Day 4 The longest, short adventure I ever survived

Last night was quite possibly the worst night´s sleep in my history. The grumbles had seriously taken hold and I had become utterly
worthless... There was a tiny man inside my guts who kept yelling "which way´s out?" And my body´s response was, "any way you please, even if it means exploding through the belly button!" The altitude characteristically has negative effects on the GI tract so I was told that my body's response was "normal." Yeah, normal...it sure felt, normal...

Throughout the night the only constant was my firm grasp on my water bottle 1) because it was full of hot liquid and the container
provided a lovely source of heat even into the wee hours and 2) because about 3 minutes after I sipped the tea it contained, my stomach was provided with about 20 minutes of relief, which was long enough for me to fall asleep before the war in my guts erupted again. This was seriously the pits! This was like the most gnarly, body aching, gut wrenching flu but on top of that I was stuck in the literal middle of the mountain. Finally, around maybe 4 AM I lost it; I tore open the tent door and puked my guts out as I attempted to hold back the impending tears... Thankfully, I have met wonderful friends here who took care of me and made me as comfortable as humanly possible despite the disheartening situation.

Bright and early the sun came up and I met it with a glare- there would be no yoga this morning and definitely no breakfast! As far as moving was concerned, I wanted no part in it. I eventually managed to get my gear together but knew I needed to get down and soon. I couldn't wait for camp to get packed so Elias (a friend of Janine's and our guide for the trek), Katrina and I started on what I was told was to be at most a five hour day. It was going to be a simple two hour climb so we could get out of the valley and then a mellow three hours down, down, down to our last campsite. At this point I would have agreed to anything as long as it would allow me to feel better. We would walk for about 30 minutes and then take a quick break and then back to climbing. At one point, I looked down and saw the rocks dancing and the ground coming up to meet my feet with every step. Then I started to get dizzy... I muttered to Elias that I had to sit and about 8 steps later decided that a bit of ground covered in a smattering of llama poop was just as good as any place to lay to rest... Roughly 30 minutes later I awoke from my "nap" to hear the lovely, joyous voices of the Janines. Mama Janine opened her bag and sauced me up with a variety of herbal creams, salves, tinctures and pills all of which I gladly consumed. I think she even got me to drink some watered down sacred ashes of cow poop that were said to be able to heal anything. I was obviously game for anything, even poop. So, we trudged on... Eventually, Melatone met up with us and brought along a horse for me to ride for the rest of the day. He knew how poorly I was feeling and I appreciated his thoughtful gesture. Unfortunately, my pride stood in the way of me ever getting on the horse so I smiled, pretended to look lively and thanked him for his kindness. I had gotten myself into this mess and it was on my own two feet that I would get out.

For some reason beyond my comprehension, our "guide," Elias, allowed our group to separate. Any hiker knows this is never a good idea, let alone when you are hiking in the Andes in winter! However, in my crazy altitude affected brain my sole focus was to keep one foot moving in front of the next so I followed blindly. At some point, I realized that we were no longer on the trail and that we were now climbing, as in scrambling, up the side of one of the vast peaks. Incredibly frustrated, I reached my boiling point and yelled to Elias, "No mas arriba (no more up)!" He just stared at me blankly and then continued up. He eventually shouted over his shoulder that we were "close." Close?? Close to what? The moon? We sure as hell weren't close to camp! We reached the top and Elias sat me down next to a rock so I would be shielded from the wind, then leaving me with our day packs, he turned and headed off to see if he could "find the path." So I sat and waited... then began to cry. I sobbed for no reason, for all the reasons, I cried just because I needed to cry. Then terror struck! Where the heck did Elias go? What if he didn't come back? What if I was stuck up here on this mountain top? I was ill prepared for a night on a mount adjacent to an Andean snow peak and far too attached to all of my digits to part with them due to frostbite! Hell NO! I was not staying here and freezing to death just because my GUIDE got lost! Clearly, I had lost a fair amount of my ability to think rationally... I quickly planned my mountain exit strategy, grabbed the bags and headed out. A moment later, I found Elias who was excited to have once again "found the trail," I followed in silence... thrilled that my guide was able to "find" the trail. With each step down, the fog in my head cleared and I dare say I was
feeling like I could manage rational thoughts if the occasion arose. It wasn't long before I noticed Elias had developed a regular habit of pausing every ten minutes or so to look around and survey the scene. This wasn't the expected break where you "oooo" and "ahhh" at the mountains and surrounding beauty, no, this was what I suspect Hansel and Gretel looked like as they attempted to find their way home. I inquired as to precisely how many times Elias had done this trek. He replied that this was his third time but the first two they had taken alternate trails. Ohh, I see, so basically, you have NEVER done this trek... Great, I feel really safe now... When I proposed that we hang out on the trail and wait for the rest of the group my idea was quickly shot down. Sighing, I followed my all knowing guide... A short while later I wasn't all too surprised when we found ourselves in what one would call somewhat of a "controlled fall" down the face of a cliff. When Elias's "path" ran dead into a massive lake with no alternate passages, I snapped. The fog, discomfort, exhaustion and general insanity immediately fled my body. That was it! We were going back to the last house where Elias had asked for directions and I was leading us there!

Mind you, the sun had set loooooooonnnnng ago, leaving us to scramble back up the rock face by the light of the moon and our headlamps. Hours later we arrived at the house and were fortunately able to hire horses and a kind gentleman to lead us to the location of our camp. This was our final night and camp was to be in a small village that was well known in the area, I suppose that is only IF you know the area. Over ten hours after initially embarking on what was to be an easy, short day I rode into camp atop a lovely white pony. I couldn't help but laugh and thank everything that we had somehow survived.

(side note* the other half of our party had also gotten lost, fallen in a river and had only arrived at camp 15 minutes before we made our grand entrance atop our noble steads).