I Want To Believe In Something Bigger Than Me: Angel Falls

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It’s not that I didn’t want to see the falls. It’s just that they are located clear on the other side of Venezuela, close to Brazil. When we mapped it out, we realized that it would take SIX DAYS of driving to get there from Merida. So then I looked into flights and realized that we’d need to take SIX PLANES, two of which would be on tiny flying coffins, in five short days, just to get to Canaima and back.

No waterfall is worth that kind of exposure.

But I’m madly in love with my husband, and love makes you say yes, sometimes, when what you really mean is no way, you're crazy, 911, help! This man is trying to kill me!

The Day Before

We’re awake no more than ten minutes before Tree announces “I’m sick,” which means total shutdown in our family. Granted, to his credit, he behaves the same whether it’s double foot surgery or the sniffles: he lies in bed, refuses medicine, and insists on working until he passes out with his head in his laptop.

In the meantime, I have a list that inlcudes 1) giving Paula and Guillermo a hands-on tutorial on how to properly care for Kiki without appearing paranoid, 2) running to seven different stores stewn across Merida to buy insect repellent, sun block, kibble, body soap, all the ingredients for eggplant parmesan, and a bottle of rum, 3) packing for the trip, 4) cooking dinner for our farewell party, 5) and most importantly, taking care of my feverish, vomiting husband.

Tree’s fever breaks just in time for dinner. Thank god. Hopefully the diarrhea will pass before our full day at the airport tomorrow. Then, just as Paula and I are finishing up the dinner dishes, it hits me hard. Party over!!! Freezing, I run to our room, pile on some clothes and crawl under the covers. It’s going to be a long night.

Day 1

4:00a.m- The alarm goes off. I stand up and sit back down. My head is spinning and I’m seeing spots, but we need coffee, so I pad down the hallway as fast as I can.

4:05- Tree finds me moaning on the kitchen floor. I’m hunkered over the French press like it’s a football, and I just got pancaked by a 300 pound linebacker. He helps me back to the room to assess the situation. “Are you going to shower?” “No.” “Are you going to get dressed?” “No.” “Can you travel?” “Yes.”  There I go again, saying yes when I really mean no.

5:00- Tree packs up the toiletries, puts Kiki in Paula and Guillermo’s room, and then plants me, still in my pajamas, with a pillow in the backseat of a taxi headed for the airport an hour away in Vigia.

6:00- We arrive. Tree parks me on a seat with his big heavy backpack and tells me that when he gets close to the check-in counter to meet him in line.

6:20- It’s time for me to go meet Tree in line. I slide the beast of a backpack on my shoulders and figure that all I have to do is make it across the sea of people to Tree, and then he can support me. I’m swerving and moaning and my vision keeps closing out on me, so, I hold up against a pillar for a minute and try to make eyes with Tree. Help, my eyes plead, but he appears to be looking right through me. I push onward. Almost there. Excuse me. Permiso. That’s my husband up ahead.

6:25- Tree! Tree! I stumble over, stiff legged, hands out like a zombie, expecting him to brace me, but his arms are crossed. Wobbling, I drop down to one knee and moan. The couple in front of us takes a step forward and to the left, and the entire line behind them follows suit, leaving me off to the side. The herd has pushed me out! I look up at Tree and he’s sharing glances with the rest of the pack about the poor schizophrenic woman on one knee mumbling to herself.

6:26- It takes me a minute, but I realize that my husband is pretending not to know me! I remind myself to be mad later. Right now I need a toilet.

6:45- Tree finds me in line, buying water. I’m parched. We sit down together and wait for our plane to board. I'm starting to doubt my ability to go through with this day, but Tree assures me that it will get better.

8:15- He’s right! I’m starting to feel somewhat sane again. The vertigo has passed and my fever is down. Things are looking up! We’re in the air, forty-five more minutes until we land in Caracas. Tree’s holding my hand and making me laugh. This flight’s a piece of cake!

10:00- Breakfast at the airport in Caracas. We’re both feeling great, relatively speaking.

1:00- We catch another flight to Puerto Ordaz. More hand holding and laughing. The flight is butter

2:00- Taxi is waiting for us, arranged by Gecko Tours. It’s boiling here! We drive an hour to Cuidad Bolivar.

