The bus to the jungle is running late, because this is South America, and buses are almost always running late. It's not their fault -- mudslides have closed down roads and unexpected construction can stop you in your tracks for hours at a time. It's like some kind of South American magic trick, a bad joke: "How do you turn a four-hour bus ride into an eight-hour bus ride? You just always do." I never knew anything could make me appreciate Capital Metro.
When we get to the jungle, it is near dark. I am with 20 other students from the Spanish school and Carlos, our guide and also a teacher at the school. We were supposed to do the hike in the afternoon, but Carlos says we can go ahead and do the hike now if we hurry up. So we scurry through the shallow river, leaping from rock to mossy rock, trying to avoid slipping on all the slime. Occasionally, we fail.
"Oh, fuck!" someone will say, followed by a splash of water or a thud.
At first it is amusing. After a while, it's like white noise.
An hour into the jungle, it gets dark.
Right about that time, we get to the first waterfall. (A word about the waterfalls: Did I know we'd be climbing waterfalls? I did not. It is possible, quite possible, that the guide warned me in advance. Only at the time, I had the Spanish comprehension of a young golden retriever. I understood "food," "bathroom," "walk," and "go." When the guide pantomimed a waterfall, I assumed the verb he used along with it was "look at" not "climb.")
We all stare silently at the waterfall in the last minutes of daylight, a waterfall that is not big, but big enough. 50 feet? 60? More Ecuadorians descend from nowhere to act as guides. They are all small -- the tallest is probably 5'4" -- but strong. They climb up and down the waterfalls like monkeys, swinging from tree to tree along the perimeter. A young, shirtless Ecuadorian boy hooks me into a harness.
"Fuerte?" I ask nervously, pulling on the harness strap.
The young boy looks up at me and smiles. Even this, I cannot translate.
I get up the first waterfall fine. Of course I do. I am a sturdy little thing, after all. It may seem like I've spent the last 10 years smoking in a bar, but I was quite a soccer player in my time. Granted, "my time" was when I was seven years old. But I had a reputation: "Hepola's tough," the coach used to tell everyone. "She kicked a girl's teeth out once."
I am feeling strong and invincible -- until we reach the second waterfall.
"I thought we'd already done the worst," someone says.
But the second waterfall is much harder than the first. It lies at the end of a narrow cave, but in order to reach the waterfall, you must get across a pool of rushing water. The water is too deep and strong to walk through. So you must straddle the water. And in order to do that, you must do the following: Prop your feet up on the walls of the cave so that you are in the splits over the pool of water. In this split-like position, walk yourself along the rocky walls of the cave. Then, you must jump across the water and onto the rocks at the bottom of the waterfall. Then you climb.
And do this in the dark, while a student shines one flashlight on you from the bottom.
I watch several students make this climb, a rope tied around their waist. It is not easy. Even the most agile climbers are getting stuck in places trying to get up the waterfall. One or two girls slip. When this happens, the small Ecuadorian man at the top of the waterfall pulls them up. But there is this terrible moment when they are just dangling.
The guide at the bottom is getting impatient -- using the rope to straddle the pond is a pain in the ass. He has to keep going back and forth across the water.
"Vamos!" he says to me, and then something I can't understand.
"He wants you to cross the pool without a rope," one of the students says. "He'll give you the rope on the other side of the water."
I want to say that actually, I would really like the rope now, that the rope is all right with me, but I don't know how. And everyone is waiting and watching. I can feel their stares as I hesitate.
"Vamos!" the guide says again.
I leap up into the splits and scootch along the walls of the cave. The waterfall crashes into the pool below and splashes all over my legs and into my face.
I reach the other side where the guide is standing. "Now jump!" he says, pointing to the bottom of the waterfall. From where I stand, my legs out to the side, the leap looks impossible.
I size up the jump, size up my short legs. Have you ever jumped from a splitting position?
"You've gotta be fucking kidding me," I say in English.
"Es facil," he says.
All my childhood fears come burbling up -- fear of heights, fear of rollercoasters, fear of flying, fear of ... fear of waterfalls. I want to argue that I am too short to make the jump, but this man couldn't be taller than me. I want to argue that I can't do it, but there is no turning back. I will be stuck here forever, with two my legs straddling a pool of rushing water, with this small man whose language I don't speak. Could I live this way? Could we be happy? I consider it for a moment.
Then I jump.

Tomorrow on Sarahhepola.com:
The guide is slapping the wet rocks, yelling frantically, "La mano aqui! La mano aqui!"
Does that mean hand or foot?

And also:
"Jesus Christ! Something just hit my face!" one of the students yells.
"What was it?"
"I think it was a bat."