The Caminata (or, Jorie hiked 30km in one day)

d The town we live in is called Quichinche. Last month, the town celebrated the 120 something anniversary of its founding. As part of the celebrations (most of which consisted of men getting astoundingly plastered and laying unconscious in the park for days at a time), they have a hike, called the caminata. This hike is 30 kilometers, or roughly 18 miles. For the caminata, we were supposed to meet in the town square, across from the catholic church, at 3:30 am. Yes the party was still going at that time, with most of the people still conscious. About 100 people piled into the back of 3 huge dump trucks. This is the photo below. We then rode for about an hour to another city on the other side of a large mountain. In the back of our dumptruck were mostly teenage boys who were still drinking from the previous night. As you can imagine, the back of the truck was more or less a big mosh pit. I spent the hour protecting Jorie from getting trampled. Seriously. As if riding over rough dirt roads weren't enough, they all thought it would be funny to exacerbate the conditions by pushing each other. Yes, I know, this is exactly what I would have done if I were a teenager in the back of a dumptruck at 4:00 am. Anyway, Jorie and I arrived at our starting point in one piece. We also took Josue, our 11 year old host brother, and Suzana's sister Christina.

Here is a picture of the starting road, with Jorie and Christina. Josue thought we were too slow and cruised on ahead. He arrived at the top about 45 minutes ahead of us. I thought it wise to have Jorie take it slow, because up to this point she had only hiked 8 miles in a single day.














We then got off the dirt road and headed straight up a hillside. It was beautiful, with cattle grazing. It was also very steep.















Here is a picture of the hillside, looking down towards the valley from which we came. Astoundingly beautiful. Hard to see from the pictures, but in the distance we could also see several snow-capped volcanoes. It reminded me how much I love to get out and hike. And Jorie was amazing, she just kept hiking, without a word of complaint about her tired legs.