This past weekend was a long one here in my country, and since December my boyfriend and I had been planning on going to the Pico Duarte. I don’t even remember how we got to talking about it. When I was a little girl (I was the six the firs time I went) I used to go there every single year with my father. But it has been 9 years since I visited. Last time I went, I was 15 and it was the year 2001. We went for spring break when the weather was pretty okay. This time, it was mid January, and the weather was much colder.
Anyway, we contacted a group of people that my boyfriend knows were planning a trip. Thursday January 21st we headed to Jarabacoa and stayed in my family’s house there. The group was leaving by bus at about 1:00am past midnight. Since my house was on their way, they stopped for us at about 4:20am. *funny* We had already packed our bags the day before, so we headed out. The ride there was longer than what I had anticipated. I was very tired and sleepy but try as I might I was never going to fall asleep with the excitement I was feeling inside me. It was the first time in forever that I was going back, to a place I had not been to for about nine years. I wondered what I was going to see changed. What was I to expect?
At about 7:30am we arrived at La Ciénega, it was still a little before dawn and the bus lost track of the road. We ended up going up some hill where it wasn’t supposed to and it was hell to turn it back. Once we were able to solve that, the whole group got together and we gave some kind of “briefing” about the way things were gonna’ go down. They gave us some canned sausages, a Milky Way and some other food I can’t quite remember. I was anxious to get going, and I kept rushing my boyfriend to hurry up. At about 8:15am we were finally able to go.
The first stop you have to make is pretty close from where you actually get going. It’s a place called Los Tablones. The road is pretty easy and most people find themselves commenting on how “harder” they thought it was going to be. I always laugh at them because they have absolutely no idea that they are just about to walk straight into the devil’s road to hell. The first stop we make is at a place called La Cotorra, which literally translates to”The Parrot”. The name was given because once, a long time ago, these mountains were full of, well, parrots. When I used to go with my father, I remember listening to their noise as I was going up. I used to get pissed off because it sounded like they were laughing at me. So anyway, once you get there the road starts becoming much more steeper, muddier and sure as hell harder to walk on. I’ve always had excellent cardiovascular resistance, despite the fact that I tend to smoke. Not long before, I plugged on my earplugs and took it up a nut. Without realizing it, I left my boyfriend behind and caught up with the people from our group that were basically leading us. We were a long way ahead of the others. I had never met these people before in my life, and yet here we were fighting the same battle. Once you have about 3 to 4 hours walking, it is then that you realize “Fuck, what the hell have I gotten myself into?” It was very different from the last time I went, because three years ago a forest fire had engulfed everything in flames. All the trees were burnt and butt-naked. The ones that did have leaves, only had a few remaining on its peak. They all loOked like Mohawk-Strutting Pine Cones
After stopping for about 5 minutes at La Cotorra, we were thinking on stopping and having lunch there. But we decided to keep on going til’ the next stop, La Laguna.
Live by the Bucket 