6. 1935 Peru Trip: Bells, Inambari, Cusco
	Learning to swim in the Inambari River. Herricks and Bells.
	Oroya & Bells Inambari River Chabuca Gold LaPaz Eucalyptus   Peru Scene enroute Oroya Scene on arrival Happy Memories Our Bolivia Home 1928-1936	We started out from La Paz by train to the Lake Titicaca port of Guaqui and crossed the lake overnight on the Ollanta, a small steam ship assembled by a British company to engage in the trade between Bolivia and Peru. At the Peruvian port of Puno we took the southern Peru railway to Juliaca and then to another town on the line to Cusco. From there we took the typical 2.5 ton Chevy truck to Limbani, the end of the road. We stayed in a hostel building on property owned by the Woods and had a nice visit with the farm manager and family. Temperate zone fruits and vegetables were grown in Limbani for transport to Oroya and Santo Domingo. A little girl kept asking us "Quien Busca?": who are you looking for. She kept repeating this until we decided that that was her name. The next day riding mules were all saddled and our baggage was on a pack mule. Our guide told us that Oroya was a full days ride away. We had to cross from one valley system to the Inambari river valley, all the way on old Inca roads, up and down hill many times. The riding mules were natural pacers and provided a very soft ride and carefully followed our guide. We met some mule trains on the way and were told to hold our mounts close to the uphill side while the pack mules took the outside or downhill side.
		As we approached the Inambari valley we passed by pineapple and banana plantations and finally reached a suspension bridge over the river and to the Oroya mine property which included a sizable house where the Bells lived and a two-story store and guest bedroom building. The Bells had a wonderful dinner ready for us. Mrs. Bell was a great cook and a native of Puyallup, Washington. Wesley and I slept upstairs in the store building. The rest of the family were in guest bedrooms in the Bells house. Actually, the Bells main function was to manage the provisions and food needs for the Santo Domingo mine, which included a small town. The store at Oroya also sold a variety of products to local employees. The next day Mrs. Bell asked Wes and I if we liked pineapple. She had a load of fruit brought from the plantation and told us to help ourselves. The first day I ate one pineapple, the second, half, and then my taste for pineapple was sated. Just like bananas: one or two the first day and very soon you lose your desire to eat any more. We learned early on that David was troubled with tonsilitis. Dr. Beck arrived a few days later. I was asked to hold David's legs and feet during the operation, while Wes held his arms. There wasn't much ether for anesthetic, but David was back on his feet in two or three days. Brazil nuts grew wild in this part of Peru. Mrs. Bell toasted them and had a bowl available for snacks. She also made the best coconut macaroons from locally grown coconuts. Meals were a great delight and the Woods imported breakfast cereals and a variety of cookies and fruit cakes.
	Inambari Swimming Lessons Shadow Maker	We went in the Inambari river every day and learned to swim. The swimming place was up river a bit from the suspension bridge, which even had llama trains pass over it. Mules tended to spook more on the bridge and were led over the bridge, sometimes with a scarf across their eyes. The piers for the cables of the bridge dated back to Inca times but the bridge cables were steel and the footing was made of heavy boards. In that time there were still many suspension bridges that were made of local hand-made rope and a cross-woven walkway.
