AREQUIPA AND THE JURA BATHS
I left Lima in September, 1903. Mr. Leguia did his best to persuade me
not to start, as since he had made arrangements with me Mr. Beauclerk,
the British Minister, had called on him and asked him not to let me sign
the agreement. He had read and heard of Staedlier’s expedition and its
result, and had come to the conclusion that it was far too dangerous for
anyone to go in alone. I told Leguia I had already notified the various
Chilian horse owners, whose horses I had been training, and had sublet
my stable there for the time I would be away; and I said I was prepared
to undertake the journey, agreement or no agreement, provided he would
agree to abide by the terms if I succeeded in reaching Paroma and
getting the information required. He assured me he would do so and
expected all the others to do the same.
So in September I left Callao for Mollendo by the s.s. Columbia of the
P.S.N. Co. (which, by the way, was lost in a fog on the rocks off the
Lobitos Islands the very next year). At Mollendo the landing is
generally very rough and the rollers very heavy till you get right in
near the jetty; sometimes passengers have to be lowered down in baskets
and occasionally they cannot be landed at all, but on this occasion the
sea was calm. I put up at the Hotel Ferro Carril where the rooms are
large, the food and drinks quite good, and the charges moderate, from
4/-to 6/-a day. There is another hotel in the Plaza, but when I was
there the owner was down with bubonic plague and the place had been put
in quarantine. Next morning I took the train to Arequipa, 7,500ft. up, a
whole day’s journey, and put up at the Hotel Maloni, the best in the
place, paying 6/-a day. At this altitude in these parts the atmosphere
is the purest and the climate the finest in the world; in fact, all
along the Andes Range, from 3,000ft. to 10,000ft., the climate is hard
to beat, in my opinion. Over 10,000ft. is rather too high.
In Arequipa itself the streets are well-paved and kept; outside the town
there are no roads at all, but just well beaten tracks. The cathedral
is one of the finest outside Lima. The police regulations are quite
excellent. All policemen are armed with rifles, and at night one of them
is posted at every square. Every half-hour throughout the night he blows
one sharp call on his whistle which is answered by the next one, and so
on; when two sharp calls are blown the men on either side come up to see
what is the matter. The inspectors ride round periodically during the
night to see that all is well. All the windows are fenced in with stout
iron bars built into the masonry so that they can be opened without the
risk of thieves breaking in. I went to the Prefect to register my gun,
rifle and revolver, and he gave me a special order of permission to use
it in self-defence if necessary. Without these documents nobody is
supposed to carry arms in Peru.
In this town there is a constant coming and going of Indians, with their
strings of llamas; these animals serve them as beasts of burden and
food, and their skins provide them with clothes. The town possesses two
good clubs where strangers are always made welcome, also a small
racecourse. The ladies of Arequipa are justly famous throughout Peru for
their beauty.
My next concern was my weight, which was 265lbs., and I thought it was
well to reduce this before starting on my long march over the high Andes
into the forests below. So I drove over to have a look at the hot
springs 21 miles from Arequipa, and the next day I took the train to the
famous springs of Jura, 9,000ft. up, which used in former days to be a
favourite resort of the Incas of Peru. I decided to remain there till I
had reduced my weight to 235lbs.
The regular train from Arequipa to Puno runs twice a week, leaving at 8
a.m. and stopping at Jura to take up water and set down passengers at
9.30 the next morning. The baths are a mile from the station by a stone
footpath. The waters are marvellous; they can and do cure almost any
disease, and are a remedy for ailments that baffle the cleverest medical
men. It is worth while relating here a few cases of almost miraculous
cures, that came to my personal knowledge on the several occasions I
stayed there. One was the daughter of a well-to-do man, a very pretty
girl, who had lupus on one ear. Her father took her to Jura, hired a
house from the Municipality of Arequipa, who run the baths, and left her
there for nearly a year with her mother, sister, a cook and Indian boy.
In three months he told me she was practically cured, but he let her
stay a little longer to make certain. I saw her myself shortly after
she arrived at Jura, and again nearly a year afterwards, when her father
arrived to take her away.