3:00- We arrive at Gecko Tours, and get checked into a bungalow. Tree works. I read. I check the shower and the water is cold. I’m still fighting off the fever and opt to stay warm and dirty over clean and cold.

6:30- We have a delicious catfish dinner in the common area and meet two other traveling couples, one of which has been teaching english for seven years throughout Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and the second of which just returned from Angel Falls with their one year old baby girl!

7:30- Tree and I go back to our room feeling very inspired. We love meeting other travelers. Their courage encourages us.

9:00- We’re tucked into bed, ensconced in our mosquito netting, laughing about the day’s horror. I accuse Tree of pretending not to know me at the airport, and he accuses me of being utterly shameless—both of which are true, so we laugh even harder! The worst is behind us, we agree, as we turn out the lights.

Day 2

6:00- The alarm goes off.

6:15- We fight over the toilet. We seem to have a lingering case of the runs.

6:30- We pack up our stuff and head back out to the common area to wait for someone to take us to the Cuidad Bolivar airport.

6:35- We meet Nelson, who is from Venezuela but lives in Brightenwood, Colorado today with his wife and two beautiful children. He first went to the States as an exchange student many years ago, and now he teaches both English as a second language and Spanish in Denver, while studying to get his PhD online. As it turns out, he’s booked on our same tour, which is awesome, because I have a plentitude of questions for Nelson about Venezuelan politics (I’m saving all the questions, responses and insights for the upcoming “Sprinterlife’s New World Order” post, but, in a nutshell, Tree and I finally understand why the middle class has a more than legitimate beef against Chavez while the poor and indigenous rightly adore him).

7:00- We pile in the back of the Land Cruiser and head to the airport

9:00- I’m looking out the window of the airport and deduce that we will be in one of two small planes, Tiny and Tinier.

9:15- Hallelujah!! We’re on Tiny! Hopefully nothing goes wrong. Fingers crossed, knock on wood, touch my pendant, say a prayer to Meme….and we’re off!

9:45- Tree keeps exploiting my superstition by saying things like, this plane would never crash, which prompts me to genuflex on command. I’m not religious, it’s just that the situation is too critical to knock on wood. I need to invoke holy powers, not tree nymphs, to ward off wind shears. The wings would never rip off at this altitude. Genuflex Genuflex Genuflex. Oooh, did you hear that CLUNK? I think something's wrong with the engine. Genuflex Genuflex Genuflex!! (Oh my husband makes me laugh!!!)

10.00- Turbulence! We’re going down!!!! Tree says Trujillos growl at fear. Grrrrr! Genuflex Genuflex Genuflex GRRRRR!

10:15- We landed, we’re alive!!!! Hooray! I can't wait until the day after tomorrow when I get to do it again.

10:30- Our tour company is waiting for us with a bus. A guy named Esteban introduces himself as a member of the Camaracoto tribe and says that he will be our guide. He’s super adorable: short, brown, pudgy, bowl cut, big smile, shirt buttoned up to his neck, and he giggles every time I say something.

11:00- Esteban gives us the lowdown. First we’ll walk to the beach and frolic, and then we will come back to the camp and eat lunch, rest for a couple hours in our private rooms, and then take a boat to the waterfalls nearby for a hiking tour.

11:15- On our way to the beach, we see and hear the local Camaracoto kids playing classical violin outside of a building, maybe a school or church, not sure what. Anyhow, they sound amazing! At first this scene seems so incongruent, but then Nelson reminds me of the Venezuelan music project called Fundación del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de las Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela. El Sistema is a state foundation which watches over Venezuela's 125 youth orchestras and the instrumental training programs which make them possible. There are over 250,000 children who attend its music schools around the country, 90 percent of them from poor socio-economic backgrounds.

FYI- There’s an award winning documentary about this amazing social program called Tocar y Luchar (“Play and Fight”, 2004).

12:05- The beach in Canaima is gorgeous. Waterfalls, palm trees, white sand, and...red water? Little boys are playing with their wooden boats in the water while the old ladies bath and wash clothes.

