Road to Elizabeth: A Quest in the Mountains of Peru - Softcover

Ridgeway, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140098194 ISBN 13: 9780140098198

Publisher: Penguin, 1988

Synopsis

ROAD TO ELIZABETH Written by John Ridgway Victor Gollancz 1986 & Penguin 1987 Perhaps our most unlikely adventure. It started as a holiday journey in 1985, with Marie Christine and our 18-year-old daughter Rebecca, to a ‘Garden of Eden’ in the magnificent High Andes of Peru. Together with our JRAS Instructors Justin Matterson and Ed Ley-Wilson we were hoping to visit Elvin Berg, who had saved my life during my Amazon expedition of fifteen years before, and to stay at the coffee grower’s idyllic hacienda in Osambre. To reach Osambre (1,800m) you have to walk for five days from the end of a dirt road, crossing two snow-covered passes before descending into dense jungle. We trained for a month, hardening ourselves at altitude on the altiplano, before starting towards Osambre; we were prepared for a hard trek across some of the wildest and most beautiful terrain in the world, but not for what followed. After crossing the Apurimac River, which nearly cost Justin his life, we walked into a war between Maoist guerrillas of the so-called ‘Shining Path’ and government forces – our path lay through mountain regions where coca leaf is harvested in a deadly trade. Here we learned that Elvin Berg had been brutally murdered by the Shining Path on 2 May 1984. Horrified by Elvin’s death, anxious for our own safety and weakened by the hardships of the journey, we set off on the long road home. Along the way, I caught a fever and we were forced to stop in a remote mountain village. Here we discovered Elvin’s 6-year-old daughter Elizabeth: suddenly we realised that ‘everything had been leading to this end’.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140098194
• ISBN 13: 9780140098198
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256