Another was a merchant from Iquique, who arrived so racked with
rheumatism that he could not even crawl, and had to be dumped down in
the water in a blanket. In six months he left quite cured and restored
to his normal weight and more; Morosine, the hotel-keeper, who was my
informant, told me that he wrote to him two years after he had left and
said that up to then he had not had a single ache or pain. Here is
another case: After I had been there a couple of days a gentleman, who
was staying in one of the little houses he was renting from the
Municipality, came up to me and asked me whether I would mind doing him
a favour. He had brought his wife there from Lima, to try the baths for
a spinal complaint; he had been told of them by a doctor in Harley
Street, London, whom he consulted and who said that he believed they
could do more than any medical man. He told me she screamed out with
pain when he and his servant carried her down, and asked me if I would
mind carrying her down for him while I was there, as he thought it would
be easier for her to be carried by one person. I did this for a few
mornings, till she could manage to walk down the steps herself with my
support, and in three weeks from the time I met her she was able to walk
down by herself, and up too; after six months she went away cured. I met
the man in Arequipa nine months after his wife’s treatment at the baths,
and he said she had been out of pain for months; and a week or two after
I had left Jura she was actually able to wait on herself. Yet another
case was that of a man whom I met there, an engine driver on the
Arequipa-Puno Railway, who was suffering from malignant ulcers which he
had got while gold washing in the stream near the Santo Domingo Mine. He
had been at Jura two months when I saw him, and had practically been
cured, simply by drinking the waters from one of the several springs,
and bathing in the baths twice a day. He told me he now had his
cocktail, martine or gin and bitters before his lunch and dinner, just
as he always did. I could mention many other cases.
There are two ways of staying at Jura. One is to put up at the hotel
built by Morosini, an Italian, who was given ground and other facilities
rent free by the Municipality of Arequipa for twenty-five years,
provided he built an hotel with accommodation for ten or twelve guests,
and was allowed to charge 6/-a day. The other is to rent one or more of
the little stone houses owned by the Municipality for £3 a month each;
these consist of two rooms with two chairs and a table in each, a
kitchen and veranda, two mud-built beds, a brick oven, and the usual
mudrange to hold four or five pots.
Fresh mutton is brought by the Puno train, and fresh meat by the
Arequipa train twice a week. The Indians round about always have fowls
and eggs to sell. There is some partridge and duck shooting to be got in
the neighbourhood, and occasionally some guanacos; but guanaco meat is
not worth bothering about when you can get fine mountain sheep for
6/-and 8/-each. Some of the most beautiful cacti grow hereabouts, and
there are flowers of all colours, red, or slate blue, yellow, white,
purple or pink, all as large as saucers, with several on each stem.
There is a good sized stream or river which runs for twenty miles
underground near here, and then appears again. Several families of
Indians live in this district with their llamas, and fine-looking
long-haired donkeys, which have the peculiarity of four holes in their
noses, instead of two; they have the ordinary nostrils and then another
pair, about half an inch round, two inches higher up.
Morosini told me that some few years ago when he was keeping a rest
house at Juliaca, where the line branches off to Cusco, the capital of
the Incas, where they built the Temple of the Sun, he knew an Italian
who had discovered where some of the Inca treasure was hidden.
Apparently he had made his home near that place for two years, and used
to disappear every now and then with two mules, provisions and gear,
staying away for five or six days, and coming back with bars of gold
weighing two to five kilos each, which he took to the bank at Arequipa.
Morosini tried hard to discover the hiding-place of this treasure, and
once he followed the fellow; but he never succeeded in finding the
place. All he could gather was that where this gold came from there was
a lot more, and that the Italian had been shown the place by an old
Indian whom he had accidentally found coming away from it one day. The
Indian bound him to secrecy, and made him promise that he would only
take away with him just what he could carry up the steep mountain path.
There was nobody living anywhere near the place, and it was extremely
well concealed; the Italian made several trips to this place during the
two years Morosini knew him, and then went back to live in his Italian
home. He had come out to Peru to prospect for a gold concession, and
had struck this find by pure luck; he was practically a teetotaller, so
there was no chance of his disclosing the secret in his cups.