	Bill Herrick	After a week at Oroya we walked to Santo Domingo (Holy Sunday), again on old Inca roads. This mine and small town were about ten miles from Oroya and about 2000 feet higher in elevation. The Charles Woods family had a very nice home and several smaller houses for their American mining engineers families. We ate our meals in a large dining room next to the Wood's home. They had a variety of breakfast cereals. I always had grapenuts with klim (milk spelled backwards), a dried milk product imported from Holland. They called oatmeal "quaquero", derived from Quaker Oats. We were given tours of the various gold mining operations by the Woods son, a mining engineer who had returned recently from the U.S. Some of the operations were "hard rock" where the ore was blasted from gold veins, crushed and treated to recover the gold. Others were "placer" operations, where gold bearing sand and gravel were washed over "riffles" to catch flake and nugget gold One of the mining engineers had been married and had a little girl, Josephine. His wife didn't like the Peruvian scene and left him. The Woods adopted Josephine who was about seven years old in l935 and had few contacts with other English speaking children. She really appreciated our visit and especially Margaret. Marian found a library in the house where our bedrooms were and became a total recluse, reading all the classical books about girls and women. This library also had a complete set of Zane Grey westerns and the Tarzan books. Midweek in our stay at Santo Domingo we took an all day hike to another mine called "Chabuca". This was in a nearby parallel valley, again reached by an old Inca road. We took a picnic lunch and our usual water in canteens and walked about seven miles. The operator of this placer gold mine, Mr. Tusk, had a Peruvian government concession and a number of native employees, but had had some difficulty with Mr. Woods. We arrived at about lunch time and shared our meal with him, which he greatly appreciated, being isolated from "civilization". That morning he had completed a run, using his water supply and a "monitor" hose to cause hillside gravel to flow over riffles to catch the goldflakes and nuggets. His water supply was obtained from a tunnel driven into a higher level hillside and collected behind a small dam. He had already gone over the riffles to collect the gold before we arrived. After lunch he invited Wesley and me and Marion to try our luck, going over the riffles again. Wes and I accepted and with our pocket knives and small tin cans started to search for treasures, also known as gold fever. In about two hours we finished the line of riffles and I had found many small nuggerts and lots of flakes, maybe 20 grams. Wes wasn't as lucky and had mostly flakes, possibly 10 grams. Mr. Tusk said we could keep our gold and then showed us his gold storage trunks under his bed. Most was in glass quart jars, lots of nuggets up to half an inch and many large flakes. He said he was about to take his gold out to where the Peruvian government bought it, but he had to wait for a military escort. Late in the afternoon we started back to Santo Domingo but it was dusk and nearly dark when we got there. We were quite surprised at the variety and intensity of insects that produced light; more than fireflies, and even some worms or caterpillars that glowed. Also huge toads six inches across, jumping along the road and scaring us as we nearly stepped on them. The trip to Chabuca was really memorable. I sold my gold in La Paz for seven or eight dollars.
		After a few more days in Santo Domingo we walked back to Oroya and had one last visit with the Bells. Then we had the same saddle mules to ride back to Limbani. We then travelled by truck to the junction with the southern Peruvian railway. This rail line was American built and "standard" gauge, whereas all the Bolivian rail lines were "narrow" gauge built by British companies. We took the train to the legendary city of Cuzco, capitol of the Inca Empire, at about l0,000 feet altitude. We stayed in a missionary hostel. They had a dinner prepared for us. I remember an aspic salad that was quite good and thin slices of roasted or boiled beef tongue. This was before the days of tourism to Cuzco. I think we took a taxi or street car to see the wonders of the city and the remnants of cut volcanic stone, fitted so tightly that you couldn't put a knife blade in the joints. The Catholic Cathedral of Cuzco was built on Inca wall foundations and was partly a museum of gold and silver artifacts from the Inca period. The outstanding features on the hillsides around Cuzco are the stone structures, particularly the fortress of Sacsahuaman, where some of the basalt stone segments weigh l00 + tons and are but to fit tightly and stacked to 30 feet high. We also visited Ollantaytambo, another hillside fortress with beautiful stone work and terraced fields up a steep mountain side. Somewhere during the Cuzco trip we visited a Canadian Baptist mission, maybe 30 miles away and saw a native fiber rope suspension bridge still being maintained. This was in a valley at somewhat lower elevation where wheat and corn were the main crops. We stayed overnight with those missionaries, friends of the Hilliers (in La Paz). The train trip back to Puno and lake Titicaca gave us another view of southern Peru. At every stop there were vendors selling roasted chicken, empanadas, and local pastries that the folks decided were clean enough to buy. We didn't have any problems with dysentery during the entire trip and were able to buy tropical fruits along the way. We crossed the lake again on the Ollanta. They were transporting a large flock of sheep to the Bolivian side. Unfortunately the space was too small and many animals suffocated by the time we reached Guagui. The train back to La Paz seemed tiny compared with the long standard gauge cars of the Peruvian railway. We had taken many pictures on this trip and Carl Bell was a noted photographer. Many years earlier, he and Dad and others really toured the Inca ruins and went to Machu Pichu, the so-called lost city, since the Spanish conquerors were never aware of it.
