Vamos a una Aventura!

I recently spent a week with Ernesto’s family in Mexico. His family is amazing and has infinite patience with me speaking C- Spanish. This is often jarring for them as I will be following a conversation and then the second I lose footing, go dead in the eyes and smile benignly as they finish a story.

Ernesto was with his family for 2 weeks before I arrived, so he was looking for a way to take a little mini vacation inside his time home. His friend on Instagram posted pictures from a mountain resort an (alleged) 90-minute drive from his hometown. Yahtzee! We could take a 2-day trip up to the mountains, see some sights, smell some pine trees, see cows or something, and then return to his parents’.

It is not quite what happened.

It started when Ernesto started looking for rides up to the resort. The place stated they could do a pickup from his hometown to the hotel. When he called to plan this, he was met with an “Lol, no. We only do that for big groups.” This led to research for a way to get a car to take us up. The 90-minute trip seemed like something manageable we could hire a service for. Upon further research on Google Maps, however, it appeared that the trip wasn’t 90-minutes but nearly 2.5 hours… less… manageable…

The night before we were about to leave, I was like “So, how we are going to get up to the resort?” Ernesto says, “I’ll order from the app tomorrow.” To which my Type A personality immediately responded, “Oh… that’s the plan?” I was reassured, and we got up early the next day and went to put in the info on the app to request a ride. The app had a similar response to the hotel. It was like, “Lol, no.” No cars were available, and the app didn’t really even want to accept the ride. There was a flurry of conversation around how we could get up to the resort. One, last-ditch possibility was me taking Ernesto’s mom’s car and driving. This is technically allowed with my US license, but well… you’ll understand what a good option this wasn’t in a moment.

Ernesto didn’t give up on the car service. He ended up calling the company and talked to one of their dispatchers. They explained it wasn’t our 9,000-mile trip that was rejected but that the app itself was having errors. The dispatcher was able to manually input the request on their end and Voila! We were in business.

A guy took our ride and we hopped in the car and took off. A gas fillup with a stop to put air in the car’s tires and we jumped on the highway toward the mountains.

I figured this smooth, highway drive would be the bulk of our journey… And was gravely mistaken. After about 30 minutes on the main road, we turned off and got to a kind of gravelly two-lane road. Very manageable.

Then, 15-minutes later, we turn onto a single-lane dirt road.

Sure! Doable.

The dirt road, however, got very potholey. Not just potholey but rocky-with-deep-gashes-due-to-erosion potholey. Our driver’s speed slowly dropped from 80 km/h on the highway, to 30 km/h on the gravel road, to about 5 km as we entered the off-road, mountain path.

After about 30-minutes on this path, we hit a legitimate river cascading over the road. About six inches of water is just rushing over a concrete path. It’s important to note that our driver was in a small, Peugeot. It is very much a two-wheel-drive economy car. And it was now being tasked with fording a river. Our driver gets over it and we get back on the rocky, gashy path up the mountain. At this point, he turns to Ernesto and goes, “Do you mind if I smoke? I’m really stressed out.” This made me feel better, because I thought I was being a very judgmental foreigner thinking that this was a brutal way to get to a resort.

Ernesto immediately agreed to the smoking.

We were still about an hour from getting to the hotel. So, we have 60-minutes left and we are supposedly about 24 km (15 miles) from our destination. That is a lot of time to go not very far. We come to a branch in the road, and the app navigation tells us to go to the left, but the sign for the resort actually tells us to go right. We trust the app and go left.

There are a group of dudes at the bottom of that hill who confirm that we could go either way.

At this point, the road gets worse. Yes. Rocky, gashed, eroded roads got worse. The road actually turned into a trail. Ernesto and I are looking at each other as we are bounced and jostled around the car. The driver is smoking yet another cigarette, and we are all saying prayers that this little Peugeot can make it through this last leg.

Then we come across a collapsed tree. There is a collective gasp as the driver, Ernesto, and I wonder what to do… like, do we try to lift it? The driver, however, notices a tiny trail that goes around the tree, so he gears up his Peugeot and plows through an even rougher, weirder trail to off the terrible, nearly unpassable trail we are on.