While I am on the subject of the Jura baths I ought to say something
about a few more of the old Inca baths. A couple of years before I went
to Jura I visited out of curiosity the Lago Huacachina (which means the
lake for incurables). To get you there take the steamer to Pisco, two
days south of Callao, and then the Pisco-Ica train across the 40 miles
of desert which separates the two places. On the way at a little place
where the engine takes in water I saw the most magnificent bunch of
heliotrope I ever saw in my life anywhere; a wonderful mass of flower it
looked in the middle of this sandy desert. On arriving at Ica you hire a
horse or a mule and ride 16 miles, then up a 3,000ft. sandhill at the
finish, and then down 1,000ft; and there lies the Lago Huacachina. There
is a rest-house there with blocks of two rooms each, mud bed, mud
fireplace, and oven, table and two chairs in each, and you pay a rent of
2/-a day to the caretaker and find your own food. There is tropical
vegetation all round the lake, which is about 300 yards long and half as
wide, with a flat-bottomed boat on it which anyone can use; I took it
one day in order to find the depth, which was exactly 17ft. on the
average, from about 20 or 25 yards off the shore; the deepest part was
in the middle.
I met here one John Robson, a rich brewer, who had come because he had
got a stroke all down one side. He told me he had been there just three
months and could walk about again as well as ever but the trouble in his
arm was not right yet. I suggested he should go in like a dog on all
fours and give his arm the same chance as his leg. He said he had never
thought of that, and would certainly try it. Two years later I met a man
who knew him and who told me that John Robson was quite cured and came
back well as ever after eight months on the lake.
Another man, Piccione, an Italian, had had a bad fall from his horse
while jumping a fence in Italy, which smashed his head and gave him
concussion. He recovered, but ever since then used to suffer from severe
headaches, and could find no remedy till he went to this lake, stayed
there six months and was quite cured. I met Mrs. Piccione and her
daughters at Pisco, and she told me that it was now nearly three years
since they left the lake and that he had had no trouble with his head
since then.
The baths are free to every one and there is no special course of
treatment; you simply bathe in the lake and the waters do the rest. It
is advisable, however, not to stay in for more than twenty minutes at a
time. The caretaker told me that more than one death had occurred
through patients staying in too long at a time. The water contains,
among other things, iron potash and sulphur.
In Jura the waters contain magnesia as well as the potash and sulphur,
and the Municipality have put up a notice forbidding people to remain
more than fifteen or twenty minutes in the No. 4 bath. This one is the
hottest and most dangerous, and there is a policeman always on duty
there.
Another of the old Inca Baths is Cauquenes near Santiago in Chili. This
is a pretty place but the waters are not very strong; it is more of a
health and rest resort. Then there are the Chillan baths; to get there
you take the train from Santiago to Chillan, an all day and all night
journey; then you can drive the remaining ninety miles by coach with
frequent change of horses or mules. These baths are owned by the
Municipality of Chillan, and are only open for the summer months, from
November till March, as they are under snow for the rest of the year.
There are three hot vapour baths there called El Toro, Novillo, and
Vaca; the first, meaning “bull,” is the hottest, the second means
“steer,” and the third “cow.” There is a Government doctor kept at the
establishment to see that nobody stays more than eight minutes in the
Toro, which is like the hottest room in a Turkish bath, only much
hotter. There is a good hotel there open from November till March.
Then there is also the Puente Inca on the way across the Andine Railway
from Mendoza to Los Andes and several others. But the best of these
baths in my opinion are Lago Huacachina and Jura.
While I was at Jura I met a Norwegian who had just returned a few weeks
before from the Tipuani River, on the way to Challana. He begged me not
to go and told me I would be killed if I tried to cross the river, but,
anyhow, he said I would never get there as I would have to walk on foot
over the 17,000ft. Ylliapo range of mountains, and that I would never be
able to do. When I asked him why not he said I was too big (I was then
still 265lbs.), and told me he himself had been offered £500 to go and
make a report on the gold washing on the Tipuani and got so knocked up
that it took him two years to recover sufficiently from the journey to
walk back; he was staying there for three months to recover his health.
After staying at Jura for three weeks or a month, I had reduced my
weight from 265lbs. to 235lbs.; so I sold my horse back to the original
owner for £16, and left for Puno.