Blogathon Day 11: A Hike in the Mountains

My new year's resolution was to live a less horizontal life. So far, I haven't been doing too well -- since I teach in the afternoons and evenings, my mornings are usually free to lie around reading.

The problem, you see, is that none of the 'active' hobbies I had in the States apply here. Horseriding, ice skating, jazz dance... yeah. Not really possible. I could run, I suppose, but everyone stares and the road is so straight and hilly -- it's nothing like running the Outer Loop at Rice, where it's shaded, there's always something to look at, and you don't get followed by several dozen Mozambican children all shouting "You're tired already!? Can I have your iPod? How about your phone? How about 10 mets?"

In the end, Laura and I end up spending a lot of time in bed, lying around. As a Fundamentally Lazy Person, I'm totally OK with this -- however, after a certain amount of time, Laura's Horizontometer reaches the red zone and she feels the driving need to go out and do something before she explodes. This is great for me, because left to my own devices, I'd probably never leave the house.

So today, as I was in the middle of an episode of The Big Bang Theory, Laura marched in with her tell-tale I-need-to-get-out-of-the-house face and said, "Let's go take a walk into the mountains with Simba and the boys."

We threw some water bottles and our cameras into a bag, and took three of our favorite kids on a hike to climb "that little hill there."

Turns out that a consequence of being a Fundamentally Lazy Person, as well as spending most of your time horizontal, means that climbing a "little hill" takes your breath away. As I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other without passing out, Izaquel was jumping and running up ahead, climbing trees along the way, picking maçanicas to pop into his mouth and looking for baby birds in the highest branches.

The view from the top was pretty cool, though. And just when I felt like I had returned to a normal color again and was breathing sufficiently to not faint, it was time to go back down.

"Oh, there's a snake in that tree," Castelo said casually as we made our way down the steep and rocky mountainside.

Laura and I stopped. "WHAT!?"

"Oh, it's fine. He can't hurt you unless he bites you."

We shared a glance. "Let's go another way."

The boys laughed. "It's fine, we'll just throw rocks at it to scare it away."

Yes, throwing rocks at an angry snake seems like a great idea. They did it anyway.

"OK, now that you scared the snake and made it angry, where is it?" Laura asked.

The boys looked at each other and shrugged. "I dunno. Gone."

"YES BUT WHICH WAY!?"

Castelo frowned, picked a direction at random and pointed. "That way. Let's go."

We descended the mountain, certain that we were about to be bitten by an angry black mamba. When we finally reached the clearing at the riverside, I had thorns in my hair, was bleeding due to several blades of angry grass, and had been thinking about just flinging myself off the side of the mountain to end my misery.

We trudged home along the river, me dragging my legs while Izaquel and Castelo did flips in the sand with Simba jogging along playfully and Laura snapping pictures all the while. When we finally got home, I slumped into a chair and exhaled.

"That was nice," said Laura, "We should do that more often."

And the weird thing is... it was nice. We should do it more often.

The hiking crew. Laura, Izaquel, Archel, Castelo and me.