At this point, I remember that it could have been my fate to drive Ernesto’s mom’s tiny Mistubishi up this trail. You can imagine my relief, that was not the course we decided to take.

After this final obstacle, we drive for about 20 more minutes and get to the gate of the resort.

When we finally do get to the resort, there is a lot of “I guess we didn’t die…”, laughter, and well wishes to the driver, who now had to do the entire, rocky, eroded, off-roading journey back down the mountain.

It was also about then that the skies opened up and it started to rain. Not bad rain, but drizzle. Steady, steady, drizzle. It was too early for Ernesto and me to check in, so we got lunch at the restaurant and then got situated in our room.

The rain continued, so that by the time we ate lunch, checked in, and were situated, we kind of stared out the window and wondered what to do next. The forecast said that we should have a brief window without any precipitation. And lo and behold, there was! We got to do a zip line through the treetops. This was evidently a gift from the Aventura gods, because the moment we finished the zip line, the rain returned. It once again wasn’t bad, but a nice, steady drizzle. We had raincoats, so we decided to walk around the resort and scope out trails for the next day. After a couple of hours in the rain, my jeans were chafing me, my clothes were all wet, and I was getting very cold.

They didn’t really believe in heat in this resort, so Ernesto and I got back to the room and proceeded to be very cold in this large, lofted room. We both took hot showers, caught up on general Internet activities and tried to make a plan for the next day.

“They have bikes,” Ernesto said. “Maybe we could do that long trail with those?”

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. We asked the concierge to get the bikes ready for us in the morning. He also assured us that we could find some kind of ride the next day. We called this a win, so after dinner, we read and Internetted and went to bed.

The next morning, we arose bright and early to grab the bikes and hit the trail. The concierge confirmed we had a ride at 2 pm to take us back down the mountain and then took us outside to two very dilapidated and run-down bicycles. The guys helping around the resort took us down and got us air for the tires and tightened Ernesto’s breaks. I realized in the short trip to the maintenance shed that my front brake actually didn’t work. After tightening my back brakes, Ernesto called this out.

“The front brake doesn’t work,” he said.

The guy looks at it, slaps it with his hand and goes, “Yep. They sure don’t.”

"Can you fix it?"

"Lol, no."

I figured this meant the trail wouldn’t be that bad? Like, if he wasn’t concerned, I probably shouldn’t be either. So we hop on the bikes and start riding toward the main trail. The trails to the hiking path are pretty even, so I didn’t notice that I was on a death trap until we got to the hiking trail. This hiking trail just says “Giddyup!” and then takes a huge downward turn. Like you go from lovely mountain jaunt to OFFROAD TRAIL OF DEATH!!! Very quickly. As I go down the first ascent, I realize that my back brakes also wouldn’t… what you say “work.” So I start flying and immediately stick out and start dragging my feet.

Ernesto looks back and stops.

“I think you’re just really heavy,” he says.

We swapped bikes and then Ernesto proceeds to careen down the mountain towards his death. We immediately decide that maybe bikes aren’t the best idea and start walking them back to the resort.

It was still early, so we imagined that we could grab breakfast, walk the trail, and be back by 2 to catch our ride.

We dropped the bikes, had a nice breakfast, and head back to the trailhead for a reboot.

Soooooo… my stomach sometimes has issues. I don’t ever really know what causes them, but I can go from feeling fine to needing to be sitting on a toilet in like 2 seconds. It happens randomly and my body decided that while I am up in the mountains, on a trail far from bathrooms, that it was the time to go.

We were only about twenty minutes into the hike when it happened. I was like “Oh… no…” But I was trying to keep it together, and I didn’t want to raise an alarm. The OFFROAD TRAIL OF DEATH!!! After it’s initial steep-grade plummet, actually begins to go up hill. And, while the downhill parts of the journey made my digestive system scream in agony, the movement of going up was not bad.

We get to the top of a small hill and then start going down again. There is a small gate you have to open and go through, and it was while standing at that gate that I knew the end is near.

“Ernesto,” I said, “I’m going to have to go to the bathroom.”

