A team picture in front of our cave (L-R Ketty, Elsavio, Myself, Rodolfo, Bruce)
Ketty and I, outside the cave
Cast of Characters:
Elsavio, all-around good guy, Jack-of-all-trades, Museo Natural de Historia Natural, Lima, Peru
Ketty, paleobotanist, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru
Jenna Emerson, clueless gringa inadvertently included in the expedition
Rodolfo Salas, Paleontologist, Museo Natural de Historia Natural, Lima, Peru
Bruce J. Shockey, Paleontologist, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, USA
The first day of digging for fossils turned out to be a blast – arriving at the cave, I was pretty nearly overwhelmed with excitement. The fun was especially enhanced when I was able to unequivocally identify the species of the very first two fossils I picked up – one being a llama tarsal and the other a jaw fragment of an Andean fox.
Unfortunately, the temperature deep inside the cave did eventually affect my energy level, as my poor fingers became increasingly entumbicedos (that’s a new word I learned on this trip. It’s a rather specific description of the terribly paralyzed feeling one gets when their extremities have lost circulation and are threateningly close to frostbite.) However, despite the sub-zero temperatures sapping my liveliness and taxing the fun level a bit, I couldn’t help but occasionally get an extra set of goosebumps (in addition to the typical cold-induced ones which were already present) of excitement. This, I kept telling myself, is science! Happening! Right now! And I’m a part of it! I must admit, it’s a pretty incredible feeling. So much of my exposure to science up to this point has been learning about already known and understood concepts. Sure, such knowledge is certainly fascinating and exciting, but it lacks the sustained energy of discovery. Just think for a second about the possibility of being the very first person who puts together enough information to actually compile completely original knowledge: isn’t it thrilling!
Sure, half of the things I found had little or no significance to me. More than once I carefully excavated a seemingly nondescript bone, only to have Rodolfo later pick it up and exclaim “Que bueno! Where’d you find this?!” My luck at finding bones from the elusive oso pedasoso (a type of prehistoric giant ground sloth) was somewhat overshadowed by my ignorance in recognizing them. I sort of was forced to develop a technique after a while. The most common, abundant fossils of llama metatarsals and carpals are pretty distinctive, so any of those which I removed I did so with nonchalance. Really really big bones (comparatively speaking) were pretty much exclusively Onohippidion, an extinct genus in the Eqidae family. When I felt like showing off the fact that I knew that, I would occasionally mention “Ahh, otro Onohippidion” while setting them aside. Jaw fragments of any species, I quickly learned, are always a good find, and worth pointing out to the people around you. Beyond that, if it wasn’t obvious, at least I wasn’t a total fool for missing any of these plainly obvious objects.
One relatively important thing which I realized while falling asleep that first night was that, while I may not absolutely love every moment of what I’m doing, I always appreciate the value later. This concept happens to be particularly applicable to this fossil field work. During our days in the cave, many times I was totally and completely entumbicedo, cramped and aching, and willing to pay any price to escape from my mixed-species catacomb. Even though those feelings were occasionally relieved by the previously mentioned lightening bolts of excitement, such events were really quite few and far between. However, the misery of these extended periods of time was immediately erased from my memory upon warming up a bit, and even before we made it back into town I would be loving it all again.
The first night, after working all day, we arrived back into town cold, hungry and dirty. We got back to the hotel (after a two and a half hour drive from the worksite into town) and everyone showered quickly, with the intentions of heading directly to dinner. However, instead of finding a restaurant, we found a flat tire on our rented jeep. We had already decided during the drive back into town that we wanted to get an early start the next day, since the long drive to the cave cut into our work time. With this in mind, we agreed that it would be best to fix the tire that same night, rather than waiting until morning.
This started a rather extended search through the congested, crazy streets of silly little Huancayo for a service station which could repair our tire and was open after 9 pm. The streets were full with more than just the typical unruly, incessantly honking taxies and bicycle carts; entire masses of teenage kids still wearing their school uniforms also packed the streets, munching on the skewers of beef heart which were barbequed right there over open fires on the sidewalk by worn-out looking altiplano women wearing bright skirts, leggings, and bowler hats, their dirty-faced babies slung on their backs in brilliant woven blankets. Considering the temperature outside, it was an incredibly lively town.
