and suspicious. Even at sundown, once we’d set up our tent and cooked our rice, we were too exhausted to toss more than a few mumbled observations at each other before crawling into our tent to pass out.
ON THE EDGE
And yet we endured – though not without incident. We did end up going a day without water, which would have been a lot more terrifying if our wits hadn’t been blunted by mile upon mile of walking. On another day, we were halfway across a salt pan – a promisingly at shortcut to an oasis village – when with a crack our feet broke through the razor-sharp salt crystals and into the squelching mud that lay beneath. It took us hours to work back towards terra rma, and days for the gashes on our legs to heal. e three weeks we spent in the Puna were unsafe and unwise, and for me will always represent what can happen when bloody-minded dedication mutates into unhealthy devotion. Endurance athletes may be fanatical, with a unique perspective on the merits of putting themselves through pain, but most know which side of the line to toe. I descended from the Andes guilty that my pursuit
of the extreme had overstepped that line, endangering four lives. at’s not to say that the trek was a failure. In many ways, it ful lled its function: I arrived back in the UK feeling ready to start the next phase of my life, rejuvenated after those long months in the library. I took up running again, having proven to myself that even the most humble reward can justify a painful trial. And I know myself better, including those darker, more ruthless parts that are usually kept at bay by the comforts of civilisation. I like to think that even Garry and Pancho, who are now back on Javi’s ranch munching on regular truckloads of carrots, were in some way enriched by the trip – carrying themselves like decorated veterans when they’re drafted in to take tourists on two-mile loops of the countryside. But maybe that’s just because I ew back to London feeling I nally understood what it is that makes endurance such a powerful force in people’s lives.
WHY WE ENDURE
I don’t think endurance has a great deal to do with tness, though you’ll need both in spades to compete at the top level. Being forced to endure, it seems to me, requires you to communicate with yourself, choosing to speak to yourself positively while ignoring the inner voice that only o ers bad advice. In the process of that communion, I think we can develop a certain self-su cient con dence, borne of the knowledge that you can rely on yourself in a crisis. I journeyed 1,000 miles through the Andes, I think, to rediscover myself after the dizzying tumult of university. I’m sure there are other ways – who knows, better ways – to have an honest and compassionate conversation with oneself. But the trip reminded me of something I had forgotten after leaving school: that mental strength is a skill built on the boundaries of what seems possible.
“Endurance requires you to ignore the inner voice that only o ers bad advice”