Gorge des Carancas August 23rd

The view looking out our door on waking

August 23^rd

We awoke to another beautiful day, though the sun took a while to reach into our campsite. There was the sound of jackhammers piercing the solitude and peace of our gorge camp spot, from where we didn’t know.

We had breakfast and then set out on an adventure up the Gorge de la Caranca, firstly for a few hundred metres on a narrow flat track with the creek on one side and sheer rock cliff face on the other (rising from the track). About 10 minutes into the walk at a junction of two tracks, Hilary had the need to return to the truck to use the facilities, so Di and she turned back while I waited. While they were gone I went up ahead to investigate a steep track which zig-zagged back on itself repeatedly as it rose dramatically amongst boulders and scrubby bushes.  I went up for about 10 minutes I guess, rising higher above the valley floor with each step. I passed many people who were setting out on the walk, young, old, skinny and athletic, and some who looked like cardiac ward refugees. One couple with three teenage children who were racing ahead, leaving their parents in the dust stopped to chat (in French). I recognized a few words, like “goat” from the poor gasping husband, as he watched his children bounding up the slope with scarcely a deep breath. When I explained I didn’t speak French, that I was from New Zealand, he got excited and called his wife back. She had excellent English and had spent time in NZ a couple of years previously. We chatted for a while, they had a book with maps of various tracks in the area and so were able to give me a little more detail of the two options, basically both went up into the mountains, so it was just a matter of whichever took our fancy. I turned around and headed back down to wait for Hilary and Diana, and  along they came a few minutes later.

We decided to take the track I hadn’t been up as the ascent looked a little less steep, and the sides a little more secure for those who do not like heights. Once around the corner it too started to ascend quite steeply, but the track was sure, and there was quite a bit of vegetation to walk beneath or around, obscuring some of the drops to our left. We had another choice of track a bit further on, either to keep going with the gorge on our left, further into the gorge (but gathering height) or to go right along a different track still with cliffs but back towards the campsite.  We chose to keep going into the gorge. We got to a point where the track came out of the bush and wound its way along a very narrow but flattish path cut into the hill, in places there was overhang just above head height (at times lower so you had to stoop as you walked), and on the left was a sheer drop down into the valley. There were ropes pitoned into the cliff to hold as you walked, but after a few metres Di and Hilary decided it wasn’t for them. I was a bit disappointed as I love that sort of thing, and had wanted to continue, but I understood their reluctance.  Di suggested that we could separate and I could continue along the gorge track while the others headed along the other option. I gratefully accepted the offer, so we divvied  out the fluids and food and went off our opposing ways. I had a wonderful time, the track continued along cut into the cliff, the drop getting higher and higher, sometimes having to stoop to get through the cuttings, the track was less than a metre wide in places, always extremely safe, with rope for support if wanted, ladders (real, and reinforcing rods bent and then whacked into the rock), twists and turns. It ran along the cliff firstly the valley got further below then the track descended gently to the valley/gorge bottom, where the hydro electric station was (about the size of a large bus shelter). I went another 100 metres or so on that side of the creek before a few ladders took me up to a wire swing bridge, which bucked and swung as I crossed it. The track on the other side involved a swift ascent through scrub, over rocks around boulders, before coming to a summit and returning to the bottom of the gorge as swiftly as it had ascended. It provided wonderful views across the gorge to the track I had been on previously, plus other  sweeping views of the gorge, both upwards and down into the chasm.

Just before hilary and Di turned back

Me forging on, camera resting on railing on self-timer

More posing for the self timer

Still more

Looking back across the gorge to the path I took on the way in

A pretty butterfly

I didn't say, but after lunch we took the train about 8kms up to a very remote village in the Nyer Gorge. Supposed to be on the edge of a National Park, but we didn't get that far, just wandered in the heat looking at the village and eating apples we plucked over the fence on our way up the road from the train.

Walking from the train to Nyer, eating stolen apple

Hilary with butterfly

The yellow train