Preparing to Visit Apu Ausangate

Mount Ausangate, highest mountain in southern Peru

I’m heading to Cusco on Friday to spend a week trekking around the mighty Nevado Ausangate, which at 20,945 feet (6,384 meters) is the highest peak in southern Peru. I’ll be interviewing campesinos about climate change, with the help of a Quechua/Spanish translator. (Click here for a slideshow of beautiful images from an Ausangate trek posted by someone named Geniza.)

My trusted guide Pablo will accompany me, along with his family and one of Jorge’s cousins. This is my first trip to Ausangate so I’m counting on Pablo to see us safely around the area. The air is very thin up there, and temperatures at night dip to below 0 degrees Celsius.

Time to bring out the woollen undies I bought for Qoyllur Rit’i in 2006.

The local Quechua-speaking people consider Ausangate the mightiest apu or mountain lord of the region. Like all apus, Ausangate has a gender (male) and a personality (powerful, easily offended). Local customs dictate that we pay our respects to the apu prior to beginning our trek, to ensure a successful journey.

One way to pay our respects is to prepare a bundle of coca leaves known as a k’intu and to perform a ceremony over it before chewing it.  Typically there are three leaves in a k’intu but because Ausangate is so powerful, he gets six leaves, Pablo tells me.

Here is a picture of Pablo preparing a k’intu to Apu Ausangate prior to our journey to Qoyllur Rit’i, which is held in a valley within sight of the Ausangate massif:

Pablo prepares a k’intu to Apu Ausangate, May 2008

A book I highly recommend if you want to learn more about k’intus and local traditions in the Andes is The Hold Life Has, by ethnographer Catherine J. Allen. The book is subtitled “Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community,” and it focuses on the people of Sonqo and “the hold life has” on them between 1985 and 2002.

It’s well written and filled with dynamic scenes that show the villagers of Sonqo as complex, very real human beings.

Related Posts:

Dancing for a Dying Glacier (May 24, 2008)

Back from Qoyllur Rit’i and Ukuku Madness (May 23, 2008)

An American in Lima Goes to Qoyllur Rit’i (May 14, 2008)