Assuming this was one of the 900 times I pee in a day, Ernesto is like, “Just go find a tree.”

And I’m like “No...”

And he goes, “Oh no… poopy?”

But it was already too late. I saw a spot in the woods that was open and I took off.

Ernesto yells after me, “Take off ALL your clothes. I’ll go get leaves!” Which was extremely sweet, but I think if I had to have him see me half-naked taking a dump in the middle of the forest, it would just mean we were divorced. Like the horror of that scenario nullifies any kind of nuptials.

So I get into a hidden part of the woods, take off my shoes, socks, and pants and go.

Not gonna lie, it was actually kind of grounding. And the leaves around me were very smooth and actually very nice on the bum.

I finish up the disaster as fast as possible and rejoin Ernesto on the trail. There is a little stream near the trail which I clean up my hands in and then we start the journey.

At this point, you may be thinking, wow…. After the disaster getting there, the rain, death bikes, and a poop in the woods, that’s got to be it for this 24-hour journey.

And you’d be wrong!

We continue on the trail for about 2.5 hours. We (allegedly) have about an hour left, which will get us to the resort about 30 minutes before our ride leaves. All seems well. From where we are standing with 1.5 hours left, I can see the hotel, and the path is turning back down the mountain.

But then we get to a trail sign. I am not making this up. The sign is on a single path. To the right is a steep incline, no trail, and trees, which leads up the mountain. To the left, is a steep decline, woods, trees, etc. and no trail. The sign says “Lookout point right! Hotel left!”

Ernesto and I confer and decide that this sign must be simply incorrect. Because why would the only way back to the hotel force you to sprint through a dense forest down then up a mountain?

It still made me very uneasy, though. What if it was the right trail? We already saw that the road to the resort was a single-lane, rugged, eroded trail of death… What if…?

So we continue walking. And the trail continues to turn farther away from the hotel. It’s getting to be an hour before we have to meet our ride and things aren’t looking good.

I’m beginning to panic but not seem like I’m panicking, so I turn around when we are approaching 45 minutes to get back to the hotel and go “So… should we go back to that sign?”

Luckily, Ernesto was smart enough to pull Google Maps up and he’s like “We should be close…” And he was right. There was a gate about 5 minutes down the path which led back to the hotel. Either way, we got back to the hotel way closer to the cut-off time than we thought. We ran up to our rooms, grab our bags, then go back to the lobby.

The concierge goes “Ready?” And we give him a thumbs up. He then points to a truck in the parking lot, so we go to the truck.

“Wait,” I said, “HE’S driving us back?”

“Yeah,” Ernesto says. “I think his whole family is coming with.”

So we proceed to get into the truck: the concierge, his wife, his son, his brother, Ernesto, and myself.

At this point I’m both trying to hysterically not laugh and also growing very nervous. Because the only thing that could put the cherry on this weekend of woods poops and near-death experiences is literally our car exploding or us getting kidnapped.

I am very happy to report that those things did not happen. The concierge was very nice. The truck was large and handled the death trail with ease, and his son was only 3 and learning Spanish, so I picked up a few Spanish words myself.

We got down the mountain and back to Ernesto’s hometown. After paying the concierge, we grabbed our bags and stood on the sidewalk, waving to the concierge as he drove away.

Immediately, Ernesto turned to me and gave me a high-five.

“We MADE IT,” he said.

Which was a small miracle.

When we got back to his parents’ house, his mom asked us how it was. She asked me, and with my weak knowledge of Spanish, the only thing I could say was “Fue una Aventura.”

Because what is an adventure if not survival and learning a few things? Like Peugeots are actually rugged cars and not weak, French garbage vehicles. Walking in jeans in the rain will chafe the crap out of my legs. Don’t ever take a bike without working brakes. Find smooth leaves when you need to defecate in the woods. Stick to the trail when a sign tells you to run through rugged forest terrain. And (thanks to the three-year-old) shoulders are called hombros in Spanish.

Would I do it again? Lol, no. Shut up. But would I trade the memory of this bonkers/gonzo vacation in a vacation?

Also shut up.

Also no.