Last week my best friend Celeste came to visit me. Our lives – or perhaps better described as “life,” since we are technically two halves of the same person – have often been referred to (by us) as the Adventures of Irène and Celeste. Our adventures have taken place everywhere from the hallways of a public high school to the floors of university frat parties to the sands of the Outer Banks…and now, for the first time, they took place in the Dominican Republic.
My grand plan for Celeste’s visit was to hike Pico Duarte with her – something I’d been meaning to do during my time here. A friend of a family friend recommended our guide, Julio, who agreed to pick us up at the Jarabacoa bus stop on Wednesday afternoon. When we got off the bus, of course, more people than were getting off the bus crowded the door, asking if we wanted a ride or a guide to Pico Duarte. I looked around for Julio, who quickly stepped forward and introduced himself (I’d told him to look for two tall gringas with backpacks). Julio led us to the flatbed truck that would take us from Jarabacoa to the small town of la Cienaga, his home and the starting point for Pico Duarte hikes. Julio was accompanied by a small band of men whose purpose was unspecified(Julio groupies?). Celeste and I dubbed them “J’s boys,” and they reappeared periodically throughout the next several days. Very West Side Story.
Julio took me aside a few times to ask, “do you know about Pico Duarte?” I said that I’d heard a few things. “Because it’s hard, really hard.” He gave us a look. I told him that I’d done the Inca Trail and that Celeste had spent a week hiking in Appalachia the previous summer, but Julio didn’t seem impressed. “This isn’t the Inca Trail,” he warned. “This is Pico Duarte.”
The flatbed truck took us to buy food at a super-colmado that smelled, according to Celeste, like a toilet. (I’ve become immune to the sometimes pungent scent of colmados.) We stocked up on rice, beans, canned veggies, bread, cheese, yogurt, and canned ravioli to eat along the trail. Then we made the hour-long, rainy, bachata’d ride through the mountains to la Cienaga. J’s boys sat in the back of the truck, protecting our backpacks from the rain and passing around a bottle of liquor in plastic bag. They kept offering it to us, but we refused.
When we finally reached Julio’s, we were served two dinners within the span of an hour. If it wasn’t already clear, we now understood perfectly that he doubted our strength. J’s boys wandered back in between the first and second dinner, still nursing their bottle of liquor (with increasingly long swigs) and still offering it to us. We politely continued to refuse and busied ourselves with a second mountain of chicken and rice prepared by Julio’s wife.
The next morning, Julio woke us up, muttering that we’d slept in. We had been under the impression that he would wake us up when the time came, but apparently this impression was false. We packed up and headed out into the mountainous Dominican sunrise with our two trusty mules. We insisted on carrying our backpacks, which further contributed to Julio’s conception of us as silly, misguided gringas. “That’s what the mules are for,” he said, giving us his judging stare (he wore his judging stare for at least 60% of the trip). We weren’t sure how to explain why we wanted to carry 35-lb. backpacks up a mountain, so we just smiled and refused.
We made it pretty far before we had to give in and put our backpacks on the mules. It was somewhere around 1,900 meters when we realized that “hiking” Pico Duarte meant death by ascension. We went up and uP and UP and it never stopped. The trail seemed to be designed not for human hikers, but rather for, well, beasts of burden. Julio mostly rode one of the mules. When Celeste couldn’t take it anymore, she switched places with him, but when I tried to ride the other (the one already carrying all of our belongings and supplies), mutiny ensued (or, as Celeste put it, “mul-tiny,” if you will). Because I felt bad for the mule and because I am hardcore like that, I decided to carry on by foot.
After an ascent of approximately 2,000 meters over a distance of 10.7 miles (8 hours of hiking), we reached camp. We picked up a companion on the way – a small dog belonging to another guide that we passed on the way up. Apparently he had been abused and jumped at the chance to run away because he began following us, whimpering plaintively but refusing to be touched. Celeste and I named him Chufle, which means “electric outlet.” I just think it’s a cute name. Somehow a second, almost identical pooch appeared, and we were really confused until we realized that they were two different dogs (we later found out that they are siblings). We named Chufle’s equally cute, female counterpart Chuleta (“cut of pork”).
