NYR 5-28-11 - thankful to be alive

Jimmy's friend from grad school days flew in for the holiday weekend. A group of embassy friends was going to visit the little town of Tobia for part of the weekend, so we asked Matt if he wanted to go. Now, after living through the overnight trip, I desperately wish he'd say no, but when we asked him, I was happy he said yes. We'd get to hang out with friends, go whitewater rafting, and be in a hot, sunny climate.

Tobia is only 75 kilometers from Bogota, but the road is terrible in some parts due to the neverending rains and resulting landslides. There are places where the road goes down to one skinny lane because that's all they've cleared after the slides. So 75 kilometers (or 47 miles) ends up taking over 2 hours to drive.

We left on Saturday morning and got to the hotel by lunchtime. The hotel was basically like camping but with walls. No hot water, mattresses that were as hard as sleeping on the ground, lots of bugs, etc. Not a luxury accommodation by any stretch but we weren't paying luxury prices, so that was fine.

We decided to go on a hike that afternoon. Thankfully, Mac decided he didn't want to go and he stayed back at the hotel to swim with friends.
en route to the hike - in the back of a pickup truck when I was still smiling

We'd been told that "you might get wet" on the hike, but within 3 minutes of hiking, we were neck-deep in water. We followed a river (with waterfalls that we had to climb around or through) upstream until we got to a "sliding rock". At that point, we veered away from the river onto a path back into this little hamlet where our ride dropped us off and would pick us back up.
Catching up to the boys and just before I had to pull myself up on a rope to get up around that waterfall
Jimmy on "Sliding Rock" which he said was about an 82-degree incline
happy to be back on a path and not in the water. Happiness was short-lived.

I was pretty excited to be on the path which felt more secure under my feet until we had to go around two recent landslide areas that had wiped the path out. On the last one, I was literally shaking with fear that my feet were going to slip on the loose rocks and that I was going to fall to my death or at least serious injury.

The other thing that was in the back of my mind the whole time was that I shouldn't have read the autobiographies of people who have been kidnapped by the bad guys here in Colombia. Now the area that we were in is safe and has been cleared for travel by the embassy's security folks, but the descriptions in those autobiographies kept coming back to me. I imagined myself on a forced march fording rivers and streams and hiking across jungles where you pick up parasites and worms that bore into your skin. You get the idea.

In my mind's eye, I was living out scenes from the kidnapping autobiographies.

The path was supposed to go across where that white pipe is in the bottom of the photo. But the landslide wiped out all of that, so we had to cut up and around.
I'm serious when I tell you we were in the boonies. We passed this family heading back up the mountain with their donkey laden with supplies. I hope they knew another way around the landslide area!

I was never so glad to be done with a hike in my life.

For surviving the hike and conquering fears, I am truly thankful.