July 19th, 2009: This morning…the rain clouds once again welcomed us to Purace National “Water” Park. Martha and I headed back to Purace, starting our day by hiking to the condor viewing point where the lazy beast is fed since some of his other mates died from starvation. While crossing a mine field strategically laid by the rebel cows that dotted the landscape, I inadvertently stepped on an explosive…covering the sides of my shoe. Fortunately my shoes are not just waterproof but poo poo proof too.Since the condor didn’t want to take in the prime views on this rainy day, I decided to climb up to his spot to enjoy a…birds eye view. Making it only 2 feet from the top, seeing the condors very own excrements on the rock, I lost my footing…slipping - finger tips becoming ridged, I tried “the cat” pose but I remembered that I have no claws. Catching a hole in the rock, I stopped myself from an extremely unpleasant landing.
With the rain coming down…horizontally, the next item on our, “to do list” was to hike up the active volcano, Purace, to a point of interest that Martha wanted to show me. Today, I was not extremely motivated to hike up or to anything…this is including the coffee shop at the entrance into the park before venturing off to the vertical hike of no interest. Hoping Martha would be like most of my other woman friends, I was thinking the weather or high altitude was going to break her down telling me that she is ready to go home before we even start. I was…wrong. I should have been wiser with my educated guess that a professor in civil engineering, specializing in…water, would fold because of bad weather.
When leaving the coffee shop, some climbers that were denied by Purace looked like a bunch of monkeys, huddled at the fire in the ranger station trying to bring life back to their extremities. Looking at my fingers, still swollen like bloated waterlogged earthworms from the day before, I slowly put down my head…following Martha up the hill, not wanting to tell her I didn’t want to go.
Each 10 steps up, I gasped for air…because of…the… altitude- not fitness level. Each 5 steps, Martha gasped for air - I had the advantage, meaning I would only have to work half as hard as her. Still not giving up on her potentially wanting to turn back, I wasted my breath pumping her mind full of information about the affects of altitude on the human body…forgetting she is at times like a senior citizen – or international traveler…saying yes when she has not a clue what I am saying.
The rain continued to flow, creating a river of water that followed the trail down the hill trying to make it to a more constant water source. With little success, the water either made pleasant mini-waterfalls or beautiful deep dark muddy trails.
Hiking up Purace I noted the locals had some creative means to protect themselves from the elements. I saw plenty of guerrilla boots, one piece painting suits, unisex garbage bag skirts, green industrial strength rubber gloves and the more fashionable food handling gloves. Some of these outfits today have seen more quality outdoor time than the expedition quality outdoor gear of others back at home…only enduring the elements when heading out of the cubical cell for a smoke break or to their car.
Due to time limitations we were only able to do a three hour hike up Purace, unfortunately not making it to our destination – Martha’s destination. Everyone I saw coming down didn’t make it to the top so I was obviously happy that time constraints saved my body from burning more calories than absolutely necessary. With my garbage bags over my socks failing me and my fingers again not wanting to function…this was a good ending point.
Waiting for a bus to take us back to civilization, we were invited into a local woman’s house to warm up next to her wood burning stove. I stood there in the dark blackened kitchen with my hands over the fire as it kindly brought feeling back to my 10 little friends. Watching the woman’s children playing marbles on the cracked cement floor…I built up enough courage to challenging one of the kids to a game, knowing he was the Tiger Woods of marbles. Hearing the bus tearing around the corner, our game was cut extremely short, since we didn’t even start. Sprinting out of the house we were able to catch the attention of the driver without me having to sacrifice Martha by pushing her in front of the bus, to create an effective but one time use speed bump. Unable to sit under the tent like tarp on top of the roof with the others, we slid into a row on the side of the bus feeling as if I was on a train circling a zoo. We had seven people on the bench in my row of this massive bus that engulfed the dirt road as a Humvee would fill a suburban street. Every inch of the bus was maximized…with the back half of the bus filled with individuals’ cardboard luggage, potato sacks and livestock.
As we moved onward to Popayan, I looked around realizing that I did not blend into the crowd very well as it seemed that I was the only one who was excited to be on this local bus. The people on the bus looked like liked they were “pigs in a blanket” with the blanket wrapped around them having just a nose or eyes peering from the opening… as I sat with my head sticking out my door like a dog, letting the cold wind dodge my face.
A man, shuffling along a 6 inch sideboard that went along the outside of the bus, was hanging from bar to bar… collecting the fare as the bus was quickly moving along the poorly maintained gravel road. It was amazing…a real life Colombian stuntman. What an amazing job…when the weather is nice. I am curious if this was the company policy for collecting fares?
We made it back to Popayan just in time to head to a local pizza place before they closed. I was thinking about pizza for two whole days – actually 41 hours, 11 minutes and 24 seconds. What is it about food when traveling? It seems to be a top item of interest for me in situations such as these. Here we sat right next to the oven in front of the pizza place absorbing and storing the needed heat. Recapping our weekend into the wild…I think the trip to Purace National Park has been the best part of my trip up to this point - it could not have been any better. The weather, the mishaps…it was the makings of a perfect weekend.
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