Jalpuna! | It's A Fucking Rock Pile

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It's A Fucking Rock Pile

I was an exchange student in Bolivia during a year of high school. Years later, I went back for a two month adventure with my college roommate Jeff. We had a lot planned, including a three day hike of an Incan trail perched high in the Andes. We'd read about an extra leg to add at the beginning of the trail through some amazing rock formations. You only live once, right? So - we decided to do that too.

The three day hike took us a total of seven days. Anything that could have gone wrong DID. We were off the trail by day four or five, but it took us a few days to get back to civilization in any form because we kept getting stranded. On what was to be our last night before finding a way to hitch our way back to the capital (La Paz), we slept on the floor of a one room schoolhouse in a remote village who's name I didn't even know.

Earlier that evening, we'd found a little 'restaurant' and sat down for what would be our first real meal in nearly a week. There were no menus... we had what they were making: Chicken, rice, and the freakish monster-corn they called choclo. We were thrilled to be eating real food again, but exhausted beyond belief.

At first, we just sat in silence, as if words required energy we didn't have. Finally, I looked at Jeff and said "That was amazing."

"What was...?" he asked.
"The HIKE! The trail... that was amazing!"
"Are you kidding me Rob? It was a fucking rock pile."

He was right. The trail had been paved in stone by Incans a few hundred years ago - and those stones had been worn down to the point where they were super smooth. The rainy weather turned them mossy and slippery as the trail progressed downward into thick vegetation. We'd slipped and fallen more times than we could count. At one point we couldn't even walk on the trail because it was so slippery - so we marched through the mush beside it. Another time, we gave up on hiking for the day by two in the afternoon because we were so disgusted from slipping and falling.

And yet... the first thing that came to mind when I thought about it all was "Amazing." To be honest, I have to struggle to remember the bad things during that hike because so many wondrous and beautiful things happened.

I learned that I focus on the positive. It was a fucking rock pile, and I'd hike it again if I could - except that I probably wouldn't because there are so many other amazing things to see in the Andes, not to mention the rest of the world.

Still, that's what I do - I focus on the positive. Maybe that's why I haven't been posting as much this week. It's so much easier to write about the negative than the positive - and things are going rather well in my rock pile life lately.