In my last post I had talked about how exciting it had been for me to the first climb to El Ávila, I told you that it was only a journey of exploration and knowledge rather than a trip to exercise. Nonetheless I must say that I arrived exhausted to my house that day, to have traveled all the way that I traveled at that moment had not been an easy thing since at that moment I wasn't in the required shape for that trip, but without a doubt It was a fantastic tour.
Having seen those landscapes and having felt that tranquility inside that mountain simply made me want to come back every weekend, so I decided to call my friends again in order to do the same tour, we still weren't going to the top of the mountain because my physical condition wasn't going to develop in a single week.
I took the phone and called the 3 friends who had gone with me the previous time, but unfortunately this time we would not go the whole group. Abraham had to study for college exams he had that week, Ricardo was working that day and only Jeison was available. I asked Jeison if he didn't mind to go without Abraham this time and he simply said he didn't mind to, we already knew the road and it was unlikely to get lost. We really knew the original road that led us from San Bernardino to Sabas Nieves, it wasn't a complicated road in fact.
We agreed that we would go early like that time, so the day before I set the alarm for 7 am, this time I put a bottle of water in my bag just in case. The night before it had been raining for hours all over Caracas, I thought about how the road would be the next day, but I wanted to go anyway like a good stubborn man. During that week in the gym I had done enough cardio so that the fatigue didn't affect me as much as it had done last time, nevertheless I really didn't think it was enough, because the climb of the beginning was still very steep.
The day arrived and I had started badly, my watch didn't ring in time by bad luck, it was delayed and I hadn't noticed such a problem, I got up about 40 minutes late and Jeison was already on the way to meet me at the entrance of Avila and start climbing. It was raining a little, and from my house there was an incredible cold, I just thought about how the weather would be in the mountains, but I grabbed my things and I left my house in a hurry since I couldn't leave Jeison waiting for so long. In the middle of the hurry I left without having breakfast, a big mistake that people who do hard physical activities should never commit, but I was stupid at that time and I left without even eating cookie.
On the way to El Ávila the weather had calmed down a bit but still the sky was still so windy and cloudy, so the scene was something like this: without having breakfast it was about to rain quite strong. It wasn't a very promising thing to say but sometimes humans are stubborn and stupid like I was at that time, I just had to call Jeison and tell him I canceled because of the bad weather, that was all but I still did not .
Whatever, I met Jeison at the entrance of Avila in time as we had planned and for my fortune there was a lady right at the entrance selling cupcakes and orange juice, I decided to buy but not much, just enough to calm the hunger that I had at that moment and also not to faint on the mountain, that would had been catastrophic for both, for me because passing out and Jeison for not being able to do anything about it since it was very difficult to take me to another place from the Mountain.
We decided to wait for a while until the rain slowed down a bit, and when it just stopped falling, we started our journey. Again we would face the steep ascent from the beginning but this time without the leader of the last time: Abraham. This time we could stop without the fear of making a fool in front of Abraham (which as I said before, he seemed like Leonidas from "300" for how energetic he always was). We were at the first 30 minutes of steep ascent and for our surprise, we didn't stop at any moment of the climb, obviously we were tired but not so much as to stop to take a breath, when we reached the flat area we were even proud of our achievement.
The climb was quite slippery due to the rain that had fallen all the night before and during part of that morning, it became harder to climb since you also had to be careful not to fall. When we reached the flat side after that steep climb we realized that the rain had left great amounts of mud, and this made it difficult to pass through the middle of the road. We passed anyway, the rain was no longer present but the clouds were still loaded with water ready to fall at any moment.
However this didn't frighten us at all.
Jeison and I had been friends for a very long time, so as we crossed that journey the topics of conversation were always present of any kind. Despite the weather, the tour had started quite well. After a few minutes of walking and the thirst began to appear in us, it wasn't so disturbing because we knew that we had the first waterfall of crystalline water few meters away, the last time we had been there the weather was quite sunny and the water was still cold, but now the weather was cloudy and cold, so you can imagine how the water was at that moment...
