It’s raining. It rained yesterday, it rained last month; it’ll probably be raining when you read this. And it rained quite a bit during my travels in South America in the 1970s. Mostly it just made life a bit more uncomfortable and spoiled the view, but a couple of times it left indelible memories.
The trek with George into the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy was our first mountain adventure in Colombia. We’d planned a circular route using military maps, though the relevant one was only peripherally useful since the most important region for our purposes, a valley coyly named Ratoncito (mouse), was blanked out by the nubes (clouds) that had obscured the aerial survey.
However, from our starting point in Güicán, the map marked a clear trail over a couple of mountain passes into the valley, where the path ended. To continue we would have to negotiate cross-country.
Although we started out in sunshine, by the second day the mountains were hidden in cloud and a steady drizzle was falling. The peaks that we had come to see remained hidden but we plodded doggedly on to the top of the highest pass at 4,750m. While we were getting our breath back, the clouds swirled briefly away giving us a view of our planned route. It was snow-covered and looked more difficult than we had imagined. But still possible, given good visibility.
Then the weather closed in and it rained unceasingly for three days while we tried in vain to find a safer route out of the valley. We gave up. We were both in tears as we packed up the sodden tent in driving rain and started to retrace our steps to the high pass. It took us two days. But then the sun came out, the clouds rolled back, and the views that we’d missed on our way to the valley were revealed: great slabs of rock, jagged giant’s teeth of granite backed by ice-cream glaciers. All this had been hidden from us – and would have been missed forever had we found our way out of that valley. If, indeed, we had survived that recklessly dangerous pathless route.
A month or so later we were holed up in a shack-hotel in Ecuador’s rainforest, waiting for an improvement in the weather. The rain beating down on the corrugated iron roof was so loud that conversation was difficult. We were the only travellers, but an American herpetologist was staying there long-term to study frogs. After dinner, she told us, she would go out on a collecting trip. The conditions would be perfect.
“May we come?” we asked.
“OK, as long as you don’t get in the way.”
We had a fantastic time. All those ventriloquist ‘peep peep’ sounds we could never track down to a frog were like radar to this expert. She found dozens of frogs: tree frogs, poison dart frogs, big croaking monsters and delicate green fellows with huge bug eyes. She showed us how to hold them so they could be examined before popping them into a plastic bag. We hardly noticed how wet we were and our outing with the ‘frog lady’ was one of the best memories of Ecuador.
So, when you’re travelling, just let it rain... sometimes.
