The next stage is bouncing along rocky sheep paths into 'villages' of a few adobe and straw huts clustered at the head of steep, barren valleys overlooking a vast, silent, austerely beautiful world. Life is austere here, too. At 4,000 metres and higher, vegetation is sparse. The ground has a thin covering of the aptly named paja brava, or brave grass. Small rock enclosures protect the scattered meagre potato fields, irrigated only by rain and fertilized only by llamas.
People live on dried potatoes, beans, some cereals and dried meat.
In many ways, though, life in Oscar's village, Palcoma, is better now than it used to be. Health workers periodically come to vaccinate the children. The pre-school, open daily from 8 a.m. to noon, serves the children breakfast and lunch. The villagers know how to use oral rehydration salts, although last year they ran out of them. But safe drinking water is still a serious problem.