We arrived at the first waterfall, we weren't as tired as the last time, I imagine the cardio done in midweek had made a positive effect on my fitness. We stopped for a while in this waterfall as we watched the people go by their trotting pace, but we could see that some drops were falling in the small "pool", they were few but definitely present. That only told us something, the rain would soon be arrived.
We decided to continue and perhaps at a more hurried pace due to the bad weather, we were worried that the rain would fall on us in a place where we couldn't take any kind of refuge.
The last time I had been there (1 week ago) I had made the promise that I would explore unknown territories, such as the 2 waterfalls that had roads to other places. As we continued our journey forward and curiously still it did not start to rain, but certainly the sky looked worse than when we were about to start climbing. Jeison several times told me to stop and go back, but as I told you before... I was stubborn and stupid enough not to give in, so I persuaded him to keep going no matter what the weather was.
Finally we reached the waterfall number 2, by this time I was already totally destroyed because all the earth and mud that I had passed, I took advantage of the flow of water to clean my shoes and drink some water also to replenish Energies. But unlike the first time, this time I saw the other path that led into the waterfall not with intrigue but rather with certainty that it would pass by. I told Jeison to go and take a look inside that road, it was just to follow the road that led the river and it was impossible for us to get lost, when we decided to return we just had to follow the water path to get back to where we were.
Jeison wasn't very convinced but ended up giving in and accompanied me during this extra route, this road was not normal, it was a path of mountains, trees, stones and water flow, so you practically had to become "Tarzan" to be able to But what I was seeing up to that moment seemed so great that I did not pay much attention to the difficulties to advance within this tree path. Jeison fell many times on several of the large stones that were crossed in the way because being wet, he didn't get any damage so he had no problems with moving forward. We ended up arriving at a part where you could not climb more since it was a stone more than 10 meters long, and to the sides were only trees with no road. Well actually if there was a way up, but I did not want to take the risk it.
We returned to our original path without any problem, it had seemed pretty cool what I had seen in there, so that made me want to go into the next waterfall, which was even more extensive.
When we reached the third waterfall the rain had begun to fall slowly, but fortunately near the third waterfall there was a place where people could get into a refuge, we waited there for a while until the rain stopped. What we were most concerned about the conditions in which the last climb and stones would be before the descent began. The last time had already been difficult enough to pass by, now the extra difficulty was provided by the rain and mud.
The rain stopped for a moment and we could get to the third waterfall without any problem, we stopped again to drink some water but this time we did not see anyone bathing in the lower part of the waterfall, it was totally empty. There were very few people that day, in fact I don't remember seeing more than 30 people along the whole route.
As I said the previous time, instead of following the original path I wanted to go and explore further in this waterfall to see where it was taking to and how the site was in general. After about 30 minutes of passing over stones and trees I had heard several sounds like some creeping animal on the mountain, could be heard due to the deep silence that was in the place, the only thing that would be heard would be the flow of water and any animal in move, I already knew what kind of animals I could find around that place, because the only creeping animal that could have been there was a snake. I was aware of the danger so we decided to go secretive looking very carefully at where we stepped, however we heard the sound of some animal moving about 10 meters from where we were walking, we stopped to watch carefully and we could see 2 snakes , These didn't seem to have intentions of attacking us so we decided to cross the other side of the river to avoid some incident with these animals.
We walked and walked but the path inside the waterfall did not seem to have any end, so after about 45 minutes of having deviated we decided it was time to go back and return to the original path. It had been great visiting that unknown place, the only worrying thing had been the snake that we saw nearby, but beyond that nothing happened until that moment.
So we got to the original road, started to climb and to be honest we were quite late, later than the last time because the alternative routes we had taken, or was more time than originally planned. As we climbed, we felt the fatigue on our legs and because of that we had to stop several times to rest. On that road there were several shortcuts that equally led to the original road, but to pass through these you had to get dirty enough and climb on some stones, we decided to take all these shortcuts to cut some road at least.
