Tree Time

This is the story we can't stop re-telling and laughing over - so I thought I'd share.

It's about 5:45pm, and dusk is near approaching. We have a very limited amount of time to reach the road where we should be able to call a taxi driver to come drive us back into town. We're resting on the rocks at the top of the mountain we just navigated and are discussing how to get down as we take the first few steps toward the bottom. Straight down. Instead of zig-zagging down, or finding the path of least resistance, we decide to opt for the most direct route. We travel in line down the mountain. I'm leading, bashing down vegetation to create some sort of path or passageway for the following two, calling out instructions as I go along, hoping to make a smooth journey down. Most of the instructions consist of "um..I'm slipping down facing backwards...grab onto the grass, it'll hold you" or "crab walk style for this part" with the one-time-only-special of "grab onto this tree and swing on it like a fire pole to this rock" - which is exactly what needed to be done. 

So we're making our way down the mountain with only a minor tumble taken by the ever persevering Nisha, when I realize we might have a problem. I wasn't on the ground. I was pushing through some really dense bush and I couldn't see the ground. I was just standing on bran--and I fell...into a tree. 

I looked down just before I fell and realized I wasn't being supported by anything except a thick layer of bush and tree, and the next thing I see is sky and Nisha. "I'm in a tree". They didn't believe me, and didn't quite know what to do. I was laying what should have been parallel to the ground, but really I think my body was forming a triangle with the mountain. Then they saw - "You're actually in the tree!" Yep. Yes, I was in a tree, facing the sky, and I couldn't get up because my legs were higher than my head. Whoops? I manage to flip myself over and tramp the bush down securely enough that I could keep moving forward - so what do Liza and Nisha do? They follow me into the tree. We decided on a direct route, so that's what we did. Thankfully that was the last tree we encountered on our otherwise smooth, rocky and highly vertical descent. 

As an extension of this story, we get to the bottom, and get our backpacks (we took our cameras, money, and my phone on our persons and left our bags behind some rocks and trees at the base of the mountain) and start to book it out. It's nearly nightfall, and we really want to get to the road. We know the general direction, but it's not like there's real paths anywhere, and we only have the flashlight on the phone for a torch. We drink one of our last two water sachets, thinking we'll drink the other when we've called the taxi to come retrieve us. I reach for my phone with the taxi driver's number in it and find, much to my dismay, that my phone has inconveniently vacated my pocket; probably currently residing in a tree. 

So. We start walking. We don't have the phone number now of the person that was to drive us to town, nor the great people we met before setting off that were going to find us a place to sleep, and we don't have water, and it's getting dark, and we're three girls, with all our stuff alone. Super. 

We get to the main (I use this term loosely, by the way. It was paved, but very infrequently traveled) road just as it falls dark and start to walk, because there's no sense just standing there. A yam truck (huge, dilapidated, tractor-trailer sized truck piled wayyy over the open top with bags of yams and yellow plastic oil containers) drives by, and we half flag it down, it half stops for us. We look to see if there's anyplace for us on the back. Negatory. A guy jumps out and asks where we're going before telling us to hop in. My bag, me, Liza & Nisha's bags, then Liza and Nisha. I climb into the balcony seating a level up from the front bench seat, while Liza and Nisha smush into the front seat. Awesome. We have a lovely conversation with the driver, who tells us his brother is in the US, in Virginia. He calls him, and hands me the phone. Turns out the guy is driving on 81 in Pennsylvania heading back to VA. Cool, right? 

So, that's actually three stories - falling into a tree, losing my phone, and hitchhiking on a yam truck. 

:)