Pico Duarte

That is the name of the tallest mountain in the Carribean (or West Indies). At approximately 10000 ft above sea level it is known to snow at the peak during its winter months. We climbed that!!!

Day:1 Monday

It was hard to believe at first that we would even attempt that ... But we did.... With some staff and students from Escuela Caribe we packed our bags and camelbacks and headed west to a small town called La Cienaga where we would start hiking. Once we got there we went to a house-looking building which was the guides houses where we got some mulos (you can figure that word out) and started hiking. We hiked out of town to the lodge at the trail head and just went on walking. 2 hours later BASECAMP yay! Basecamp is the first of 3 camps. Two cabins, outhouses, fire pit, and a river. At this point I am very frustrated, not with the hiking or anything to do with good ol'duarte. It's my inability to describe to you anything at all. The fun. The beauty. Anything. Anyway, for the night we split into groups. Girls in the cabin, guys in the tent. There were a total of five guys. Me, Drew, Terry, Dad, and B-wall. (B-wall= Brian, Mr Wall, Fireman, Dry Wall, he is a counselor for the school.)(oh ya, one more name, Ethan calls him
"Crazy Bald Man") The tent flooded.(the tent has a name, it's called the man tent.)

Day 2: Tuesday

After waking up at 6:00 sopping and having nothing dry we packed up the stuff, loaded the mulos, and had breakfast.(Which was like a trail mix bar) At this point we split up into more little groups, the slow group, medium (who were referred to as mediocre) and the Fast Group. All of the Friesens were in the fast group so we left last and prepared the mulos and packed the tents,and set off. I am not going to explain the hiking much for this day other than it was 8 hours of a LOT of up hill and near the 3 hour point it started to rain which really dampened our spirits.(sorry couldn't help it) When we finally reached the next check point: Peak Camp we set out the tents to dry from the previous night and crashed until the rest of the groups appeared, once they got there we set up the rest of the stuff, had supper and sat around the campfire talking about the hike today and the one coming tomorrow.

Day 3: Wednesday

3:45 AM (lol)
A select group of experianced hikers wake up and layer up. Jacket, sweatshirt, t-shirt, bandanna, headlight, pants, shorts, rain pants, double socks. Sounds like winter, don't it? Hike two hours up. Our guide Tigua rode a mule and showed us the path up the mountain. After 100 minutes of climbing. (no joke) we can see the top of pico duarte. Me (Brodie) and ******* (some names may have been changed in the making of this blog strictly for for legal purposes) reached the top after around twenty minutes more of hiking at around that angle ---> / , slapped the statue of Duarte and curled up in our sleeping bags. After watching the beautiful sun rise of course.

3 HOURS AND A GOOD NAP LATER...

The rest of the pack arrived bringing water and breakfast. Oh wait. No breakfast. Then we turned around and went back. The rest of the day was uneventful except at the end of the day when every one was just in bed, my dad was putting a tarp up. It was dark and he couldn't see. He took Terry knife and stabbed it into the tarp. Except it didn't hit tarp. The knife was sticking through his hand. (Pause. How are your mental images doing? What are you picturing right now? Do you want me just to get on with it and learn how everything ends up all happily-ever-after?) The knife caught on the big piece of his hand bellow his thumb, slashed across his wrist and came out of his palm. There was a lot of blood. We were way out on a mountain with no needle and thread to stitch him up so they just neosporind it (NOTE; to neosporin is no a verb) put a bandage on and we all went to bed. While they where bandaging it no one thought it went through his hand. But it did.

Day 4: Thursday

So after having are second dry sleep we packed up feeling refreshed and ready to go. At 7 o'clockish we started our 6 hour trek downward. Pause: When I say downward I mean almost straight down. We didn't take the same way we went up that would have been easier, we took a route that would lead us to a valley full of green grass and wild horses. It looked awesome, we could see it from the 1 hour point, and the next, and the next, and the next. ( It was kind of depressing) It was also very dry... Like desert dry, burned trees were everywhere, we asked around and almost immediately found our answer, a forest fire was started a few years back and had ravaged the whole entire section here. The weird thing was that the valley was fine... Once we got there we went for a dip in the river, unpacked the stuff, and waited for the others. That night the guides played us some Dominican music and some people danced while others just talked and chilled out along the sides.

Day 5: Friday

Free day Friday. Wake up at 7 do some swimming, eat breakfast and chill. Later in the day we got to ride horses. Riding horses is really fun. There was one pony, two horses, (one horse was black and we called him demon-spawn or something because he liked to bite, kick ,and just not listen. The other horse was white.) and three mules. Warning: saddles are not fully attached. This makes galloping rather difficult, and caused a few people to fall off. Later we played a game of soccer. In the rain. On a pasture. If you can put those together you would find that they equal a muddy cow pie minefield. Very stinky. Very dirty. To add to that it was tackle soccer. Use your imagination. Afterwards we decided to take a bath. The part of the river we went to was really cool. (multi meaning) It was a very short swim. At night time the cows swarmed. The cows in the valley are crazy. They eat anything (including our tent.) one walked into the kitchen and crapped all over the shelves. My dad got a picture. Again more of the same singing and dancing.

Day 6: Saturday

The journey home. Now that everyone is fully refreshed and happy to start the trip home the packing was fast and we all got on the trail by 8:00. (woke up at 7) And they looked like it was going to be perfect: warm with a slight breeze, dry clothes, happy campers. Two bad things though, ANOTHER 6 hour hike and we first had to climb out of the valley to start our trip down.

6 HOURS LATER

We made it back! We went to the guide place again gave them their mulos and took the bus to Escuela Caribe where mom and E-man were waiting for us.