After some traveled road, there was a rather peculiar shortcut, this one looked quite high and the formation of the stones at the beginning of this shortcut seemed to form a stair, so I told Jeison to take this shortcut. Jeison had begun to tell me not to take any chances because this shortcut didn't give him a good feeling, it was so high that he could not see where he was going, but I just thought we would cut a big piece of the way, but Jeison insisted on not taking this road. I managed to convince him after a few minutes as I had done in the other 2 previous waterfalls and we started to climb, as we went up Jeison was telling me to return because in the end this shortcut would lead us nowhere. I, stubbornly, decided to ignore him and keep going up and up.
Things began to get difficult, the rain had started to fall and already at a stronger pace and holding the stones was increasingly difficult because of the slippery these ones were, and Jeison insisted on telling me that there was no way forward. However, I did not follow his warnings, something quite unfair on my part because I clearly was not traveling alone. After a time to continue climbing that climb, I could begin to realize that Jeison was right, certainly the road didn't go anywhere and was steadily steeper, to the point that there was no way to go back, the way back was too difficult for us. We had no choice but to go up, Jeison was already upset with reason enough, my stupidity had led us to a path with no direction, but we still kept going up despite not knowing where we were heading to.
Jeison: You don't have any idea where we are going, do you?
Ricky: I honestly don't, but we are here already, what can we do now?
Jeison: I've been warning you about this for a while, we're going nowhere, we are totally lost.
I refused to accept the reality that we were really lost and I did not know where we were heading at that time, the rain didn't stop and the road became increasingly difficult to climb, there was a time when the stones had been finished and we were leaning on practically nothing in order to continue climbing, instead of stones there were branches of trees and obviously we had to grab ourselve in these ones even though some of them were unstable.
The situation we were like a game, the more we climbed the more it increased the difficulty in "the game", by that time and the branches had changed texture, now these branches had a spice of spikes, so it was almost impossible to hold on, and the most macabre of the situation was that if we didn't hold ourselve on anything we would just fall and we were already high enough to simply fall. Jeison insisted that everything was my fault, and certainly it was, my stupidity, as I said several times in this post, had led us to that situation so desperating.
We stopped for a moment to think about how we would do to get out of there, we were the only ones in that place, no person was seen anywhere near there. But we managed to hear something that reassured us a bit, the sound of a waterfall...
Jeison seemed to be totally upset so he decided to stop following me and start looking for a path by himself, I remember that he fell about 5 times during the time we were in that "shortcut", but he continued because he did not want to stay there stranded and with the rain falling harder and harder. Now instead of climbing, we decided to circle the ravine where we were until we found the waterfall we had heard, the plan was simple, we would simply follow the course of the river down in order to find the original route and definitely not take more shortcuts. We were pretty dirty both of us because of the rain and dirt mixed in our clothes, after about 5 minutes of having surrounded the ravine we could find the waterfall, but there was a new problem, to get to the waterfall we had to jump from a height of about 8 meters and fall on a slippery surface. It looked quite frightening but it was our only choice. Nearby to Jeison I saw a large tree and so as to get down ther he needed to hold on to it a little so he could cushion the fall, I didn't think he could do it but he surprised me by falling without hurting, but now it was my turn to do it, I honestly was afraid at that moment, if something happened there was no way to warn someone since the telephone lines didn't have enough signal in that place.
However, I could also do it but unfortunately I bent my ankle a little, it was not so serious but it bothered and besides my legs were pretty tired. When we saw where the waterfall was heading to, we decided that it was a bad idea to follow the course of the river, since this exit was practically a precipice, but next to it was a giant bush where we would take the risk of finding a snake but again... It was our only option to get out of there. We had to get into that mountain, and as we walked we could hear the sound of some people laughing, we knew we were near to the original path. We kept walking and until finally we were able to see a path traveled by people again.
It was quite difficult to go through the "shortcut" that I had found, in fact he didn't even cut any road, we managed to cut about 6 meters ahead of where we had started the that madness, so what I had done was really stupid, it must be admitted. We managed to get to the original road and Jeison despite everything seemed to have forgiven me for such stupidity, it was still raining.
At the end of the tour that day we learned to follow the original road always and that with bad weather we should not go up again. We were quite destroyed at the end of the tour, much more than the first time we had gone in a group. Nevertheless it was a quite good experience.
When I got to the house I could rest and this situation was like an exciting anecdote to tell others.