So, thanks for your patience guys… I had to do a bit of head work over the last couple of blog posts, which created a delay in downloading my reflections on the trek. I couldn’t leave it all bubbling away under the surface because I was starting to feel really out of control you know? I’ve come to realise over the last year or so that facing directly into the things that are chewing at me really helps, and unpicking stuff takes away its power a lot of the time.

Anyway, shall we pick up where I left off before? My food sobriety still feels a bit fragile but I’m motoring along and the wheels seem to be turning okay. So far so good…resisting the Asshole voice is no longer burning up all my attention. I feel like I can multi-task without him gaining any ground and that’s progress at least.

So, let me think about where we got to…day two, heading into the jungle and seriously some of the hardest walking I’ve ever done. They’d said up front that day two was going to be harder terrain than day one, so we were expecting it and I can’t begin to tell you how nervous I felt setting off from camp, bearing in mind day one had nearly finished me off. I was feeling better though, and my voice was almost back to normal…the pills dispensed by our doctor the night before were doing their thing.

The truck dropped us off a couple of kilometres from the camp and from there we walked steadily uphill for a good couple of hours. We weren’t on the jeep tracks by this point, we were walking on softer ground and it was much easier on the feet. Well, I say that…bits of it were easier. The deluge of rain we’d had the night before really hadn’t helped and it was a bit hard to stay upright at times…I imagine hiking in roller skates would deliver a similar experience.

There’s a picture of me standing on what felt like the top of the world, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, elated that I’d got to the top of what had been a very steep climb…I felt like I’d done my hard work for the day. However, as we continued on after a brief photo stop we started to go downhill again and the penny dropped that despite feeling at the time like my lungs were going to explode, going up had actually been the easy bit. Coming down could only be described as some kind of extreme mud-surfing experience.

Our delightful local guide was a young bloke called Osmin – not the Tom Thumb-sized action man that I’ve referred to before, who glowered at me regularly for being old, fat and slow, but his number two. Osmin was awesome with me that day…he walked right in front of me on the steepest bits, planting his feet firmly and pointing his finger. Go heeeere Dee. Be careful, is sleeeeeepy…there were times where he put his arm out to steady me as my feet slid around in the mud, and I had visions of me and him rolling down the hillside, mashed together in some kind of giant mud ball, getting bigger and rounder with every spin. It was very sweet, given that my left arm probably weighed more than he did but he was looking out for me with every step.

It was slow, exhausting progress. At times we climbed, with every step propelling us around a foot higher than the last for what felt like miles at a time. We emerged from the canopy of trees onto a road at one point, and met the truck for a quick snack-stop before going back into the jungle on the other side and pushing on. I swear there were times when it felt like the mud was trying to suck the boots right off my feet. I’d take a step and the ground would squelch mud right up and over the top of my boots and then cling onto them as I tried to pull my leg out. And all this done in forty degree heat with outrageous humidity…it was hard. Really bloody hard.

Thing is, there was so much to see I forgot to find it hard. I saw coffee beans growing wild, and bamboo growing so high you couldn’t see the top. We trekked past wild pigs, and saw a snake curled around the base of a tree. We walked out of the jungle after the second leg and met up with the truck, which took us to visit a coffee hut where we ate our packed lunch of prison bread and sweaty cheese washed down by an insanely fresh cup of coffee, I mean the beans had practically been picked and roasted that day. It made the last leg of day two feel easier somehow, sort of like Cuban rocket fuel.

My walking poles were a Godsend, and I found myself getting into a bit of a rhythm. Right arm and left leg, left arm and right leg, sure even steps on the non-deadly bits, which felt almost graceful. I mean don’t get me wrong, I landed on my arse more times than I could reasonably count when the mud whipped my feet from under me. But on the whole I did okay…I wasn’t the fastest but that didn’t matter. I forgot that I was fat, and I just kept on putting one foot in front of the other. We walked for around eight hours altogether, and then as we got to the top of what must have been our fifth or sixth steep climb of the day, just as I was starting to wonder how much I had left in me, we emerged from the jungle and there, unexpectedly, was our camp for the night.

It was an awesome camp…I’ll tell you all about it next time 🙂

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