Esta Cali-ente: Careful What You Wish For

8 July 2016

The bad thing about 3 straight days of rain is that all of the footholds you’ve worn into the mud over the previous days gets washed away & the trail literally becomes a slip & slide of mud, where you end up on your ass or with a twisted knee (thank goodness for a walking stick!). I still find myself reaching out for trees to catch my fall or find some balance. But this is a cloud forest & you’re lucky if the branch you suddenly reach out for isn’t covered in spikes or in such a far gone state of decay that, even though it looks like a normal tree, it immediately crumbles in your grasp. It has led to some very interesting “yoga” poses though, as we all try to keep our balance while simultaneously sliding down the hill at different rates of speed, trying not to careen into each other or off the cliff. Nice one, Pacha Mama.

Hiking thru cloud forest trail

Mafer left yesterday; she headed back to Cali to go on vacation with her parents before she starts school again next month. It was interesting to see the transition in Mario & Tatiana. Clearly I am not the Spanish-speaking chatter box that Mafer was; my conversations are limited & I’m not the long-time friend that she was. They were fairly quiet all day & their demeanor was quite reserved. Then again, they’ve been out here for exactly a month today; so it could just be that they’re exhausted & anticipating the next 6 weeks ahead of them until the project is over. Either way, it was all bird business & then napping or reading in between. Very little conversation all day.

View inside tent w/ no rain fly

Fortunately, it hasn’t rained on us since the deluge, so we are able to sit at the new site without the rain fly. Which is REALLY nice, as we’re situated atop a peak overlooking the river. Not that we can SEE the river from this high up, but we can see through the trees to the mountains on the other side of the valley where there’s sun! And since we’re so high, thankfully not at the base of the canyon anymore, we don’t have thick canopy up above us and can actually see the sky above (not to mention the sparkling stars at night when there are no clouds!). It sounds ridiculous, but not having seen the sky for almost 3 weeks now, makes it a real treat! It’s also the farthest site so far, which according to Mario is only 1km from the station but Tatiana & I don’t really believe him since it takes us an hour to hike over 2 very steep peaks to get there…which he claims he does in just 25 minutes when he heads out ahead of us. Again, not sure we believe him on that one.