Jungle — return

 I’m just going to post everything I wrote in my notes app each night. No editing or reviewing done, so excuse any ramblings.

Hopefully it makes some sense, photos and videos to follow once I get back to actual civilisation and can put them together

Morning of the first day

In the drive to the jungle it’s mostly along sealed road, until the last hour and a half where it’s exactly what you’d expect - muddy roads winding through the hills. 

One thing that stands out in South America, once you see it — every off road vehicle is a Toyota. There are no Mitsubishis, no Fords, and certainly no CyberTrucks here. Toyota has a very well deserved reputation for reliability. 

Our group is 5 of us, plus our tour leader Jairo (pronounced Hai-ro), and the local guide, whose name I still haven’t caught — much to my self shame. In our trip we have represented Ireland, Sweden, the US, and Mexico.

Throughout the drive Jairo introduced us to Colombian music, with every song we got a little history of the musician and what the song was about, the song, or some special meaning.

Camp 1

We managed to get to camp 1 before the rain set in, and wow did it set in.

We were told to expect a lot of rain on the trail today, and we had not a drop until we got to camp. That said, it was hot. Very hot. Most of us could well be mistaken for having walked in the rain, we were wet and our clothes were very wet.

Once we hit camp, the plan was to change clothes and go for a quick dip in the nearby river. However as we had our showers and got changed the sky opened up. A few people decided that the river didn’t sound so fun anymore, but I and 2 others went for a swim.

The waterhole was really quite nice, you had to jump about 4m into it, but the only alternative was to carefully climb down the ladder that’s used to get out, so most people took the easy way — off the edge. I didn’t have my glasses on, so it was basically jumping into a big blur that turned very wet.

Once we got back to the accomodation the sky really unloaded. Thunder and lightning, absolute buckets of rain. We all agreed that while we had wished for some rain while we were hiking, this much would have sucked. We put in a request to our guide — overcast with a sprinkle of light drizzle for tomorrow, k plz thx.

Of course who knows what the weather will be like tomorrow…

Day 2

I’m not sure where to begin in describing day 2. Let’s start with it being called the hardest day of the hike — this is 100% true.

We had complained yesterday about the heat and how much nicer it would be with a gentle rain. I awoke at 4:40am and promised myself the roaring water was in fact the river next to the camp site and not the bucketing down rain. I lied to myself.

The next problem is we all had very wet sweaty clothes from yesterday, and faced with the choice of putting on yesterdays clothes, or getting some new clothes wet. We were encouraged to save our dry clothes till a day where we didn’t already know we’d get them wet, so we did the absolute horrible and put wet clothes on to start our hike. I did at least have fresh socks, but that doesn’t help when your boots still haven’t dried from the day before (river crossings).

Amazingly just as we were to head off the rain actually stopped, and we proceeded in cool, but mostly dry weather. 

On the previous day we actually hiked through almost roads, they were motorcycle accessible (and frequently used as such). I was a little worried that that would be what we would have the entire way, I needn’t have. Day 2 was by no means bushwhacking, but it was definitely a trail, a lot of up. And up. And oh god up. 

In the morning I slipped and landed slightly on my side, no problem I bounced up within 30 seconds and kept on my way. Lunch time we stopped at a camp and went swimming in a river. After swimming as I was changing again I noticed a lump on the side of my leg. It was a hell of a lump. It started off as about small apple sized and swelled to full on tennis ball sized — halve a tennis ball and that was what was sticking out of my leg. It looked like I had a rag or something shoved in my pocket, it was that noticeable. 

After lunch, as I felt sorry for myself, we headed off. Early on in this half the day is when I slid again — landing on the lump. So that meant my day was going to get very interesting.

Day 2 morning is fairly “easy”, it’s what I’d have called Nepali flat — up and down mostly up.

Day 2 afternoon is described as “20-30 minutes very step up, then 5 minutes flat ish, then another 20-30 minutes very steep up, and then 10-20 minutes flat ish. At that point we’d reach a fruit stand where we could get fresh fruit. We’d had two of those yesterday and they were the goal, definitely want to get there. Nothing tastes nicer than eating a hunk of watermelon having spent an hour and a half climbing up hill.

Unfortunately with my very tender wound (the swelling was now even bigger) it took me a lot longer. I was about 30 minutes behind the rest of my group when I got to the fruit stand.

At the fruit stand the sky, which had been threatening to open up, delivered on its threats.

Dear reader if you’ve never experienced rain in the jungle, let me enlighten you. Take a full bucket of water. Then tip it directly over your head in one go. Then have your friend tip the next bucket of water over your head. And your next friend, and so on. To say you get soaked is an understatement of epic proportions. Drowning while standing upright felt like a real possibility.

In the morning we had our first river crossing. When the ocean, sorry, clouds, opened up, we had our next rivers… crossing. The rivers were the trails. We didn’t cross the rivers, we walked through them, along them. Any idea of keeping one’s boots dry was a laughable idea at best. 

Eventually, having navigated through we got to camp. I was only an hour behind the group — my leg no longer hurt, it was beyond that. 

