XICAQUES (pronounced hee-KAH-kays)

So I was running some errands with Walter, one of the guys from the theatre, and one errand took us to the south of town, where the houses start to run up into our mountains here. I asked Walter if it was safe and possible to climb them. He said "Of course! we always take our foreigners up there because they always ask about it. We take them swimming at a couple calm pools at one part of the river. I'll see if i can get something together for the vacation."

Before I knew it, everyone was planning to come to my house last Saturday at 8 am with liters of pop, full roasted chickens, loaves of bread, and bags of chips to pack in our backpacks (who needs room for the rain gear, warm socks, bug repellent, sunscreen, first aid necessities, healthy water bottles and trail mix, when you have sugary caffeine and fake fried cheese to nourish you). Everyone arrived ready for a day away from the city, out in nature, enjoying our Saturday rather than being couped up in the theatre all day. We packed up the food and headed out to catch a bus that would take us to the closest place we could get to the trail by vehicle. This was my first public bus ride, and i think i figure out why: we caught the bus a block from my house, roughly in the north east corner of town, headed straight west all the way to the farthest west side of town, then as far south as we could go before we hit the hills, and then east again to the exact cross-street of my house but about a 15 minutes down the road--it took us nearly 30 minutes to drive all that and cost 4 Lempiras! No wonder people only use the bus to get to the hospital because they are sick or out of town because it is too far!! I have no idea why we able bodied theatre people did not walk, but I never really understand everything totally around here, so, eh.

Anyway, we finally reached the trail head...or its El Progreso equivalent--the cemetery on one side of the road and trash dump on the other. Passing between this awkward and unwelcoming gateway, we tromped along some well horse-and-cart worn roads, winding a bit higher with every switchback, though the view of El Progreso my actors had bragged about hid itself in the fog that had accumulated around the base of the hills. Soon the rush of water filled our ears and we encountered the lowest, rushing part of the urban river, whose calmer, mountain cousin we were hoping to swim in later in the day. We hop-skipped across a line of rocks just like in "My Father's Dragon", to the other side and started up hill again. Here the path narrowed, hidden by bushes, trees, ferns and vines of all varieties (you could have fooled me that these mountains have been deforested almost completely 3 different times ). The barely visible thread of a trail suddenly inclined immensely and we began what seemed like ladder climbing rather than mountain climbing. And then...the rain. it started just like you would expect with a couple drip-drops here and there, all of us thinking it was dew dripping from the trees, and turned into a gushing downpour, wet-dog-ing our hair, slish-sloshing our boots, and sticky-tackying our pants and t-shirts. It also turned the already invisible trail into a rushing vein of water we had to wade through. As we started to go back down the other side of the hill, my Rocky Mountain, 14er-climbing boots were no match for the slippery, moss-covered rocks and gooey mud that made up the trail, and I landed on my butt about every 3 minutes, with calls from behind me to SLOW DOWN and BE CAREFUL!, though I'm not sure how you slow down when walking on water--maybe I'll ask the Big Man for some advice on that next time.

Finally, we reached the end of the trail, which stopped at a small cliff. we had to lie on our tummies, and let ourselves down, SLOWLY they said again. I tried, but slipped, as had quickly become normal, and dropped a bit onto the tiny rocks below. When I turned around, a Honduran fairy tale twinkled in my sight. This place looked perfect, just like Fern Gully, canopied with giant trees and vines, a small waterfall, a calm pool of clear water to swim in, giant rocks to jump off, and flat groups of rocks to picnic on (and in the actor's case smoke packs of cigarettes on). However, for some reason, half the group had loped over another set of rocks to see if there was a better pool to swim in. I voted to stop where we were, but those ahead said what they found was even more beautiful. So we started climbing on all fours over boulders and shimmied along a rock ledge that held my feet about 2 centimeters from the water. We reached another short and shallow, but rushing waterfall. Yuma, one of the actors, had already crossed it by jumping from one of the boulders that bordered the falls to the other side where another boulder lay. But i was feeling i hadn't had much luck with my unsteady legs and slippery rocks, so i asked Yuma to help me over. Since we were all soaked anyway, he told me to put one foot into the water, firmly on the bottom of the river, and then put my other leg on the boulder he was standing on, and he'd pull me across. I placed my foot in the water all ready to go, but the rushing water and mossy rocks were too much for my bad knee and already tired legs. My leg twisted at my knee and I slipped into the water, knee first, slamming it into the rock i had once been standing on. The water was too strong and Yuma let go so as not to fall in himself. And I was swept away down the falls. Now, don't get in your head that this was Niagara or anything, but it was a falls of about 4 giant boulders that from top to bottom was probably only about 5 feet high, but was about 25 feet in length. As I was swept along, I was trying to keep my backpack out of the water, because I had my treasured camera inside. But also inside were 4 liters of the all important coca cola, so I was carrying those extra pounds on my back. This extra weight held me below the water so that every time I got swept to another rock, I slammed down again hitting that same knee which was somehow trapped below me. Thank god my mom made me take swimming lessons my entire childhood, because as she said "lakes and rivers don't have sides to hold onto." I was able to keep my head above water and keep from choking on water or going under completely. A couple actors thought I was joking and that I had jumped in voluntarily so didn't help me and starting laughing. Another, more sensible actor, realized I was not in control, and heroically reached down to grab one of my flailing arms and turned me towards the side of the river so I could heave myself out.

