It’s hard to believe that a whole week has passed since I fell through the front door to a rock star welcome from my four legged fur baby and a bear hug from my boy – the whole week passed in a haze of jet-lag, and a busy work schedule. And best not forget the eight or so hours that I’ve been engaged in various chat room too-ing and fro-ing with people in a different time zone to me, who promised to fix my website.
Whether it is fixed or not remains to be seen….they tell me it’s fixed and that you lot can post comments again but to be honest I’m sceptical. They made the same outlandish claims on Tuesday and again on Thursday whilst the website was busy locking me out amongst wicked rumours that I too was a ‘bot’. Thing is, I was so banjaxed by the jet lag that I fell asleep twice clutching my laptop whilst I was on hold for web support and missed my chat window when it was my turn for someone at the other end to try and help sort it out.
Anyway let’s see how we go on. I’ve finally managed to upload all my pictures from Cuba…if you haven’t already seen them on our Facebook page you can click here …there are rather a lot, but even the pictures don’t really tell you the whole story. It was quite simply the most awesome experience I’ve ever had.
God of Pain knows his onions, I mean hats off to him you know? There can’t have been too many times in his life that a fat middle-aged woman has landed on his doorstep in ill-fitting exercise pants and thrown down a challenge to get her fit enough to trek 90km up a mountain but fair play, he knew exactly what to do. I mean sure, I know I was the one who put the work in, but he designed the programme and I’ll tell you what, it was bob on.
There were people on the trek much faster than me and much fitter from a cardio perspective – unlike me they climbed the mountain without once feeling like they needed an iron lung. Me, I was slower, and was invariably last across the line for whichever section we were doing but at the end of every day when lots of folk were struggling with tired legs, mine were okay…they were primed. I wasn’t fast, but I was ready and I was strong.
What I couldn’t have prepared for was the heat. On the day we started trekking it was around 40 degrees, and the humidity was running at well over 90%…I shit you not, it was like breathing in soup rather than air. I’d allowed myself to be lulled into a false sense of security as we set off on a boat across Lake Hanabanila…there was a gentle breeze and I remember sitting there enjoying the ride thinking this is wonderful, it doesn’t feel as hot as I thought it might. It took 90 minutes to cross the lake and it was stunning.
And then we got off the boat. The breeze disappeared as soon as my feet hit solid ground and we never felt another puff of air for the next five days. We started the trek as soon as we reached the end of the lake and within ten minutes I was hurting, but that was only the start. It didn’t help that I’d woken up that morning with a sore throat and a squeaky voice…not the ideal time to realise you might have a chest infection, right?
By the time we met up with the support truck, about 8km into the trek I was locked in conversation with the asshole voice, who was hell bent on convincing me that I’d bitten off far more than I could chew and trying to dream up reasons why I should spend the rest of the day on four wheels instead of two feet. I mean that was never going to happen, although I did find out later that our local guide was convinced I wouldn’t complete the first day. I don’t blame him, I’d probably have thought the same to be fair. I was right at the back, gasping for air and croaking my way up the hills, it can’t have looked promising.
I had to force myself to eat something at lunchtime, even though I’ve never felt less like eating in my life. I felt sick, and a bit shaky but I knew I needed the energy and once I’d forced a sandwich down my neck (I use the word sandwich loosely, given that the packed lunch had been provided by the Cuban equivalent of Fawlty Towers and the very sweet bread, chewy ham and plastic cheese combo was an interesting take on a sandwich as we know it) I felt a bit better.
We completed the first day in three sections, and the last two were a bit easier than the first. But I still found it really hard, and I was feeling like shit. Every breath hurt, my voice was coming and going and it felt like the flesh was melting off my body – I couldn’t decide whether that was because I was sick, or whether it was because I was old and fat and pushing the boundaries a bit in terms of what I was trying to do and the conditions I was trying to do it in. But I made it to camp, and even though I was hurting, I’d walked every step of the way.
As I laid in my tent that night, after a dinner of rice, beans and chicken accompanied by bricks disguised as bread rolls, on a mat which was about as thick as an after-eight mint, buried in my mosquito net with no pillow and throbbing toes, surrounded at every turn by the smell of deet, I don’t ever remember feeling quite so…accomplished.
I ached from head to toe. I was hot and sweaty with no prospect of a shower, there was a legion of ants marching around my sleeping mat and by this time it was pissing down with rain in biblical proportions but you know what, I’d done it. I’d completed day one. I could worry about day two tomorrow…
