Woke up cold for the first time in ages after a not very restful hammock slumber. We crossed Rio Buritaca a few times today. Shoes on & off & eventually shoes drenched. Everything drenched really as the water was waist deep & it rained most of the afternoon.
Notwithstanding the cold our 5am start was enhanced by hilarious Cesarisms. We asked what we were having for breakfast & he told us 'breast'. We said you mean 'bread'? No, 'breast', like pan (which is bread). Poor Cesar, his English really was pretty bad & he was hardly the most honest guy around. Actually I saw him eating some of the gol chocolate bars they gave out as snacks. Cesar says 'shhh don't tell, hopefully there is enough for everyone later otherwise I'll have to blame the indigenous kids for eating them.' I told him that was not funny or fair. He said I was always there when he was 'making the evil'. It's not hard when he was pretty much always making some kind of evil.
All up we started walking at 6.30am and finished around 4.30pm in the torrential rain. It was a moderate walk, lots of up & down & mud. Nothing is too fun with wet feet either but we trekked on in good spirits.
At a few stops during the day we snacked on fresh pineapple, watermelon, oranges & melted 'Gol' bars. Fruit & chocolate had never tasted so good and it was the perfect fuel to keep walking for 15kms or so.
Our group passed Lindy's group on the way to our camp & it was good to see her - seemed like they also had a good bunch of people & had loved the lost city.
Once we got to camp the rain was epic. We all huddled together in the main cabin to stay dry & warm & wait it out until dinner. Fortunately thanks to the genius of our cool Junio we were given a giant bowl of popcorn to tie us over while Raz taught us how to play Yanev.
Dinner was an amazing whole fried fish with patacones & salad. Afterwards we sat around chatting, laughing at Cesar & his cesarisms & then tucked in for the night. After 21kms trekking in two days we were only about an hour or so and 1-2kms and 1200 steps away from the lost city journey in the morning.
