“Camp Follower” On Andean Expedition

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30512, 6 August 1964, Page 2

“Camp Follower” On Andean Expedition

“How we longed for a hot bath, fresh vegetables and a glass of cold, fresh milk!” said Mrs E. Cotter looking back yesterday on three months spent in the outbacks of Bolivia and Peru recently, as a member of the New Zealand Andean Expedition.

But these were small deprivations weighed against the exhilaration of the kind of off-the-beaten-track travelling Ed. and Jennifer Cotter had always wanted to do.

No mountaineer, but not w'anting to miss such an opportunity, Mrs Cotter went along with her husband and four other climbers on the trip as a “camp follower.” She did the washing at base camp, helped cook the meals and got to know the Indians when the rest of the party were up in the hills. She read a lot, drank in the magnificent views, and had a rest from the cares of civilisation.

To Jennifer Cotter travel means getting to know people and how they live in other lands, rather than a tourist’s trek round cathedrals and art galleries in the world’s capital cities. In halting Spanish she got along well with the friendly

Peruvian Indians, who live in filthy conditions in strawbrick hovels yet seem very contented.

“Though most of the Indians speak Spanish, for me the most difficult part was understanding their answers after I had asked them a question,” she said.

In Bolivia she noticed a marked difference in the Indians there.

Infant Mortality

“In Bolivia life is cheap among the Indians in the hill villages,” she said. “The death rate of babies is between 75 and 80 per cent. We heard of a widower with three little daughters who refused to allow them to be immunised against diphtheria, though their mother had just died of it. He prefered that they should take the risk of dying. That would save him the bother of looking after three motherless girls.” The Peruvian Indians own their own bit of land, though they do not make the most of it. They are more Spanish looking and some of the men wear whiskers. They are taller, more friendly, less primitive than the Bolivian Indians, she said.

Will Not Budge

The Government of Bolivia wanted to move the altiplano Indians down to the subtropical fertile valleys, where they could grow fruits, enjoy more prosperity and improve their standard living. But they refused to budge. “They are so primitive they can’t comprehend the longterm benefits of moving,” she said.

There were always a number of Indian peasants following the New Zealand expedition around. Some helped with the cooking, done on llama-dung fires or primus stoves.

The main meal of the day for everyone was usually salted or dried meat or fish, maize, sauces made from red and green peppers and potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes. “We could get no fresh vegetables away up there on the altiplano,” she said. Ancient City When Mr Harold Jacobs broke his leg, Mrs Cotter accompanied him to hospital at Yungay, Peru, and stayed in a nearby village, from where she made a five-hour journey to the Chevin Valley

to see an excavated pre-Inca underground city, probably 4000 years old. “It is quite fantastic with its carvings in the stone and its original ventilation shafts,” she said. “It goes on for miles and excavators are still working there and finding ancient pieces of pottery.” Mrs Cotter found this underground city more interesting than Machu Picchu, high on a Peruvian mountainside, and once believed to have been a lost city of the Incas. After accompanying Mr Jacobs to Lima and his homebound aircraft, Mrs Cotter stayed for a time with two American friends in the city of 3 million, which she described as a mixture of modern skyscrapers and primitive mud-brick villages. The only other woman on the New Zealand Andes Expedition was Mrs M. Nelson, formerly Miss Jean Adams, of Christchurch, and a well known Canterbury mountaineer. Dr. and Mrs Nelson now live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Mr and Mrs Cotter left Christchurch yesterday for their home in Gore.