Before I even got out of the guagua I was set upon by a young Dominican named Tito who wanted to be my guide. He told me that although most people (gringo tourists) want to ride the cable car up and either ride or hike down, that he could show me where to hike up the mountain. I thought it might be a good idea to have an experienced guide show me the ropes, so I paid him and off we went.
Ha! Tito had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where he was going, and had a horrible sense of direction to boot. So after wandering around about a third of the way up the mountain on various paths we gave up and just started heading off trail in the general direction of the peak, all the while trying to maintain some semblance of proximity to the cables.
Well. It was no hike. It was a freakin' mountain climbing expedition. We went places goats coudn't go! For the rest of of the ascent we climbed using our hands as much as our feet. And about the time I started to really feel the effects of the altitude (Mt Isabella is 800 meters/2500ft high) we started hitting sheer rock faces (read small cliffs) that we couldn't get around. So we went over them. Talk about tired, using a high percentage of upper body strength at altitude was KILLING ME! And about half the times I'd grab a rock or tree root I would pull back an arm covered with ants. The other half of the time I'd grab the stalk of this peculiar plant that grows between craggy rocks that has thorns on its stalk and itchy, stinging thistle-like leaves. So I was pretty beat up when we hit the toughest one. It was sheer vertical cliff, anywhere from 12 to 25 feet high with a paucity of places to get a secure hold with hand or foot, and was flanked by obstacles we couldn't get around. I didn't think we could safely get over it when I realized it was 3pm. We had been on the "trail" for four hours, and would lose sunlight in about two hours, especially since we had moved around to the eastern side of the mountain. But I knew we were close to the top, and turning back really wasn't an option and I got really worried that we could get stuck on this mountain for the night. It prompted me to take a chance on scaling the cliff at one of its lower points where there were some thick vines to climb with. Tito, being 27 and weighing all of 120lbs soaking wet, scampered up like he was some kind of monkey. But for me it was a little problematic. Although it was touch and go and completely exhausted me, I managed to haul my big fat butt over the edge and sat panting and groaning like I was dying. But I was, in fact, quite relieved that we made it past that obstacle and hopeful we could now reach the summit without further ado.
And indeed, after another half mile of crawling/climbing I heard Tito exclaim rather gleefully "It's here!" what he had, in fact, found was the road that went down the south side of the mountain, and we emerged onto the road with only about a quarter mile to hike up and ride the cable car down.
And so it was that I, with the "help" of my new friend Tito, defied all the odds of striking out on my own in a foreign country to climb the North Face of Mount Isabella de Torres despite being told to just take the cable car or drive up the south side and managed to live to blog about it. See the pic above of me and Tito in front of the statue that is a replica of the one in Rio de Janiero. And yes, we were so high that, on a humid day like today, the summit was in the clouds. Now, I'm taking a Motrin and going to bed. I have home visits to do tomorrow before THE BALL GAME!!!
Never trust a guy named Tito. The end. :)
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