the climb

Another week flies by. Monday and Tuesday were pretty uneventful, Tuesday I laid out in the sun on my raft. Wednesday followed suit, but in my Culture class we were talking about Refranos, a specialized proverb here, and we were supposed to write some down. I wrote a few and the teacher was going around all the Mexicans to give examples. My partner then decided to tell him I had a few, I read one and he responded, “Um not exactly, close let me explain it more,” except of course it was in Spanish. That night I waited for and edited my group members’ parts to the History paper due the next day before our partial. One girl still hadn’t sent it by the time I went to bed; I figured oh well I will get it tomorrow. The next day I got it at 8:27 when class started at 8:30. Too bad I had already printed it and took her name off the title page. The test went good, just test are always a drag. Then in my class with the crabby, rude and mean teacher, who has severely improved his mood, asked if we wanted the class before or after Spring Break. I was arguing for before, but we will see since the decided this afternoon at a study session. That afternoon I went to the mall again to look for Spring Break clothes and some other things. I also went to Costco; I decided to stop there first to avoid having to leave my bags at the front. This intern had me carrying a pack of 4 1L Gatorades around the mall, without a bag. Friday was LONG, after two nights of little sleep I needed a nap, but it never materialized. This was also the day one of my roommates moved out. The Australian roommate, after much complaining to me and totally ditching us for a little over a week decided to move out. He didn’t listen to me, after I first found out he wanted to move out, and talk to the school. This resulted in a having to pay for 7 days of the month, which is lucky considering the contract says payment is due the first in full and no refunds. He still might have to pay the whole month and maybe will return. Unfortunately this would suck, since he already burnt the bridges with the other two roommates. After all of this we learned that our host family is Tec’s favorite and he is the first of 10 years of 6 kids a semester to move out. They also said normally a friend of one of their kids moves here after not getting along with their host family. Tec even paid them to add an extra room to the house. Now it is just the three of us Americans here. That was my school week.

As for today I signed up to climb “El Cerro de la Silla” (Saddle Mountain), the icon of Monterrey. I thought it would be a nice 2 hour hike to the antenna part of the hill, which looks like the shortest peak from our house. It in fact is the tallest. We met at school and they had us sign waivers relieving them of responsibility for injury. I should have taken that as a hint. The bus dropped us off at 8 at the bottom of a hill before the path too, just more work. We got to the base and started climbing. It started out good like all climbs, but slowly got harder as I got tiered. The path would go from dust, to jagged rocks, to cement, to slick/smooth rocks. We got the platform at the half way laterally point. It was originally going to be a view point and restaurant with an aerial tramway from the ground. On the inauguration run, it collapsed and killed all five in it. Over the past 30 years they still have yet to rebuild it. After a 20 minute break and talk about all this we had the choice of continue up the steeper half. Most of us went for it. This half of the trek got pretty steep and was riddled with switch backs. My group kept stopping to catch our breath; we ended up meeting some Mexicans from Tec on the trip that joined our group. The schools representative kept telling us we needed to hurry and catch up, being the last group, or we wouldn’t be able to go all the way. We kept arguing with him saying the plan was to get there at 12:30 and we were ahead of schedule. We finally made it to the radio tower, it was 11:45 45 minutes ahead of schedule, at the top and looked around from there. The whole trail to the top was 5.6 km (3.48 miles) long with a 1.28 km (4230 ft) rise in elevation. I felt like I was going to die, but made it all the way and was so proud. It felt as if my heart stopped, because I went from feeling it a like 200 bpm, and then all of a sudden I couldn’t feel it beating, and couldn’t find my pulse. The funny thing though is the best view wasn’t from the top, but a little bit lower. The climb down took little energy good thing since most of us only brought a litter of water, not quite enough. The only problem was everyone’s legs, knees, and backs were shot and freaking out. Whenever I stopped my legs would start shaking, at least I wasn’t alone with this happening. We made it bad to the platform and took a 40 minute break. Then it was to the bottom. Almost at the end a man was selling water for 10 pesos, I gladly would have paid 30. I chugged all 500 ml. I then got to the base at 2, and greeted by clapping a great treat. We waited for the last of the group during which I ate and orange like a little kid just sucking out all the juice and throwing out the pulp. At 2:30 all were down head for the bus, which we had to send for early so it took a little while to get. I bought a 500 ml bottle of Gatorade and chugged it too. I got home drank 2 more litters of water and Gatorade, had lunch, took a shower, and a 3 hour nap. Now I feel better, but have a feeling tomorrow my muscles won’t be as forgiving. A great experience, but one you only ever do once. Pictures will be up soon. Here are my two favorite though; click on one to make it bigger.

The View from the Platform:


The View from the Top:


Sorry for the super long description of today. I also decided I need to write more often to cut down on the length of each posts. Cancun is one week away and I am extremely excited. I just have to make it through the 2-4 tests next week. Talk to all of you soon and have a great week.