The bathrooms at the campsite were beautiful. Unlike Julio’s steaming outdoor chamber pot, they smelled good – like the sun-warmed wood with which they were constructed – and they had working toilets and running water. We were tempted to sleep in the bathroom itself and we spent as much time as possible in it. After changing and washing off a bit, we curled up in our sleeping bags and tried not to move until Julio called us for dinner.
At dinner, Julio informed us that one of the rice bags was infested with maggots, which he realized after preparing it with the canned veggies. He deemed it inedible and made another batch of rice. Since he’d also forgotten the chicken at home, this severely limited our culinary choices for the second night’s meal. (Furthermore, one bag of the bread we’d bought tasted and smelled like the toilet colmado and the other bag – well, Julio said that the rats must have gotten to it, because it just didn’t taste right.) Therefore, he proposed, the best plan would be to complete the 3-4-day hike in only two, meaning that the next day we would finish the ascent to Pico Duarte and then hike ALL the way back down to la Cienaga – a round trip of 28 miles, 2500 meters up and then back down, and 16 hours of hiking in two days. We were in so much musculoskeletal pain that we could only laugh at the prospect of this, but death by falling off a mountain seemed better than death by starvation stuck in the mountains.
That night we slept on the floor of the cabin at the campsite. The next morning, Julio awoke me by hissing in the dark, “morena! What’s the plan? Are we going to finish the whole trip today?”
“We don’t have much of a choice, do we?” I groaned.
Celeste reported that she’d had to use the bathroom in the night, but opted to wait till sunrise due to some suspicious scuffling sounds outside that sounded like neither dog nor mule (there are wild boars in the mountains, but luckily Julio had a machete should one surprise us on the trail). We got up – reluctantly, because it was actually really cold at 2,500 meters; think coniferous trees and steamy breath – and headed up to Pico Duarte, ascending another 500 or so meters to the top. When we arrived, Julio hugged the bronze bust of Duarte (one of the DR’s founding fathers) and we admired the scene around us.
It’s said that on clear days you can see the ocean (and the mountain is located in the very center of the island, in the central-west part of the country), but because of clouds we couldn’t make it out.
Julio smiled at me for the first time and said “you did it well” (remember, I rode the mule for a total of maybe two minutes during the entire ascent). Finally, respect and approval! Then he informed us that our bodies “would never be the same” and that now no one could tell us that we don’t know Pico Duarte. Good thing I have a response now to all those haters who keep taunting me with “you don’t know Pico Duarte, fool.” Happens all the time. We took the obligatory pictures, bade Duarte farewell (at least, Julio did) and then descended back to the campsite, where we ate breakfast and packed up.
The next six hours were devoted to the hike back down to la Cienaga. Downhill is just as hard as uphill, only in a different way. We stumbled our way down the mountainside, trying to enjoy the scenery. It was difficult because 1) we were forced to look down in order to avoid tripping over ubiquitous rocks; 2) if we stopped for any length of time, Julio and the mules would catch up to us and then they would be uncomfortably breathing down our necks (often Celeste and I could hear them coming and would mutter, “it’s the Mules of the Apocalypse! Outrun them!” and tear down the path in order to avoid them; and 3) it really seemed to be about the destination rather than the journey, especially since we were always outrunning the threat of afternoon rain.
When the downhill started to wear on our nerves I began to freestyle. Then we sang The Sound of Music. We were nearing insanity when we finally reached the level portion of the trail. Julio forced us to ride the mules for the last 30 minutes because of the mud, but my hiking boots became soaked anyway after we forded a couple of rivers. Julio took us down the scenic route through town, greeting everyone we passed. Celeste and I felt strangely nauseous.
When we got back to Julio’s and curled up in our sleeping bags, I realized why. My gastrointestinal system had decided to mul-tiny. After destroying Julio’s outhouse multiple times in multiple ways, he and his concerned wife made me chicken broth with noodles and “plenty of garlic” and tea from an herb I’d found along the trail, which Julio said was really good for curing diarrhea. The tea tasted like warm sea water. Julio’s wife heated a tub of tepid water so that we could take “hot” bucket showers in their makeshift, outdoor shower. Despite my body’s unhappiness, showering under the stars was, as usual, magical to me. Celeste began popping back antibiotics, but since my stomach is also hardcore at this point, I stuck it out and was back to normal over the next 24 hours.
We spent the night at Julio’s again and then departed the next morning to return to the capital, weak, our bodies forever changed, but alive. There really are some things that only happen in the DR.
