I have seen and heard a lot of the Venezuelan tendencies to keeping arrangements. Quite frankly, people seem to baile out a lot. I may add that they always have an excellent reason for doing so. Their arguments are reasonable enough for the most part, but it seems more redonedant here for some reason. “I can’t hang out until later, I have to take my mom to run errands.” “I didn’t have credit on my phone and couldn’t contact you.” "I don´t feel good." “I don’t have any money.” “The boiler in my flat broke, I can’t go hiking to the mountain this morning.”
This got me thinking about how I want to do all of these things while I’m here, I shouldn’t rely on anyone but myself to go to those places and see all that I want to see. So I went to the parks, and museums, I walked around the city. But now it was time to hike el avila and I had eaten 4 or 5 cloves of garlic just in preparation. El Avila is a national park that borders Caracas and I’m told from at a certain point at the top you can see the ocean on one side and the city on the other. Our departure time of 8am from our apartments was delayed by my pondering if I should go or not with the news of the most recent bailer.… now my new departure time was 830am. After catching a bus to Baruta and then to Chacaito, a metro ride to Altamira and another bus to the entrance of el avila, I started the climb a little before 10am. The trails that I chose didn’t have a huge amount of people on them, especially after I passed the waterfall that everyone was playing in. I hiked up short cuts that met up with the same trails again. Climbing higher, I was getting a magnificent view of the city and by 11am I had taken a picture of a helicopter that was below me. I was level with the clouds. The large trail ended and a smaller one began that brought me to an even loftier point. I had to get the view!!!! But I was sidetracked by water. I heard the falls and couldn’t wait to see it and get wet after an hour of climbing! I think the trail ended when I got to the big water pipe. It helped me make my way along side the mountain and closer to the falls. I saw 2 guys at this point, one of which told me to be careful going a certain way(I think). I went ahead and checked out my surroundings. I had a huge waterfall just over this huge rock formation, if I could just get to it. I checked out this way the other. One was over the top of the falls, I didn’t want to get swept away, so I looked for alternate routes. There was a climbers rope attached to the unreasonably smooth and steep rock. At the end of the rope there was nothing to hang onto so I had to slide to the crevice between the 2 monster rocks. Here, I was able to slowly edge my way down to a flat surface. But I knew for sure that I couldn’t ever make it up that way again. I went across the falls loving every minute of it. Now on the opposite side of the water, I climbed as high as I could and it started to get really nasty, I couldn’t help but wonder where the trail was. I was suddenly clinging onto tree roots and rope vines. Many of which were the wrong ones to touch. I climbed and climbed to find myself in just more precarious positions. I was now crawling through the soggy ground, trying to fight my way through entirely sturdy vines and dewy cobwebs, releasing moths each time. I was vertical again, adhering to the dirt, a rock, and small tree below; reaching for the next truly sturdy root (some are dead and fall apart when you grab them) or small tree. Pulling myself up I got a glimpse of the devil. If snakes can hear this one was deaf by the time I had made my way out of his nest. It didn’t move and I don’t know why this one scared me so much- maybe because it was blue and bigger than normal and I realized at this point that there are a ton of things out here that want to eat me, poison me, or just give me a good scare. The horseflies and mosquitoes were everywhere, but didn’t bite me once. Thanks to the garlic the previous night. I passed by the big, scary snake and started to freak out because looking up, it was all solid crap: biting bushes, thorny plants, and straping vines that just wouldn´t let me through. Below me … was below me!! I didn’t want to go back, I had to be close to another trail, if I could just get to where the sun hits an open spot. I descended and reascended in a different location only to become super frustrated with my life at that point and screamed. Hey, not a bad idea… I started screaming “UUUUU HOOOOO” as loud as I could. There was no echo. I could barely even hear myself under the mountainous jungle canopy- very unpleasant. I was feeling trapped and definitely wanted to quit. I drank water instead. Determining now that I was in some sort of valley between mountains, I had come to a decision to follow the waterfall downwards. Eventually I would hit solid ground. I could see the city and it looked too small. The waterfall tricked me almost every time, getting me down to a certain slope and then having to reclimb already explored territory. Because of the steep cliffs on each side, there was just no other way to go than back and reroute it. At 2pm I called Cesar to tell him that if I wasn’t at the birthday parties that night, I was still lost in the mountain. At least someone knew where I was. He tried to help, its impossible to do something like that over the phone. Soon I was sitting on the edge of the waterfall, not fully hydrated but wanting to piss on the mountain anyway. Mountain water may not always be so clean. I wanted to eat, but I had so much adrenaline that I couldn’t stop getting out of where I was. I needed to find a path and soon, or just plain get out of there before dark! I found myself in some pretty scary places where I was sure there needed to be a safety apparatus for me to attempt getting to the bottom. I never thought I would love to see tree roots so much, or vines- Tarzan really knew what he was doing. I knew I would get out and soon. I kept following the waterfall, sliding down directly through it until there was a falls. 5pm rolled around and I saw a red shirt. My adrenaline rush faded in less than 2 minutes. He had just graduated from a university in Florida and came home for the month of June. This was his ‘spot’ and he was quite confused and amazed that I had just descended alone from the direction I did. The rest of the way down should have been easy, but after resting with Florida for a while on the rock, I didn’t think I could get down the remainder. It took another hour maybe… and this guy is a rock climber, so we took the shortest way possible. Hey, I’m not a rock climber, but Saturday I was. It was a cakewalk once I found him because there were trails not very far off. I saw the Cocada stand and spent the last of my money thanking him for wearing a visible red shirt, speaking English, and giving my dirty, torn, ragged, wet body a ride home across the city.
My body is in shambles. The mountain has rubbed me in every inappropriate way and I am 96% worthless. The soreness? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sorer than I’d ever been before, but that’s not the ½ of it. I have 1,662 slivers in my body. Tiny slivers; about 73 per finger and 1,114 on my hands alone. The rest cover my arms and some even penetrated through my pants! Once I finally arrived at my apartment I had to call Mariah to come for me with the elevator. I couldn’t walk up any steps. It was my time to baile. I had to argue my reason for not going to the birthday parties. “I don’t have any money.” Precisely why I didn’t go out, I didn’t even have enough money to take the buses. Monday I had to borrow $0.50 from my roommate just to get myself on a bus and to an atm in town. All to cross off another item on my personal mission statement- ‘climb a mountain.’ It didn’t state that I wished to get lost in the jungles of the mountain, but now I know that I will never have to do that. Valuable lesson learned here: I should not lose site of the path on a mountain when going solo. This won’t happen again.
