Head in the clouds

I literally had my head in the clouds almost all day today.

My friends and I spent our day climbing a mountain (if you asked me which one, I wouldn't be able to tell you...Venezuela is covered in them). Anyway, it was beautiful. We left in the afternoon with a bag of rations - pan de guayaba (sweet bread filled with guava fruit) and pan de queso (cheese bread), and we drove up into the mountains a ways and parked the car. From there, we didn't know exactly what we were getting into, but we were determined to get to the top. We weren't completely in the dark about our adventure though (don't worry) we had one of our Venezuelan friends with us who has lived in these mountains with his family his whole life and had climbed this stretch many times before. When I say we didn't know what we were getting into, I meant how steep and muddy the climb would be. Let's just say I don't think I'll be going on a run in my tennis shoes tomorrow.

We followed a path up the mountain, and it got skinnier and skinnier as we went. We pushed vines aside, trudged through the mud, and climbed over rocks. After a couple of breaks to stop and admire the view, we finally we reached the top. It was a giant plateau where we ate guava and cheese bread, played catch with a football...and where I stepped in a gigantic mud puddle :(

The best part about it, though, was that we were surrounded by clouds. I looked up and saw clouds swirled with blue sky, I looked straight ahead and saw mountain tops peeking through a thick layer of fluffy clouds, I looked down and I saw...MORE clouds. What a surreal feeling.

At some point, though, I looked at my watch and saw that it was 5:30 and asked everyone if we should be heading back soon. You know how I said earlier that we "weren't completely in the dark" about our adventure? Well...that's only partly true. We headed back down the mountain, our socks squishing in our shoes from mud and water, and when we were at about the half-way point, it was so foggy that we had trouble seeing. And it was starting to get dark. We hurried though, and it was more exciting than anything. We reached the bottom safely just as I was starting to kick myself for leaving my flashlight at home, and then only had to sit in Venezuela traffic for an hour or so before we reached home ;)

All in all, it was a good day. I climbed a mountain!