I told my friend Anne about the day during our recent training exercise in Italy, when we walked downhill through gorges virtually all day, including down two thousand stone steps. I was hard pushed to shuffle out of bed the next morning, but did eventually get myself moving.
She reminded me that we had done something not dissimilar but much more scary before, with the same crippling pain the next day, and she is right.
There were perhaps eight or nine of us together on a “Girls Holiday” in Tenerife, most of us in our fifties. I am not sure why we had no youngsters along with us: our plans might have been better researched had we had some daughters present. We decided it would be fun to explore one of the less populated parts of Tenerife and signed up for a hike organised by a local company. It was advertised as a trek through amazing scenery, which could not be seen from the road. It would take a few hours and would end up with a swim in crystal clear sea and a boat trip back along the coast. It sounded like a lovely relaxing day: our whole group signed up for it.
We were pleased to be collected from our hotel in a minibus and taken to the starting point. It was in a lovely old village called Masca, which we were told had been cut off from road access until relatively recently. Some of us started to feel a bit uneasy when the guide said that our footwear was unsuitable, and we would have to pay to borrow walking boots. Those with hand and shoulder bags were told they would have to transfer their possessions into proper back packs.
My sister Leslie immediately said that she had never done anything in her life involving walking boots and did not intend to start now: she was out of it. She was assured that the tour company would put her on an alternative more relaxing boat trip.
Alarm only started to set in when we met with the other proposed walkers: they were mostly super fit young Germans wearing mountaineering gear. We were told to start walking downhill and that consideration would be given to whether we were fit to do the trek after we had gone down about a hundred meters. After about ten minutes of climbing over rocks downwards into a ravine, my sister in law, Mary and one or two others decided it wasn’t for them. They turned round and went back, leaving only four of our group still going downwards.
We thought that we were doing alright, but the guide in charge thought otherwise. Much to their indignation, two more were told by him to go back: they had being enjoying themselves and were not well pleased – it seemed a rather arbitrary decision. That left only Anne and me, along with the young Germans.
Anne and I continued downwards. There is a drop of six hundred and fifty metres during the six kilometre climb down to sea level. The walk is recommended only for those with experience of walking down gorges without proper paths and sheer drops in places. But the scenery was indeed spectacular. Mountain springs ran down most of the way, often making it slippery under foot, but adding to the beauty of this verdant route. We were told that some of the plants were unique to the Masca Gorge and the birdsong, in the surrounding silence, was memorable.
Anne and I got down to the bottom absolutely thrilled to have made it. I was straight into the sea for a swim and Anne for a paddle. We got into the boat and were taken back to the port, where all the rest of the group were waiting to greet us.
My sister burst into tears as soon as she saw me! It seems that they had been told how dangerous the gorge is, and that two women had fallen and been killed the year before. She had spent the day envisaging Anne and me falling over an edge and crashing to the bottom. Apart from that, they had been well looked after. They had been taken on a cruise around the area and had seen lots of dolphins, which was an unexpected treat.
Well Leslie probably won’t need to worry about me falling over an edge on Kili. Altitude sickness is what we need to worry about, though I know we are in Exodus’ expert hands.