After numerous stops at various closed tire-repair shops, a process which probably seemed exponentially longer as a result of our empty, growling stomachs protesting the delay, we finally found someone open. The service station, titled “Vulcanizador El Loco” (a business name which was spray-painted on the wall beside the shop), was more than happy to receive our business, and set to work right away setting up the jack to remove our fallen rubber soldier. Unfortunately, in order to take off the damaged tire they needed a special anti-theft device which slides onto the wheel nuts before a tire iron can be employed. This little key was somewhere inside our rented jeep, but no one had any idea where. This started the second giant search of the night, one which requiring completely emptying the entire vehicle, opening every secret compartment imaginable and generally expressing hunger-enhanced frustration for a good half an hour before the whatzamahozit was found.
Finally, two hours after setting out for dinner, we were able to sit down and satiate our stomachs. That first night was actually a little rough on me, I think because I have a natural tendency towards anemia (I’ve been turned away from giving blood more times than I’ve been actually allowed to donate as a result of low iron content). While this normally has no effect on me, spending the whole day working at a pretty high altitude (we were around 3,800 m) and going without eating much induced a condition which can be described as nothing less than total exhaustion. Luckily after that first day I didn’t have any further trouble, and never got altitude sickness despite everyone’s expectations that as a “lowlander” I would.
Of course, drinking the local mate de coca (tea made from coca) and chomping on the occasional ball of coca leaves may have helped, as they say it does. I never felt any strongly notable feeling from the coca, although some people claim it has a strong affect. It kind of numbed my mouth a little bit, and maybe, maybe, I could say that it was relaxing, but that could just as easily have been psychosomatic.
After returning to Huancayo from the cave the first day, we decided to spend the next night in the tiny little town of Yanacancha in an effort to save time. Yanacancha was only about twenty minutes from the cave itself, although the only option for lodging was a bit dismal. A giant, ancient concrete building with huge, tall-ceiling, linoleum-floored rooms was the town’s “hostel,” and we made arrangements to sleep there. I think it would be accurate to describe our night’s lodging as the coldest, emptiest, most sparse building I have ever entered. During the day, for example, the only place colder than outside in the wind was inside our rooms. We didn’t even have running water – not that we would have wanted it, since it surely would have been refreshing glacial temperatures. None of us was exactly looking forward to spending the night there, but we knew we wanted to have as much work time as possible, so it seemed like a worthy sacrifice.
That afternoon, we didn’t finish up in the cave until after the sun had set, and the cold was nearly unbearable. During the trip from the cave into Yanacancha, I resolved myself mentally to the fact that I was going to remain that miserably freezing until the sun came up the next day. Rather than expecting or hoping to warm up, I was just going to have to suck it up Quechua style and deal with the wretched discomfort. Elsavio had made arrangements with the owners of the town’s cafeteria for us to have a hot dinner that night, so at least there was a light somewhere in the end of the tunnel. We waited in the car, more or less frozen into place, while dinner was prepared, then braved the cold for the fifty-foot walk from our location parked alongside the hotel to the cafeteria.
Dinner turned out to be a heavenly surprise; a hot, savory soup warmed us from the inside out, and was followed by amazing fresh fried trout. The trout was accompanied by an Andean variety of potatoes unlike any I have ever had; while they presented inconspicuously enough, the flavor was incredible. A big bite of simply boiled, plain tuber tasted as if it had been slathered in butter. The fish and potatoes were accompanied by rice which, as a consequence of our extreme altitude, had been boiled around 85 degrees (C) instead of the normal 100, and resulted gluey and undercooked. Not that it mattered, there was plenty of other food to keep us happy, it was just funny to think that we were high enough above sea level that rice couldn’t even be cooked correctly.
Through the duration of our feast the bone-cold feeling faded away, and by the end we all felt fat and warm and happy, basking in the enjoyment of good times with good company. Unfortunately, that comfort was temporary, as our bodies jolted our minds back to the reality that we were sitting in the middle of nowhere on the Andean altiplano after dark, in a tiny pueblito which had never heard of central heating and didn’t have trees to cut wood to build fires for warmth. It didn’t take long for us to come to the group conclusion that some strong liquor would be a possible body-warming solution, and our eyes scanned the shelves behind the counter of the cafeteria where we sat. After inspecting the three options available in the small tiendacita in which we were currently located, it was decided to purchase a bottle of anisado (anise liquor) to sip on. The liter bottle cost 2.50 soles, equivalent to about 70 cents, and good Lord we got what we paid for. It didn’t take more than the first sip to decide that we had purchased an entire bottle of anise-flavored methanol water. Being the troopers that we are (and starting to feel desperation as the life-sapping cold began to settle back into our bodies) we made a pretty strong group effort to choke it down.
