Down to the river

One of the biggest problems of the Andes is that they are so steep. And photos capture very badly indeed how steep they are. One meagre example is a photo I took during yesterday's drive:

In the right hand bottom corner there is a bit of the road visible, and the reasons why it is not also visible in the left hand bottom corner is because the road is narrow - and the reason why one doesn't see any further bits of the slope on which it is built is because the slope is too steep to be visible.
This steepness makes the Andes quite tedious - when driving around and equally when walking. I noticed that especially today when we walked to the river at the bottom of the valley of which we live at the top. The river can be heard from our huts and I have for some time been quite keen to go there. We slid downhill through soggy forest soil for some 45 minutes and I am happy to say that it is very beautiful:

There is only so much you can do at a wild river with many mosquitoes, though, and we had also plenty other work to do and so we sadly had to make our way up again. I don't think I have ever sweated so much in my life as in these 2 or so hours I needed to climb up the 500m or 600m again that we had descended. I still haven't totally adjusted and V. was clearly better suited to the climes:

If you think the image is shaky then you're right. I was panting as I took it. I don't think I will try that ascend again - even though we bumped into a nice passiflora on the way: