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We are just getting back from our adventure with Roberto Penny Cabrera, aka “Desert Man”, in Peru’s Ocucaje desert.

I like to call Roberto the shaman of the desert. When I first told him that, he was amused. He quickly refuted the statement, however, saying that what he shows us in the desert is real, and what he knows about the desert is based on fact. This is generally true.

Roberto also offers a chance to spend time in a completely isolated world, where your ears ring with the silence, and where the only remnants of life you see are fox tracks (right), the occasional vulture, and insects that are dying of thirst. It was difficult not to contemplate my life in this surreal world of sand and nothingness. 

I could go on and on about our trip. I’m going to try to keep it to three short installments for the blog.

Tuesday, March 24

We met up with Robert at 7am on Tuesday morning. We arrived in Ica an hour early to eat some breakfast, but no restaurants were open. So we called Roberto, who we knew had been up since at least 5am. He was ready to go and happy to see us ahead of schedule. We made a couple of stops for peanut butter (a very important staple) and a weather report over coffee at a rundown cafe outside of town. From there we headed into the Ocucaje desert.

Roberto came prepared in every way to give us the adventure of our lives. His truck, affectionately named Hermalinda, was equipped with all of our gear. The only thing we had to bring were a change of clothes, food and water. He has an “upside down dune” tent that he made specifically for the desert, sleeping bags, chairs and tables. He also brought some supplies for us (a jacket, gloves, and a hat) for the cold, lest we become “annoying” or “patetic”.

 

At our first stop at a whale fossil (below left) on our way into the desert, I was frantically looking for my sunglasses in my bag to help shade my eyes from the dust that was being kicked up by the truck as we drove. “You are worrying me,” he said as he handed me his sunglasses/ goggles. “Eyes are important in the desert. And I don’t want you to get patetic.” I used the goggles for the rest of the trip.

 

After setting up our base camp and napping, we went farther into the desert to search for shark teeth. The entire Ocucaje desert used to be the bottom of the ocean in ancient times. So you are constantly seeing bones from marine animals, petrified shells, plants as you walk around. The dirt is soft and crunches under your feet, leaving deep footprints. In that way it’s kind of like walking around on the moon.

 

There are very specific conditions needed for shark teeth hunting. Roberto explained that it’s a matter of wind opening and closing certain areas in the desert. (He had been studying the gulls of wind carefully as we slept that afternoon.) We also needed to see the bones of other animals and have a certain color of brown/orange sand in the area.

The sun wasn’t out that afternoon, so we only found hollowed out remnants of teeth. I went back to camp feeling a bit skeptical about the huge teeth we had seen in his room the day before.

We watched the sunset that evening from the camp.

Roberto wouldn’t admit it, but around the camp fire is where he really lets his desert shaman powers flow. He has a very different approach to life that he is happy to explain to you. Honestly, someone should write a book called “The Dao of the Desert Shaman.” There were too many stories and quips to write down that first night. We were put to sleep by his chatter.