As if my latest rant on the perils and stupidity of undertaking strenuous hikes for no apparent reason wasn’t enough fodder for my poor little brain to realise that said activity should henceforth be banished…it appears the central American heat has finally warped my mind enough that I decided to do it all over again…
And thus, in the quaint little mountain town of Boquete (panama) when some testosteroned up American said… do the quetzal trail… you don’t need a guide, it’s easy… only 4 hours, you might see quetzals (Guatemala’s national bird which as yet has remained elusive) it’s all signposted, you’ll end up in this gorgeous little village at the end…. I donned on my hiking gear once more and eagerly set to work at the task…
A taxi ride down washed away roads winding through the lush green jungle covered mountain sides, watching the white wash as the waves of the rivers pound worn and weary rocks, and assured by the presence of a “park ranger” and a somewhat sketchy free-hand drawn map at the start of the trail…
We commenced, amidst the heat and the humidity… a gentle incline, up, through the fields of farmers lazy cattle, over the simplicity of wooden bridges until… the real track began…
Now no longer within earshot of the “real” world… the quetzal trail is not a clearly marked meander through rolling hillsides, but is in fact a torturous, vine ridden, bug infested trail through thick uncompromising jungle that while at first gives the false illusion of a gentle stroll rapidly becomes a sheer cliff face scramble…
As what once may have been ample stairways slowly turned into impossible vertical ladders, mounted precariously on washed away cliffs, and what may well have been a signposted trail in 1976 became an instinctual fight for survival we braved certain peril and pressed forwards, aware that mosquitoes that persistently hounded our sweaty worn bodies were merely waiting for their chance to infect, while the only bird life we saw was the presence of the ever ready vultures just awaiting our demise and their next meal…
Step after weary step we trudged on, and as miracles would have it… some 1000 m elevation gain later we broke through the jungle canopy and emerged at the other end… only to find an abandoned ranger station, no signage, no vehicular access points and gangrene the cat, who with his wicked green and puss infected eye socket was only marginally less terrifying than his malicious and evil twin brother, “fluffy”, whom I firmly believe may have in fact eaten gangrene’s eye during a sadistic ceremonial killing…
So now, late in the day… it emerges the nearest village is some 3 – 4 hours from home via public transport (and this in itself is a death-defying feat) and we are stuck, hostage to a gangrenous cat on a lonely mountainside…
Our only hope… a worn little track down the sheer cliff to the promise of a village below…
Blindly we commence our descent, meandering, weaving between the mosquito infested plants… only to be confronted with the horrific fact that landslides have in fact engulfed our only hope of survival and all that remained before us was the gaping scars of a broken mountain…
With no means to reascend, we braved the crumbling earth and step after step hoisted our way down the vertical scale… fearing with each step that we were headed to certain doom and an impenetrable jungle with no more path…
With great intrepidation, we turned the final rocky corner, and relief, a field, the familiar sight of roving cattle, and the nicest of farmers willing to drive a Ute load of worn out gringos into the nearest town and commence their battle against the odds of public transport home…
Some 12 hours later… re-emerging in Boquete, we the victorious have survived another day.
May all your landslides be punctuated with generous farmers, wherever in the world they are.
Always,
L
despite being sideways, gangrene inflicts fear into the hearts of many
