El Mirador: Day 3

Another morning in the jungle, again a slow paced walk and still the guide (sober for once) at the back of the line. The mud and water were there to welcome us with the ants and banana-spiders on the way.

Orchid

As explained by Raul, we quickly arrived to a “small” river that wasn’t that small anymore: from 20 to 50 m large and the deepest point going over 2m50/3m. The cross will be something… We find our way a bit down the river were some branches were stuck and allow us to get an hold on during the cross, and quite frankly, we passed easily even though the currant was strong. Then, the turn of our guide, who was still on his mule waiting the good moment to go through. Everybody is ready to help him out in this ‘not-so-good-idea’.

Well, everybody but me :)

As the mule walk straight to the currant, logs on its left, we tell Raul to get off it. 2 meters later, the mule only has 5 centimeters to breath, and we now shout at him: Get off the freaking mule!! 

Not so sure of himself anymore...

Here you go...

Head in the water, breathe taken away and hopes vanishing little by little, Raul is finally off and in a matter of second, the mule is swept away by the currant, under the logs. Everybody is now tense, searching for the animal down the river. No sign, for what we think of an eternity. No visible bubble, no swirl what so ever. 

Tension

The tension goes away as the desperation take place, but suddenly we can see an ear, soon a second one. The mule is trapped underwater by the leash! With the strength of the last effort, it manages to finally breathe with a terrified look, kicking in the water, trying to swim. Nobody dare to move, it’s still too dangerous to risk to be stunned in the river and we are now waiting for a miracle to happen. The animal won’t be able to keep up this rate longer and will, for sure, collapse of exhaustion. And it happens: the miracle. From nowhere, the mule managed to locked its head into a tree to not go further down the river.

The miracle

But it is in the middle of the river, still kicking. At once, somebody shout that we need to get the leash back and Damien is already swimming against the currant to carefully approach the animal. The risk is high because if the mule frees its head, he might receive a kick, but the good fortune is here to protect us. In my boiling head, the eventuality of seeing my cousin, unconscious, floating and taken away by the current is washed away quickly as Damien reach the closest tree of the mule. He is now out of danger. Everything is still to be done though. He grabbed the leash and throw it to Nick, Adam and I. The mule HAS to cross now, pulled by us, as much as we can. Head out of the water, the last meters are finally crossed and in 30 centimeters of water, it collapsed, exhausted. We finally saved it! The tension goes down as we all take our breath back. 

Saved!

But… Where is the guide? Our little crippled Raul was still hanging on a log, waiting for help and thankful for us to have saved 3000 Quetzales (more or less 300 euros, the equivalent of 5 treks like this for our guide).

Back from a very closed one

We took a lunch well deserved but we all had something in mind at the moment: we were late. And there is something you do NOT want to, it’s to walk in the jungle by night and there is 7 hours waiting for us now: no time to relax. Therefore, we packed our things, and started again. But after a bit, our guide is still not behind us… I had to run back and pulled the mule. Every minutes count now but we are soon back on track at a good pace.

The second river, easier to cross as we are now in control of the trek, is a small detail. We are all tired but pushing to the very end: El Mirador. The closer we get, the more impatient we are. Only one hour and a half away, the rain started. Lightly at first, it wets everything on its path. Speeding up in the end, we got to the camp under heavy rain.

Maybe that’s one of those moments of pure happiness; being in a relatively dry place, hot coffee and even a cigarette.

Totally worth it!