My Legs are Trembling...

Okay, so I'm sorry that I haven't been updating regularly.. I've been getting caught up with school work and hanging out with the group that by the time I have time to write, I just end up falling asleep without finishing. And then I was gone from Saturday to today.. SO. I'm separating all my posts (so they're easier to read - for those who were complaining hehe) by days.

Last Tuesday (13/09/11) was a super tiring yet adventurous day!! Some people from my group and I got to climb Mount Ilaló, a super tall, expired volcano. It seemed like such a good idea when we decided to go hiking on this beautiful mountain, but 10 minutes into the hike, I wanted to die. After classes, Lisa, Sophie, Lucy, Kara, Keely, Dan, Chris, and I ate lunch together, and left for Tingo. Tingo is a small pueblito (town) near the mid-base of Ilaló where we decided to start our hike because if we had actually started from the bottom of the actual mountain, we would have had to pass through various pueblitos, and it would have taken us 5-6 hours to climb. And by the time we started walking, it was around 2:10, and the sun sets around 6, so we wanted to make it back down before it got dark.

So at the beginning of our hike, there were two paths we could take - left or right. We chose to go left, because that's the direction we thought Lisa's mom said to go towards... but it was actually towards the right. So after walking 15 minutes in the wrong direction, we turned around and started actually hiking. It was cool because we got to see a cow super close hehehe. At first, the hike wasn't very tiresome.. just a little stressful because the ground was all sandlike dirt and was really hard to walk uphill in. Soon, though, the ground became harder... and super steep. I felt like I was doing the stairmaster on level 10. And it was like that nonstop; we couldn't put it on an easier level or anything.. It was just step after step after step.

Our group kind of got separated because we all went at different paces, but I liked that better because we were able to go at our own pace rather than be forced to go faster and just really die. Lisa and I stuck together for the whole trip because we were at a very similar pace, but we still followed the people in front of us (Sophie, Kara, Lucy, Chris) who were drunk, so we probably shouldn't have blindly followed them because we got lost! Instead of going down the actual path up the mountain, we got off track and took this crazy journey up the mountain.

We had to climb up the side of a mountain; if you imagine drawing a mountain, that's how steep we climbed, and yes, we were on the surface of it, not walking through it. It was crazy hard because of the steep slope that caused our feet to slip all the time. And if we walked slow so we didn't roll down, it was harder on our muscles, so we had to somewhat keep a steady pace all the way up the mountain. As soon as we thought we saw the end, there was more - a lot more, like we were only halfway there. And somehow I kept on walking. As we neared towards the cross that's at the tippy-top of the mountain, we noticed that there was a line of trees that acted as a forest to "protect" the cross or land from visitors. If we had stayed on the path, we probably wouldn't have gotten lost or stuck in that forest, but Lisa and I got stuck between the branches, and I ended up getting a small splinter :( But it's okay because we had FINALLY MADE IT!!! It was such an accomplishment, and we were so happy that we were able to do it.

When we got to the top, we climbed the cross hehe I don't know if we were allowed to, but we did it anyway. We had some avocado and tuna with saltines that my host dad packed for us, and soon we were on our way back down the mountain. All I can say is that going down is as hard as going up, but on different aspects. Going down is harder because there are less times we can stop to rest our muscles, and also, our muscles hurt more since we're trying to stop ourselves from falling over. But we eventually made it!! From there, Lisa, Keely, and I split from the rest of the group who went to look for a place to eat because we needed to go eat dinner with our host families.

Actually,  my host family decided to go out to dinner that day because my "cousin" Maria Daniela received an honors award!! I think this means that she's at the top of her class (?) or something special of that sort. We had hamburgers, and it was DELICIOUS because 1. I was starving, and 2. we ate at "Cafe de la Vaca" which is a cute cafe with a bunch of cows decorated all around the restaurant. Then I went home and finally started my homework/fell asleep without doing much. Oops :)