The "Hill"
Since we did not really know how to get there or even how far away it was we just set off down the beach where we cut up the side of the dirt embankment to find ourselves walking towards what we could only assume was a military base of sorts. The give away here were the two armed men running towards us screaming at us in Spanish while waiving their arms around as if to say... get the heck out of here you silly gringos. Once we realized they were carrying really big guns and we were only armed with our cameras... we decided to head in the opposite direction.
Spider Man
Refusing to let that stop us we were now headed straight out into a desolate waste land with toxic green water streams and purple lakes. The smell was rather unpleasant and the temperatures were starting to soar. With zero shade in sight we pressed on until we came across several buildings wrapped in black tarps. Curiosity got the best of us, so we scurried over and had a peak. I felt like I was suddenly in the middle of the X-Files, but instead of finding a bunch of virus infected bees... we found hundreds and hundreds of baby chicks! Still a little bizarre, but not as bad as stumbling upon some secret government project to wipe out the human race with a crazy alien virus! Relieved... we continued on our way to the hill.
Chick Farm
A little over two hours of walking and we finally made it to the base of our hill. Beau is an expert mountain climber and I am... well... not, so he pressed on at rapid speed. I opted to take out my trusty camera and start snapping photos of all the strange sights. Although we were a good 10k from the ocean, there were sea shells everywhere. All sorts of desert fauna and dead snails stuck to pretty much everything.
Pretty Purple Flower
With no shortage of interesting things to see... I had no problem wondering around in the foothills of the mountain that my friend was scaling and before I knew it the sun was starting to make its way towards the horizon. After walking in the 100 degree weather for approximately seven hours, exhaustion had set in and with shoes full of sand it was time to take a load off. The time had come to stop hiking and find an ice cold beer STAT! But where and how- I was standing in the middle of absolutely no where!?
Snail Graveyard
The last thing I felt like doing was retracing my steps back through the desert wasteland and Beau was in total agreeance. Luckily there was a main road off in the distance where we thought we might be able to catch a ride back into to town and so we headed off in hopes of finding a ride. Making our way through a rock quarry we thankfully found some very nice policemen who were kind enough to drive our butts all the way back to the beach. Here we were able to hop on the local bus back to our guest house and claim our well earned reward... ice cold cerveza!
Izzy the Lizard
One small hill for the Aussie... one big mountain for the American girl!