However, when Elsavio revealed the knowledge that there was (miraculously) another small general store in town, the decision to investigate their alcohol supply was an easy one to make. Elsavio and Bruce headed off into the night, and returned shortly presenting a hip-flask sized bottle of “Ron Kankun,” a peach-flavored, sickly sweet rum concoction. While failing to rise above the ranks of simply disgusting, this alternative was a world of quality about our last selection, and the five of us eventually finished off four bottles that night. This feeble alcohol supply didn’t come without a cost, however – the idea that nothing about life is easy on the altiplano was reiterated in many permutations during our field work. Not realizing how desperate we were going to be for the brightly orange-dyed body warming liquid they had found, Bruce and Elsavio initially only purchased one bottle. As it didn’t last long at all, they returned to the store a second time, and then another. The third and final time they found the store closed with its owner already in bed. Desperation mounting, they actually went so far as to wake her, begging for one last sale. Hugely appreciative of her compliance with their request, the men paid double for two bottles (a purchase amounting to 20 soles, a little less than seven dollars). Adding to the dramatic situation, one of the bottles was dropped and shattered in route to our table, before the cap was ever even opened.
Midway through the evening we transferred locations from the little cafeteria where we had eaten dinner to a “sitting room” (a bare room with a card table and a handful of plastic chairs) in what was to be our home for the night. The short, thirty second walk from the little store to our hotel was so cold that Ketty and I decided to add on a few layers of clothes. We both put on every single article of clothing we had brought with us; I headed downstairs from our room wearing three pairs of jeans over one pair of sweatpants and nine upper-body layers. Giggling to myself at the absurdity of the amount of cold I was still feeling, I entered the area where the men were sitting to find a roomful of rather somber faces. Bruce, wearing a “I’m trying really really hard to be serious right now but I’m kind of having a hard time doing it” expression, reported in a matter-of-fact matter that “We have a bit of a security concern.”
In this tiny town, which couldn’t possibly have more than 50 residents, in what is genuinely the definition of “the middle of nowhere,” I couldn’t imagine what sort of threat could possibly exist. Had we been unwittingly cast as leads in some outrageous Hollywood horror film? Was I about to find out that we were actually staying in a town of gringo-eating zombies? Was the hotel haunted with ghosts of fossil hunters past?
The truth was way better than anything I could have concocted. As it turns out, we were the threat. The strange, unexpected arrival of our little team, especially threatening because of the presence of English-speaking gringos, had sparked into action the imagination neurons of the natives. It didn’t take long for them to reach the conclusion that surely we were pishtakos. (CUE SCARY MUSIC OF DOOM).
Ghastly demonic creatures, pishtakos are well known to roam the frozen desolation of the Andean altiplano. They hide in the darkest, coldest areas available near concentrations of human populations, waiting for unsuspecting prey to cross their path. Usually gringos, pishtakos love nothing more than to murder unwary Andeans in order to strip away and feast on their body fat.
I couldn’t control myself; I burst into outrageous laughter. I was going to kill people and eat their body fat? REALLY? Immediately launching into giggles and jokes, I was surprised to realize that no one else seemed quite as amused as I did. Actually, none of the others appeared to be amused at all. They quickly shushed me, explaining the fact that this was actually a real problem. In the past, people have actually been killed after coming into small, isolated towns such as Yanacancha, when the “natives” feared for their own safety. It was dangerous for me to even say words like “pishtako,” “fat,” or “hungry” aloud, as people may very well be listening outside.
I tried my hardest to take the situation seriously, and even found myself feeling a bit nervous when a dog started barking mournfully outside. Here we were, miserably freezing and actually fearing for our security in an isolated Andean village. No one would even know of our disappearance for weeks if anything happened, and in this vast, empty landscape hiding our corpses would be a piece of cake. No search party would ever be able to totally cover the expanses in search of us. We might actually be in sticky situation.
Luckily the healthy portions of peach flavored ron were able to dull the actual fear we should have felt, and once the last drop had been consumed there wasn’t much left to do besides hit the sack. Ketty and I snuggled down together in one of the twin beds in our double room, piling the blankets from the other bed on top and providing ourselves with 10 layers of warmth. Still wearing all of the clothes we had previously put on, it didn’t actually take too long to cozy up and doze off.
We all awoke the next morning with headaches as a result of our fine choice in after-dinner beverages the night before, but at least we awoke. Apparently the locals were too afraid of our potential magical pishtako powers to dare entering the human-feasting lair we had created for ourselves in quaint little Yanacancha. We may have lucked out that night, but it wasn’t hard to decide that heading back to Huancayo, where they not only had hot running water but also didn’t suspect us of wanting to eat the neighbors, would be the best alternative for the following evening.
