Day 36: Preparing To Drink Ebola Water
May 16, 2017
Mile 477.38 Casa De Luna to Mile 493.41 Maxwell Trail Camp
The thing that sucks about walking in the rain all day is that by the time it stops it’s dark out. So everything is just perpetually wet until there’s a break in the weather. And since 90% of you that are reading this are from or have lived in the Midwest you know that humidity prevents anything from drying ever (so like 9 people since there’s a extremely unlikely chance that more than 10 people actually read me babble on about hiding in latrines and eating tortillas with peanut butter and mayonnaise). Anyway, so when I woke up this morning everything was wet. Again. It didn’t rain, but there was so much condensation inside my tent that my sleeping bag had a thin film of dampness. Is that even a word? Dampness? Whatever. So yeah the struggle resumed trying to face the prospect of either hiking in cold, wet clothes or hiking in my dry, relatively clean sleep clothes.
While mulling this miserable prospect the trail angels at Casa De Luna made us pancakes for breakfast which were oh so fine. Fortunately, during this time of feasting the sun finally broke and we were able to explode our packs and tents out in the sun to dry out. Mother Earth finally felt some pity for us after making our lives living hell for the previous 24 hours.
By 10:00 we were back on the trail with fully dry clothes and gear. It was quite the contrast to approaching hypothermia the night before. Other than that the day was pretty chill. Glow Worm and I hiked a bit together here and there and we saw Dr. McDirty and Cougar while eating lunch along with Adam from Poland, Yardsale, Bandit, and Metric. Well, I guess it wasn’t completely chill. We had a bit of a water situation late in the day. There was a very small spring about 6 miles from camp. It was flowing, but down to a trickle. It took a couple minutes to fill up a liter and the water was mostly brown. The good thing was that it was just soil and not anything harmful (I think). The bad thing was the next water source was and I quote, “a large concrete cistern just off the trail [it] looks like a random slab of concrete. The water is stagnant, but at least it’s there.” A comment on the Guthook App said that the water was green and full of filth, worms, mosquito larvae, and bugs. The comment proceeded to mention that at least it didn’t have chemicals, although others in his party were convinced it contained ebola. With this enlightening nugget of information I decided to give it a go and yes, it was exactly as described, although I can’t vouch for the ebola. Since there weren’t any other viable options I opted to fill up a liter at the cistern anyway. There were definitely worms and other living things swimming around in the bottle. I filtered it through my bandana twice before putting in my chlorine drops. It’s still quite yellow. Thinking about maybe putting in more drops in the morning. Glow Worm gave her’s a taste and responded by giving a Mr. Ick face. Still haven’t tried mine. This may be my last post. It was nice knowing ya.
Liquid Ebola in a bottle. Cheers.
