So on saturday when I had nothing to do I asked him if he would accompany visit one of the neighboring villages. "what are we going to do?" ...we are going to walk. "yeah sure i'll go with you"
I knew he wouldn't turn me down.
I had been really wanting to go to this pueblo for quite some time. It's off the beaten trail but not by much and I had been told that it had lakes that were more nothing short of a sunbathers paradise - perfect for a couple of redheads. Once we got there it took us every bit of 10 minutes to walk from one side to the other. We found the empty public pool but no lake. We walked some more and then found a lady to ask of the whereabouts of the lakes. She said it was too far and that we should probably get a moto-taxi. I explained our intentions to walk and then she offered up her sons to be our guides. She said they were pricey though. A coca-cola and 10 cordobas was the going rate. Only the older of the two accepted - he might have been 12. So we walked on cattle trails through cane fields and banana plantations, we walked through pastures -some private some not- and finally we came to the river bed. Walking on it or beside it was a solid third of the walk.
Many times the forest was so thick or the road so curved that you could not see more than 20 to thrity yards ahead of you. No big deal though, we had a guide. Just as we were rounding one of those bends I saw a bull pop out in front of us. I was walking next to the kid (my chivalry goes to pot right about here) and I turn to him and say "is he dangerous?"
sidenote: so for the past 25 minutes I had been prodding that kid with every question I could think of to get him to talk, I'm usually pretty good at it, but this guy was a steel trap. Turns out that the proper enviroment had not yet been created that would lead him to being a bit more talkative.
His response to my question took no more than a half second. "si"
At this point he and i were right next to one another and ryan was just a few steps behind me. The bull stopped, I bolted the 10 feet up the river bank to the fence knowing with unshakeable certainty that the bull wouldn't follow, Ryan stopped to reason about the bulls intentions for just a second longer before he made a move, and the kid vanished out of harms way for the next few mintues. I made it to the top put my hands on the fence and looked again and at best the bull was about five feet away and in full speed coming my direction. Now I don't remember the exact mechanics of what happened next but I think it might have looked akin to watching weak man trying to heave a very heavy bag of potatoes over a wall that is just a little to high for him to see over. So I heaved my self over, head first, and managed to land square on the top of my right shoulder. The tops of my thighs nearly cleared the fence completely! But they didn't. Each one was, is, marked by the barbed wire that caught them on my way over.
My brother. His pause to determine the bulls intentions might have brought him a little closer to the swords sticking out of the bulls head than he would have liked. When the time came he too employed the heaved potatoe sack method of clearing the fence. I learned that he has a a higher vertical jump than I do, but that his landings need a bit more work. Instead of using his shoulder to take the brunt of the fall -not sure where our hands were in all of this- he managed to get the middle of his forehead planted on a soft rock. Sweet Lord we are graceful creatures!
We were both on the ground on the safe side of the fence and we each had one sandal left on. I started yelling at him "get up, get up, that damn thing might come around the fence." Fortunately, it didn't. Unfortunately, the barbed wire fence that had lust left its barnd on our bodies was coated in a solid coat of rust.
On the road back we managed to get a moto taxi to take us most of the way home. At one point he looked at me and started laughing quite hard. I thought he might be in shock from the split forehead and a bit of fat that was hanging out of his hand from a gash the barbed wire had produced. I couldn't help but join in the laughing.
A love of walking and laughing induced by pain. Ha, the ties that bind run deep!
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