12:30- We stop by the local elementary school on the way back because Nelson, who is a teacher in the States, wants to take pictures to show his colleagues back home what it means to lack resources. To our surprise, when we look in the classroom, all the children are sitting behind laptops learning their computer skills. The computers, as well as the internet, were a gift from Chavez (more on this in the upcoming NWO post). We also find out that the kids learn in Spanish, Camaracoto, and English.

1:00- Lunch back at the Camaracoto camp. We eat chicken, rice and veggies, and converse with our new friends--Nelson, and the Brazilians, Ivan and Anna.

2:00- Back in our room, we fight over the toilet again. “I’m coming in hot, Stevie, move over!!”

I have mixed feelings about this new level of intimacy we've broached. When I first met Tree, I wouldn't even go the bathroom in my house while he was in it, opting to go to the neighbor's house instead. Now look at us!

2:30- Tree naps, I read and relish having the pot all to myself.

4:00- Everyone has arrived by now who will be on the tour with us. All of us, I’d say around 30 people, walk back to the beach and climb in two canoes with lawnmower engines. We zip over to an island no more than five minutes away.

4:15- We hike on easy terrain for 45 minutes. All the while, Tree and I keep monitoring our stomach pain levels that seem to be steadily climbing up from a level 6. Finally we come up on a waterfall, walk behind it, get soaking wet, and then hang out on the other side enjoying the pristine vista of Canaima. (This is super fun, but in no way does it compare to Honduras Waterfall jumping).

6:00- Level 8 and rising. We are racing both against the rumble in our bowels and each other to get to the camp toilets.

7:30- Dinner time. I choose to eat, even though every time I do it hurts like holy hell. Tree gives his food away to the guy sitting to his left.

8:00- Man down!!! We’re back in the room, and Tree is violently ill! He’s green, grey, white and sweaty! He’s on the pot and I want to help but he’s banned me from the bathroom. Oh wait, now he’s calling me. He needs something to barf in. By the looks of it, we’re at a level 10.

8:36- I break into the camp kitchen, rummage through the cabinets and pick out a good puke pot

8:39- I proudly hand Tree the pot that I have stolen for him in the name of love. I offer to hold it for him, too, but he kicks me out of the bathroom again.

9:00- We watched some movie the other night about exorcisms, and I can hear Tree mumbling the dialogue:

“Name yourself, demon!!! I hereby command you with the power vested in me by our holy father to get out!!! OUT, DEMON, OUT!!!!”

9:15- I need the bathroom too—I feel an explosion coming on—but there’s no getting Tree off the pot! I go next door and ask Nelson if I can use his.

9:30- I come back and discover that Tree barfed purple stuff and is now lying on the bed —the devil defeated for the time being.

10:00- I’m putting a cold compress on Tree’s forehead and reading my book. Things are not looking good. He asks me if we’re going to make it to Angel Falls, and I say, “Let’s just take it one day at a time.”

Day 3

6:30- The alarm goes off. Tree seems to be feeling better, and so far I feel okay too.  Today is the big day!

7:30- We nibble lightly on breakfast, both of us very wary of food.

8:00- We take a short bus ride to the boat launch. Tree and I chat up Ivan (see pic below with Anna) from Brazil, who is going to New York to get his PhD in biology. His specialization is reptiles and amphibians, so we start talking about habitat loss, environmental pollutants and the decline of frog populations, and how frogs are like canaries in a coalmine—a warning of what’s to come for the rest of us. Super interesting stuff! He tells us how he has used his studies to try to prevent the construction of new dams in Brazil, but how in the end, the economic interest in building the dams won out over frogs and every other living thing on the planet. 

8:30- While we’re waiting for our guides to load up the canoes, Ivan finds an amazing frog that’s black with a bright yellow ‘hand-painted’ band around it. He informs us that it’s poisonous, and then for god knows what reason, he and Anna, as well as Sonia, our friend from Poland, and Nelson all lick the thing! Would you like to taste the frog too?

That’s very kind of you to offer, Ivan, but no, we would not like to lick the frog.

9:00- And we’re off! All 30 of us are piled back in our two canoes, and we’re charging up river! Angel Falls here we come!

9:30- They stop the boats and kick us all out onto an island. Apparently the boats can’t make it over the rapids with us in them, so we have to walk for an hour in the blazing sun across the island where we’ll meet back up with the boats on the other side. Oh joy.

