June 15, 2009

Post Jungle Training

Posted in Honduras tagged hikes, jungle, whines at 4:48 pm by shangela

I’m alive!!!! Three days in the jungle and I’ve collected quite a few bug bites, a little more calf muscle, and the knowledge of how to tie my own hammock. The entire time, I couldn’t help comparing it to OA, which might give some of you guys a little perspective on how different/same the jungle is.

In terms of hiking, this was waaaay more strenuous. We didn’t travel very far…the first day was only about 3-4 miles. The problem is, the majority of the paths here are either straight up or straight down. One of the guys at camp told me that people say this part of Honduras is all at a 30 degree incline. Some of the hills we climbed definitely felt like we were going 60 degrees up. And while going up is tiring, going down is just plain scary. There were several places where we just gave up walking and slid down the hills on our bottoms (and there’s so many British people here that I’m tempted to say “bum”). The paths were never straight, as well, always twisting and turning, going over fallen tree logs, under tree roots, over streams and across mud pits. It’s usually so narrow that even walking single file doesn’t prevent you from getting scraped and smacked in the face by tree branches and vine. In some places, the trail looks like it just disappears…thankfully we had amazing Honduran guides that led us through, or else I’m sure we would not have made it through so safely. (Btw, these guides have probably been walking these trails since they could walk. They run up and down those slopes I mentioned like its nothing and carry ridiculous amounts of stuff on their back and still travel twice as fast as we do.)

The second day, we hiked out to a river which was actually big enough for us to wash in. I went in with my bathing suit, but only ended up washing my arms and legs cause it was freeeeezing. But it was very very cool…I mean, bathing in shallow pools formed by rocky outcroppings, as the river flows over and down the hillside…that’s like stuff you only see in movies.

Food was definitely way below the quality of OA. We had to make our own fires, which was cool, but food consisted mainly of noodles, beans, and canned vegetables. Definitely not appetizing after more than one meal. Oh, how I longed for the cheese, sausage, and Nutella of OA fare. Meat is basically non-existent here…we get our protein from peanut butter, beans, and maybe some tuna. I guess large farm animals are few and far between around here. Last night though, we had fun toasting marshmallows and dough balls over the campfire, and this morning the guides taught us how to cook eggs over the fire using tree leaves. Mine failed cause I dropped it in the fire, haha, but I got some cool pictures of other people cooking.

We also learned how to set up hammocks, which is how we slept for the past three nights. I can’t say they’re as comfortable as people make them out to be; sleeping in a U shape with my feet and head above my butt doesn’t really do much for good blood circulation. Plus, there’s not much room to maneuver in a hammock, so it was a cramped 3 nights. It also gets dark around 6:30, and after the sun goes down its pitch black, which makes walking around in the forest a bit scary. Random noises in the night are also creepy, although mostly we could only hear crickets and birds. Apparently, somebody sighted a puma, but I’m not sure a large feline would come so near a noisy camp.

At any rate, I don’t think jungle training was very helpful in terms of teaching me how to survive in the jungle. I thought we’d be taught how to find edible leaves and berries and stuff like that, but nope…they didn’t even give us a crash course on what plants and animals to avoid. The only thing we got was “snakes: if you see one, don’t touch it!” Well, duh…tell me something I’m not already conditioned to do. So now if you throw me back in the jungle for a week with nothing, I’m sure I won’t survive more than a few days. Good thing that’s not going to happen.

Anyway, so now we’re back, and after a few days in the middle of nowhere, Base Camp feels like civilization. Showers, toilets, tents, FOOD….seriously, it’s like luxurious compared to jungle training. Which is probably why they make us do this the first week, so we’re not complaining about Base Camp the whole time. But it’s only been ONE week, and I feel like I’ve been here forever. I have 7 more to go!! Not sure how I’m going to survive that, but hopefully most weeks won’t be as dirty and tiring as this past one has been.

I’m currently writing this post as I’m waiting for the Internet to load. The cloud cover is pretty heavy (looks like its going to rain later), and the internet is waaaay slow. I’ve been waiting for Gmail to load for almost two hours now, but it’s still not working. You’ll see how long it takes when I finally get to post this.

Pictures later cause obviously this is soooo slow.

Permalink 3 Comments