I sat on a rock, and for a moment felt fine, but then realized that my knee was burning! i looked down and it was purple from shock. i tried lifting it and a streak of pain shot through my leg. i thought for sure i had shattered my knee cap, but i tested it a bit more, massaging it and checking it out with the things i have learned over the years with my other knee problems and the immediate pain went away and it was just throbbing inside, keeping the beat of my heart, so that i knew everything was still working, but that I also knew I had bruised the bone inside. I sat with a few of the actors trying at least to get courage and knee back to calm rain forest mode again so that in a couple hours after swimming and a picnic I could hike the trail back (knowing what I would have to tackle with the rain and slippery mud kept that calmness from returning full force but I was doing OK).

Barely 5 minutes later I was going to get into swim with the other guys, because though my knee still hurt like crazy, i didn't want to miss the experience of swimming in a Honduran river in the middle of the hills and forest. But, no matter, i wouldn't get to have that experience anyway. As we were chatting, and these 3 guys came shouting through the woods. We didn't really know who they were, and me with my language barrier didn't know what they wanted, but as they shouted incoherent sentences the actors informed me they were guards of this land, which was supposedly prohibited and private. I was still very nervous as they checked all our bags and with the usual Central American corruption I thought they might steal some things from us, since we all had cameras and such, but they took nothing and just told us we had to leave immediately. But of course they wouldn't let us go out the way we came in. We had to follow them on their even more secret guard path that would take us back to the guard house and the "Prohibited" signage which we had not passed our way in the back door of this 'private' land.

Well these skilled mountain climbers assumed that all of us had the same talent as they did. So they led us up these steep muddy cliffs, which with the rain had no grip. Plus, I was dealing with a knee that refused to take any pressure from my thigh muscle without shooting pain all the way up my back. Each step I took would carry me back another three, as my legs shot out backwards behind me and i slid on my stomach part way down the hill i had just climbed. German, a kid that weighs about 100 pounds kept trying to push my butt up, but with my feet trying to grab onto a wall of crumbling mud nothing helped. I finally started digging in the mud with my hands to find the roots of trees and testing all the trees and roots above ground for the most secure, and began pulling myself up with just my arms, hoping my legs would follow and i could get them nearly above my shoulders so i could push off of those same roots with my feet and make some progress. Well just as i got the hang of it, we started heading back down hill again. Jeeze these guys wanted to make it difficult! again i sat on my butt and just treated the whole thing like a giant mudslide--it took the pressure off my knee and let me go faster to catch up with the group, though it also ripped a gaping hole in one of the 3 pairs of pants i brought down here for the year.

Finally after about 30 minutes we we had made it down the hill and were at the river again, though this time at a huge dam. The water rose above the ledge of the dam at the moment though only about 1 inch deep. They told us we had to walk across the dam. I was nervous about this, as well, as the last time i had stepped in the water didn't turn out well, and this drop would have been way worse, but we passed over it slowly and carefully and then came to a cement suspended bridge which we walked over single file, and though I am not normally afraid of heights (i was suspended above the rainforest canopy on a single wire in the rainforest of costa rica, and was fine), bridges freak me out! I held on to the railings which stopped and started where they had rusted through or broken down. At the end of this horrible bridge, we finally reached the guard house, where they radioed in that Teatro La Fragua had left the premesis. Covered in mud, soaking wet, and sweating we trekked out of the park area and into town, joking that we looked like illegal immigrants crossing the boarder into unknown urban city, where we would be shunned for our poor appearance (an image not too foreign to these kids who all have at least one 'wetback' relative working in the US.) Of course the city people did a double take as we walked though sophistocated, fancy dressed Progreso, but we got back to my house and plopped ourselves down on my porch, not bothering to bathe before we each grabbed a beer and a ham or chicken sandwich and a package of chips and cookies and gorged ourselves like we really were immigrants who hadn't eaten in days.