To the Pulsa

On Sunday, after church, which thankfully was only an hour (not an hour service and then an hour knealing like last week), we decided to check out the ¨pulsa¨ that Marcel keeps talking about. From what we understood of Nicañol, it is a lake or swimming hole of somesort that we can hike to and swim in. Apparently they took their last volunteer there, and it has been a big attraction for other volunteers as well. Marcel said it would take about an hour to get there on foot, so we packed our backpacks with pleanty of water and snacks for the journey. We were suprised to see that Marcel and Harold were ready to go in just their flip-flops and regular shorts. Alejandra said that the can´t swim, so they don´t have suits... which made us wonder why they love the pulsa so much.

The hike started off with about a 15-20 minute walk along the road, and then we headed down a small path - all down hill, with lots of rocks. We were thinking, ¨this is easy, but what about on the way back?¨ When we got to the end of that path, we walked though a small opening in a barbed wire fence and arrived at a little house with lots of children running around. One of which was a little albino boy, about 6 or 7 years old. He was totally excited to see me, I think he thought I bas albino also. He kept saying ¨¡Chele, chele! ¡Blanca, Blanca! ¡Como mío, como mío! ¡Su pelo, su piel, como mío, como mío!¨ (Literally that means ¨Milky, milky! Whitey, whitey! Like mine, like mine! Your hair, your skin, like mine like mine!¨) We saw him at church a few weeks ago, but I guess he only just noticed how fair I was because I was wearing shorts... and my legs never get much sun. C.J. thought it was pretty funny that my skin was the same color as the albino.

Anyway, after stopping to say hi to that family we headed to Marcel and Harold´s grandmom´s house, where we saw cute little Angelito, their 18 month old cousin. I tried so say hi to him, but he just screamed and cried and called for him mama. I figured we had made enough trouble, so we headed on tward the pulsa. That´s where the really hard part began...

After walking through a few corn fields, we arrived at the river bed where we were apparently supposed to cross over a few large rocks and then arrive at the pulsa. Marcel and Harold took of their flip-flops so that they could more easily navigate on the rocks. We thought we were really close, so we asked Marcel if we should take off our shoes too. He said yes, but as soon as our shoes were off we realized our mistake. We had a 30 minute rock climbing and hiking adventure ahead of us, and it would have been impossible for gringos without shoes! Marcel doesn´t think of these things, he and his brother were like little spidermen on those rocks.

I think I have offically confirmed that rock climbing and extreme hiking are definately not my thing. I was definately wishing I had opted not to come, like Jeni, once we go to the hard rocky part. I was constantly scared of slipping and falling... and I didn´t really consider any of that part fun. Finally when we arrived at the pulsa, we had to climb down a 15 foot (essencially) cliff to get to the water. Marcel said we should just jump off... that is what the other volunteers did. LIKE HELL! We had no idea how deep the water was, or what was in there, because it was pretty murky.

C.J. finally got the courage to shimmy down the rocks to the water - he walked around the and then waded in on the oposite shore. I stayed up top for a while, until this middle aged woman cam buy and walked down the cliff with the ease of a mountain goat and made me look like a complete chump. I actually did make it to the bottom to swim, and we even convinced M & H to splash around in the shallows too. The pulsa is actually very deep... I don´t know how deep because I wasn´t about to put my head under... but too deep to touch amost everywhere except near the shore, if there happened to be a rock to stand on.

Once we had swam our fill, we climbed up the rocks again with incredible difficulty. The trip back was also full of many obsticals, that stopped us up for several minutes trying to climb up. Even Marcel and Harold had trouble in a few spots. The strangest part was when we came accross a bunch of cattle in the river bed... I think C.J. has a picture somewhere. By the time we saw the cows, I was just happy to be near the end. The rest of the trip back went by pretty fast, and wasn´t as tough as we though it would be, although I did cut my leg on the fence post of one of the many barbed wire fences we had to cross. It wasn´t bad though.

I was so happy to be home by the end. Like many of my other adventures in the past... the views were beautiful, but I don´t think I´ll ever do that again.