		Back in La Paz we started another school year, 3rd grade Secondary for Wes and I. The war with Paraguay still lingered on. I started raising eucalyptus (globulus) seedling for the Arbor Day festival. Eucalyptus was introduced to the high andes from Australia in about 1880. It was the only tree that grew to 50 or 60 feet in a reasonable time. There were stunted pines and some firs in the lower valleys, but eucalyptus easily adapted even to 14,000 feet if protected by walls when young. The tree could be coppiced or cut back to bare trunks, which soon sprouted juvenile leaf growth. These cut branches were big enough to use for timber framing. The juvenile foliage had a different shape and was heavy with eucalyptus oil, which became an industry in the lower La Paz valley. The juvenile leaves were steam distilled to recover the oil which contained menthol and cineole, both good cold or medicinal remedies and flavoriing for cough drops. Mature trees produced a large quantity of little conical seed pods, which when dry could be shaken to release numerous small seeds. Wes and I took on the task of germinating the seeds in wooden flats and when about 8 to 12 inches high, transplanting them to a protected hillside. These seedlings had to be watered and given a little manure fertilizer for one or two years to produce a 3 to 4 foot tree for the Arbor Day event. Our school probably planted several thousand small trees on the north side of the La Paz basin. The local government contracted nearby farmers to carry water to each tree (during the dry season) until established. In later years I continued to grow seedlings for the lake Titicaca region. We planted some in the Yungas and they grew six feet every year. We gave away many seedlings to families associated with Amerinst. By 1936 our walled garden was producing lots of vegetables and flowers. My favorite plant was the artichoke. There were two terraces on the north and east side of the garden and we eventually had 20 or 30 mature plants that produced enough artichokes for several meals per week. At this time our chicken and rabbit pens were also yielding lots of tasty (range fed) poultry and rabbit. Dad had started out with local chickens and bought four beautiful game cocks to protect the flocks from hawks and cats. These roosters were named: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and they had 2 inch long sharp spurs on their legs. If we entered the chicken pen we usually carried a stick to ward off an attack. Eventually, Dad got Rhode Island fertile eggs and in our incubator we produced lots of the heavier weight chickens and they were better egg layers. Our rabbit experiment wasn't as successful. We had both short haired and angora long-eared rabbits. In Bolivia, guinea pigs were also called rabbits. Cats from neighboring properties managed to eat many of the little rabbits, since we didn't have proper pens. One of my jobs was to prepare the chickens and rabbits for cooking. One time one of my favorite tame rabbits was on the list. I hit it hard on the head with my hammer. I had never heard a rabbit scream so I let go and it got away. I had an awful time catching it again. We usually saved the rabbit furs and sewed them into useful lap robes (fake chinchila). Sometime in early 1936, Mother and Dad went on a horseback trip to Palca, about 40 miles down the La Paz valley. They rented horses from one of the stables that kept military and riding horses. Dad rode a standard Arabian but Mother chose a "soft riding" Andalusian, both beautiful horses. I got to ride Dad's horse around the campus. They were gone for a week or so, two days riding each way at a walk or pace. Mother came home broken in half and said: "Never again!" The Andalusian horse was larger and a soft ride, but when you aren't used to riding, a little is too much.
		next >   7. Returning to the USA in 1936; Living in Sumner (9th Grade)