It took me about an hour to get up the courage to have an ice shower and peel off my wet clothes, and change into dry ones. These dry clothes I shall keep forever. 

It is night now, the camp lights are off, it’s 9pm. I can’t lie on my front, my back, one one side. Time to “sleep”.

Day 3

If day 2 was the hard day, then day 3 is saying “hold my beer”. For someone who doesn’t do uphills well, it was a true test. It started with some flatish (up and downs), until we got to the 1400 steps to the lost city. You probably don’t have the right picture in your mind when you think these steps. They’re made of stones found around, and some are very narrow width ways, and some are very narrow depth, and some very much both. The steps aren’t embedded in some kind of structure, they are just steps up a very steep hill.

In the end I went up portions of it using my hands, almost crawling up them.

An hour or so at the lost city — sadly just circular retaining walls are all that exist, at least that we can see. It’s not really a lost city as a lost foundation.

And then we head back down, and down, and down those same steps. Noting how narrow they are. We finally get back to camp, only for me to discover that we aren’t staying at this camp, but are instead heading to another camp a few hours away. Those hills that gave day 2 its reputation, we are walking down those.

The bruise to my right thigh is now a beautiful artwork of purple and white circles.  My left knee has complained because I was favouring it going down hills.

I am exhausted, the showers are cold, my clothes will not dry (nothing dries in the jungle). Tomorrow morning we “sleep in” until 6am, and I put on my soaking wet hiking gear, and hit the trail 

6am Day 4

Slept surprisingly well, and my clothes dried to the point that they’re just very damp (as opposed to wet). Those are the only things that went right 😭. My bruise is looking very nice now. My right big toe has layers of tape on it because there’s only so much a blister plaster can do, and I’m possibly going to lose a toenail on my left foot. We have another 5 hour hike ahead of us. Another glorious day in the jungle!

Two more days left.

Day 4

It felt like day 4 was as hard as days 2 & 3, but I think that’s just the exhaustion talking. A very long uphill part, and then steep downhill and then up and down. 

My left knee was already making grinding noises yesterday, and today it protested every time I had to put pressure on it. I’ve got a blister on my right big toe that I haven’t looked at because I’ve just been adding more and more surgical tape as it threatens to come off. 

The hike today went through some particularly muddy parts. I’m not sure “mud” conveys exactly what I mean. Imagine a muddy path, make it 3ft deep, make it muddy clay, and make some of it even deeper. Every day in the jungle these paths changes as the rains overnight wash some parts away and add other parts, as well as the mules and people walking through. So it wasn’t surprising to find parts that were perfectly fine 3 days ago that are now inaccessible unless you take the dangerous steps of trying to walk on the more solid of the mud parts. I almost lost my boot through one section. 

It’s 2pm and I’m currently evaluating the recommendation of the guide that I take a motorcycle out from the road. That would mean hiking up the steep hill out of this valley, and then getting a ride down. Disappointing, but I’m only doing further damage to myself by continuing to push it. I also have the option of riding a mule from this camp to the top of the hill. The mule is actually more exciting an idea than the motorcycle.

I said to the guide in my ideal world I’d take 8 hours to walk out, but doing so would mean the rest of the group would be waiting around for 5 hours, which is definitely not fair. I want to do the whole thing, but I also need to consider that I have another week in South America, and that being in the Galápagos Islands — something I’d rather not miss.

Day 5

I woke up this morning feeling quite happy I had booked both the mule up the hill, and motorcycle down. My knee really wasn’t playing ball. I could bend it, but it preferred I didn’t, and I found a new blister on my other big toe.

The trek out may have been exhausting for the others, but for me it was terrifying. To understand this you have to realise that “up” doesn’t mean continuous up or up and flat, it means up with some down and mostly up.

So the mule up involved some pretty dicey downhill bits of very mud covered paths and a mule that very much did not want to do them. All I could think was while the handler was getting paid, the mule had no such reward coming and if it so decided its day would become easier by throwing me off.

I began composing this entry in my head as we were going over a particularly narly narrow part and then remembered I’d have to survive to write the entry.

At multiple points the mule got half way up a mud covered hill and decided it was done for the day, but eventually we got to the top of the hill, next, the motorcycle down.

Say hello to Jose, who would be taking me down on the back of his Suzuki motorcycle. This became frightening for different reasons, while I was afraid the mule might choose to unburden itself, I began praying to the gods of friction that the motorcycle would remain upright. 

As we hit some uphill (mud) parts, I found myself switching deities to the gods of weight that we’d be able to get up the hill. On one occasion we did not and I had to walk some of the way. Somehow lugging myself up a hill was a welcome reprieve from the terror of downhill.

Somehow we made it back to the place we set off from so many days ago, and I realised I now had the problem of sitting around for 3 hours while my new friends had to make the same trek, without mule or motorcycle power. I still reckon I have had the harder time, bet their lives didn’t flash before their eyes numerous times.

As for my clothes, my gear, everything I brought into the jungle — all of it stinks beyond hope. In a few hours we will reach a laundromat where miracles will be hoped for, but it’s not likely.