Deres gold in dem dere hills - Fog Nets and the value of water in mountain villages

Hola amigos!

So yesterday I finally found fog nets!  It has been incredibly difficult to locate and visit.  I had many leads and connections but they all fell through and required paperwork in Spanish that far exceeded my grasp of the language.  I am still working on visiting with a guide to explain it in greater detail but this is what I have learned through talking to local villagers and students of engineering I have met. 

1) Most people have NO idea what I am talking about, not even the villagers that live less than a 1/4 mile from them.  Either they didn't know, or they THOUGHT they knew where they were but in fact did not at all...sending me to net fencing around peoples properties, random billboards, etc. 
2) The nets are not used for drinking water (yet), they are used to get new saplings started which are planted to stabalize the mountainside from erosion
3) Villagers in the mountains around Lima are very poor, but if they live on the mountain for more than 10 years the municipality gives them the land for free because it is not land that most people want (erosion and earthquakes make it very undesireable)
4) The municipalities where these nets are found fund the supplies, the villagers build and maintain them.  Cost is generally around $800 per net
5) Lima used to be forested! Man cut down all the trees for building supplies and created the desert over centuries of logging
6) Large nets produce roughly 90 litres daily (winter months)

After a couple weeks of frustration over many emails but not making enough progress I decided to just go at it alone.  I researched locations but could not find an actual location, just general areas where they are found (and most reports just say Lima....hardly useful).  I found a report about nets in Villa Maria de Triunfo, look it up online, assume the nets have to be near the peak, write down the directions and grab a cab.  I can not explain how lucky I am to have chosen this day, the exact moment to grab a cab.  The village is roughly 45 min away from where I am staying and the driver tells me he will take me there for 13 soles (roughly $5).  I am skeptical, cab prices are directly porportional to how nice the car is, and this was a new clean car, the driver is in an ironed button down, kakhis, etc. 

As we leave the city and start our ascent into the mountains the fog becomes blinding.  Visibility is about 30'.  We are now driving on dirt roads, at what felt like a 1:1 slope.  The car is fish-tailing, sliding backwards, bottoming out, I feel awful because this man's car is his livelyhood.  We could not find the nets, I don't have an exact location and can not see what is not right in front of me.  The locals either have no idea what I am looking for or are sure they know, but send us on a wild goose chase.  We make many stops, go back and forth up and down the mountain, backtrack like crazy.  What should have been 35-45 minute drive became over 2 hours.  Finally a woman seems very excited to talk to us, seems very confident and knew a lot of info about the nets so we take her lead, but end up at the bottom of a garbage dump in a psuedo parking lot area.  The driver walks down stairs to a village to ask if they know, I spot what could potentially be a foot path above a 10 foot cliff.  I scale the wall, and disappear into the fog.  I follow this trail, which becomes basically stairs dug into the mountainside, for what feels like forever.  I can't see where it is leading me, and after 5 minutes don't even know how to get back to the cab.  I hear my friend Nick talking to me and asks if I see anything.  I tell him I'm on a trail and will continue for  a few more minutes, if nothing...I will come back down.  

He says to keep going, they are up there somewhere, with that I see this frame made out of rebar, shaped to support/protect a tree.  I keep walking and find another contraption made of rebar, its tall and cylindrical, about 2 feet wide, and HAS A NET ON IT! It does not look like it is being used, but water is collecting and dripping from it.  I walk 15 more feet and see another, similar style thing that is square.  Suddenly, my driver and my friend emerge from the fog, covered in mud and tell me they were chased up the mountain by a pack of junkyard dogs.  The driver seems completely amazed by the nets (as was I) and is inspecting them as carefully as I am.  He had never seen them, and only heard about them but did not understand what they were for really.  I explained them to him, to the best of my knowledge and best of my broken Spanish.  We walked a bit more then...I see what looks like a small billboard, it is not made of mesh like I expected but a bunch of rubber bands tied vertically from top to bottom.  Hundreds of them.  Then I walk more along the ridgeline...I find a much bigger one, similar style, bent over like it had been hit with a wrecking ball.  45 feet more, and another small billboard but it is made of mesh, then some more and another bigger one made of mesh.  This is the one I had expected to see.  At this point I am begining to assume this is an abandoned testing site of various designs.  They all are collecting water, but the drainage systems are not functional, just dripping to the ground.  After about an hour walking around the ridgeline, and taking in the eerily beautiful views through the densest fog I have ever witnessed, we begin our descent.  

 

 

Again, I can not stress enough how little we can see.  I have no idea how to get back to the car, and remember...the whole purpose of these nets is to plant trees to stabalize the loose earth, so I am basically skiing down this hillside when I spot a flower, crazy little yellow flower.  Then I see more, then another net.  This one is much more makeshift and smaller, but has a pipe going from a tarp that collects the water, down the mountain. FUNCTION! We follow the pipe, which leads to a cistern.  At this point we see some lights in the distance and it is in the general direction (we think) of where we parked.  As we approach the lights, we begin to recognize the area...wait for it...and the car, with the lights still on.  The battery is too dead to start the car, but by a series of happy accidents, directly caused an opportunity to speak with a local villager that knows a lot about the nets.  I speak with her for a while while her children run around our feet.  She explains how the municipaility funds the materials, the locals maintain them.  In the winter months (lots of fog) the water is collected and stored, so they can use it in the summer months (drier) to water plants and trees which stabalize the ground, protecting the village below, increase infiltration (because once the trees take hold they act as fog nets themselves, collecting dew on the needles which drips to the ground, providing water for itself and nearby plants...this is man just giving a little nudge toward natural reforestation of the hillside) We give the car a push downhill and it starts up.

   I begin to see the future in my head, like time lapse as the mountain becomes green again.  Beautiful.  The woman I spoke to said that in the summer the mountain top is beautiful, and is a tourist destination as there is no fog and you can see the colorful flowers all the way from down in the city, but it is very rare to see tourist in the witner as it is so difficult to locate that most locals don't even know how to get there in the fog. 

So, I was a little bummed I have not met with anyone that can explain the details of the operation, but if I had gone with someone else I would not have had the same experience.  I would not have had the freedom to observe on my own as much, as I would have been influenced by what they were telling me.  I would not have felt as compelled to speak with locals, and I would not have met the coolest, most adventurous, most patient taxi driver on earth.  I gave him 120 soles for his trouble and what turned out to be over 4 hours, although I am fairly certain he would have done it just for the experience itself.  I hope to visit another site shortly (waiting on replies from emails) with a guide, so I can get more detailed information about costs, etc. I have attached some pics! I want to go back and do a watercolor up there, and took my driver's number because he knows where it is now, and was a great person to have met.

Next week I visit UTEC for their water filtration design presentations, then around the 10th I will be leaving the city for my next leg of the trip to Cusco, the Andes, and Machu Picchu!

Hasta Luego!
Jack

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