On Crossing the Andes again
Or Aconcagua by air
Most of you, I suspect, will have first come across my writing in connection with my most recent book, The Pandemic Century, which was published in April 2019 by Hurst in the UK, and a month later by WW Norton in the US, and re-issued in 2020 by Penguin with a new chapter on Covid-19.
But my interest in infectious disease is long-standing and can be traced to my first book, The Fever Trail: In Search of the Cure for Malaria, about a series of expeditions to the Andes in the nineteenth century in search of Cinchona, a tree indigenous to the cloud forests of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, and that is the source of quinine, the world’s first anti-malarial.
Part of my fascination with Cinchona is that I have a passion for adventure, and researching the book gave me an excuse to step away from journalism and travel widely in the Amazon and Andes. In the course of researching The Fever Trail, I also retraced the route taken by an English botanical explorer - the Yorkshireman Richard Spruce - around Chimborazo, the loftiest volcano in the world, as measured from the bulge at the equator.
Last week, I am delighted to say, I was back in South America on the trail of another tree that I believe could soon prove equally important to philanthropic efforts to relieve the global burden of infectious disease.
More about that in subsequent posts….
In the meantime - and as I have a ton of marking to get on with (don’t you love the exam season) - I offer this brief verse inspired by my return flight to Europe and the breathtaking sight from a Boeing 787 of another volcano - Aconcagua.
Rising to 22,831 feet (6,959 metres) above the Argentine Andes, Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the Western hemisphere, and the second highest in the world after Everest (as measured from sea level).
According to Britannica, Its name is thought to derive from the Quechua Ackon Cahuak, meaning “Sentinel of Stone”.
That impossible place, for so long beyond the imagination
Hammered by Titans’ hands in Promethean chambers
Sundering Earth’s fragile carapace
Standing sentinel
In jagged gestures
Frosted by snow and ice
In the High without end
A world without limits.