Puya in relief

Maybe you can almost hear that contented sigh faint on the breeze...

Through rutted roads and bumpy folded mountain ridges. Past the stoic Kichwa girls dressed bright and unsmiling on lonely horses by the roadside and the wrinkle faced farmers in chompas hoeing potatoes in the fields like toadstool appendages sprung up from the earth. I´m happy to be back here in the paramo in the high camp of Rumi Loma. A heart sigh of relief and return.

We have not been here since back in September at the start of this adventure. It is strange to return. The fires have raged through the ridgetops recently and all is burned. Singed black like a rough shave over the jaw of the land leaving the spiky skeleton hairs of puya creaking in the emptiness.

A world both tragic and inspiring. Green shoots of grass already poking through the desolation and wreckage of the burn spread out like a dark stain over the hills. But I like it here like this. So strange and quite. I can be alone and far away up here from everything else. Perched overlooking this world from afar from this remote eyrie.