Our First Setback

Today CMI (or specifically Tyler and I) suffered our first setback. Don’t worry; we will be on track again tomorrow. We were headed to Juliaca to conduct impact assessments with PRISMA. Forms, pens, water and a roll of toilet paper in hand we boarded the combi for the 50 minute journey. Combis are 12 passenger vans outfitted with an extra row of seats behind the driver and 2 extra seats beside the right side sliding door and then stuffed with at least 21 people. As a small American (I’m 5’3”) I barely fit into the seats. Tyler is six foot. He has to sit sideways to fit in the narrow aisles.



The ride from Puno to Juliaca is not only uncomfortable but terrifying. The roads are small and wind along steep cliffs. Busses, combis, cars, motorcycles and “tricitaxis” (like a rickshaw except the man pulling it is on a bike) all pass each other and do so on blind curves sometimes knocking each other into the terraced fields that drop off to the side. The scariest part however is looking out the window and seeing the rows of crosses where former combi passengers are remembered. Fortunately this ride I was so squished I couldn’t turn to look out the window.

About 10 minutes into the ride Tyler informed me that he felt sick and needed to get out as soon as possible. Unfortunately between Puno and Juliaca there isn’t much of a place to get off – just a lot of grazing land and some deteriorated mud-brick structures. About 20 minutes later another woman got off in a tiny town called Caracoto (the RUMI cement factory nearby is bigger than the town itself) and Tyler skedaddled off after her and began asking every person in sight “Baño? Baño? Baño?”

I caught up with him at a bodeguita (snack shop) where a sympathetic storekeeper had let him in back to use the baño. After waiting a while and buying a coke I left to go find a pharmacy or somewhere where we could stock up on enough pills to get Tyler home safely. Unfortunately in a town of about 200 there are no pharmacies. I eventually found an outpost of the Juliaca hospital and bought various pills there which I returned to Tyler.

After the pills Tyler felt well enough to look for a car to get us to either Juliaca or Puno. There were plenty of cars going to Puno but to our dismay they were all too full to squeeze onto. After about an hour we found a combi that could take us to Juliaca and from there we caught another combi back to Puno. We made it back around 5:00, exhausted from a long day of adventure, disappointed at a lack of filled out impact assessment forms.

Tomorrow impact assessments will continue…

Jessie