Bella Vista Hike 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So Ramiro goes, “Oh yeah, we’re gonna go on a little hike,” and I said to myself, oh, a hike, we’ve lived in the jungle for two and a half years, we can do a little hike! Plus, it hadn’t been raining that much.

So, we get our boots on, and we clean up the table where we were eating, and our team sets out. We start walking. We get to Saul’s house, and I’m so worn out! I’m thinking, are we there yet?

But then we started the actual trip up the mountain. So I’m thinking, oh, well, it’s uphill, but, it won’t be that bad! But then I start sinking in to the mud.. nearly all the way up to the tops of my almost-knee-high boots!

It’s way uphill now, but there’s this flat spot. It’s got sunk-in foot prints in the mud, and there’s water and caked-up mud on the sides, and I start sinking in it. I try to keep going up, but it’s super slick! I fall, but I catch myself with my hands. Now there’s mud all over them. It was nasty! My hands were dirty, but I just forgot about trying to keep them clean, and used them to climb.

After a while, I was hearing surprised screams and laughing. I was trying to keep up with Ramiro and Saul, because I wanted to be able to keep up with the Ecuadorians. Then we finally, finally, finally, got to the water tank. It’s filled from water from the spring, and it’s going to help with aquaponics system. Ramiro told us that the ledge was called “the Wall of Decision.” On one side, there was the water tank. But on the other side, it was like a cliff! There were rocks and sticks and other pointy stuff at the bottom, where the water flowed down. It was almost a little bit scary, so I didn’t get really close to it.

This is the story Pastor Ramiro told us: “This is the Wall of Decision. We bring people up here if they want to get baptised. If they repent of their sins, we dunk them in the water. But if they don’t, we push then over the edge of the cliff!” But he was just joking, they don’t actually do that.

I thought going down would be so much easier. “Yes!” We were ready to get back to the village and take a break! We didn’t go down the way we came though, we took a different path. It was very steep and curvy — like the roads here in Ecuador! It was intimidating.

Some of us were more sure of our step, some of us were covered in mud, and some of us (like myself) had our hands and pants dirty. We were slipping everywhere — it was crazy! It was so slick. Pastor Ramiro told us to put our heels in first, make sure you’re stable, and you won’t fall as much. It was still hard to walk, but it helped.

So there I was in the jungle, sweaty, muddy, walking, putting my heels in first, and trying to stay on the inside of the trail. And then, we came to a little ledge, like a drop-off. I saw a bunch of slide marks, where people had fallen. So I just edged my way along, very carefully. There was this guy on our team, and he was huge! I heard, “Whoa!” and I looked behind me. One of his legs was hanging off the cliff!

We finally made it back to the village. We took pictures, and it was a lot of fun. It was an interesting experience.