During the night it rained hard, but our tent was now adjusting itself to the “dry season” and we were more comfortable.  Furthermore, camping out at 10,000 feet above sea level is very different from camping at 6000 feet.  This elevation, similar to that of the bridge of San Miguel, below Machu Picchu, is on the lower edge of the temperate zone and the beginning of the torrid tropics.  Sugar cane, peppers, bananas, and grenadillas grow here as well as maize, squashes, and sweet potatoes.  None of these things will grow at Pampaconas.  The Indians who raise sheep and white potatoes in that cold region come to San Fernando to make chacras or small clearings.  The three or four natives whom we found here were so alarmed by the sight of brass buttons that they disappeared during the night rather than take the chance of having a silver dollar pressed into their hands in the morning!  From San Fernando, we sent one of our gendarmes back to Pampaconas with the mules.  Our carriers were good for about fifty pounds apiece.

Half an hour’s walk brought us to Vista Alegre, another little clearing on an alluvial fan in the bend of the river.  The soil here seemed to be very rich.  In the chacra we saw corn stalks eighteen feet in height, near a gigantic tree almost completely enveloped in the embrace of a mato-palo, or parasitic fig tree.  This clearing certainly deserves its name, for it commands a “charming view” of the green Pampaconas Valley.  Opposite us rose abruptly a heavily forested mountain, whose summit was lost in the clouds a mile above.  To circumvent this mountain the river had been flowing in a westerly direction; now it gradually turned to the northward.  Again we were mystified; for, by Raimondi’s map, it should have gone southward.

We entered a dense jungle, where the narrow path became more and more difficult for our carriers.  Crawling over rocks, under branches, along slippery little cliffs, on steps which had been cut in earth or rock, over a trail which not even dogs could follow unassisted, slowly we made our way down the valley.  Owing to the heat, humidity, and the frequent showers, it was mid-afternoon before we reached another little clearing called Pacaypata.  Here, on a hillside nearly a thousand feet above the river, our men decided to spend the night in a tiny little shelter six feet long and five feet wide.  Professor Foote and I had to dig a shelf out of the steep hillside in order to pitch our tent.

The next morning, not being detained by the vagaries of a mule train, we made an early start.  As we followed the faint little trail across the gulches tributary to the river Pampaconas, we had to negotiate several unusually steep descents and ascents.  The bearers suffered from the heat.  They found it more and more difficult to carry their loads.  Twice we had to cross the rapids of the river on primitive bridges which consisted only of a few little logs lashed together and resting on slippery boulders.