10:30- Back in the boats, and we’re off again!

11:30- We stop at some lagoon. People swim. I’m feeling anxious about being so far away from a bathroom and just want to hurry up and get to camp.

1:30- Lunch stop. They give us sandwiches and cookies. Tree and I are starving but only nibble, again, as a precaution.

2:30- Pain!!! My tummy feels like there’s a knife stabbing and twisting inside. Level 8!!

3:00- We hit a confluence and continue up the right side. The river narrows rapidly as our boatman deftly maneuvers us through rocky channels upstream. The scene is breathtaking, surreal, larger than life. Giant table-top mountains called Tapuys covered in mist frame our passage. The landscape reminds me of the Grand Canyon, only it’s as if the canyon walls have been overrun by the jungle.

Canaima is one of the most beautiful places on Earth 

4:00- Finally, we arrive at the base of Angel Falls. But to my dismay, this isn’t camp. Camp is across the river, and we won’t be going to it until after we hike an hour uphill in the jungle to the falls, hang out up there, and then descend—basically not for another 3 or 4 hours. I’m never going to make it! I need a bathroom now!

4:15- Up, up, up we climb, one step at a time. Above us is a lush, diverse canopy of jungle, shading us from the sun. Just a few feet from the trail, the jungle is wild, dense- impenetrable. It smells like fungus and flowers, sweet and earthy. The ground is an uneven cross-weave of giant roots with big sinkholes of mud between the stitches. I feel like I’m inside the Tree of Life thing in the movie Avatar, like the entire ecosystem itself is a sentient being, and it inhaled me into its lungs.

4:45- Level 9.5. I’m DYING. The gradient is getting steeper, it’s so muggy, and I literally am afraid I’m going to shit myself. I just squeezed my sphincter so tight I tripped.

5:00- Holy shit! We made it! We’re here! We’re here!!! We’re at the lookout looking out at Angel fucking Falls!! I can’t believe my eyes. My eyes can’t believe my eyes! It’s like it’s too big to see. Tree sits down close to the edge to take it all in, but I can’t get comfortable. A far less majestic part of nature is calling me.

5:05- I’m squatting around 50 feet away from the lookout, my ass hanging off the side of the trail, letting the demon go. Foul and fluorescent. Out, demon, out! Thank god I brought toilet paper. I cover it all up with leaves, say I’m sorry to the jungle for defiling it, and walk back to the lookout to properly enjoy the fruits of my labor. 

5:30- Tree and I take pictures, but we know that there is no way for us to capture the glory and impossibility of it all. Sitting on the edge of the cliff, looking out at the tallest waterfall in the world, I feel a profound sense of awe, wonder, and humility.

 All of us humans are but a tiny part of an enormous context. We are one bright speck in a planet shimmering with awareness!!!

I feel the divine immanence of nature and I give myself up to it. I hand myself over to my mystical potential, to the possibility of surrendering to something much larger than my daily self, to transcending the boundaries of my temporal, shitting in the woods, mortal, worm food being!

5:45- Life is a waterfall: we’re one in the river, one again after the fall.

6:00- Damn it. The beast is back in my bowels. Code Red! I can’t go off into the jungle now either because the rest of the group has caught up. Tree and I decide to make our descent ahead of the group. There’s an abandoned camp with disgusting non-functional toilets at the base of the mountain that sound really good to me right now.

6:30- I’m at my breaking point. Human dignity is predicated on one thing and that is NOT SHITTING ONESELF. I think of Freud’s quote, “We are all born between shit and piss,” and about how shitting is a constant reminder that we are of the flesh and everyday dying and how strange it is that we are all so ashamed of it, how we deny it, how we long to transcend our bodies and never shit again.

6:45- And why aren’t animals ashamed of their poop? I’ll tell you why: it’s because they don’t sit around contemplating the meaning (or futility) of life relative to death.

7:00- Finally, at the bottom of the hike down, I explode in an abandoned camp toilet soiled with other people’s poop—the wrongest kind of all—and I can’t help but wonder how this is more dignified than going out in the open?

8:00- Camp! Finally! My fever is rising again so Tree helps me into some warm clothes. I pour a shot of rum, grab my book, and climb into my hammock for an hour rest while Tree sips his rum by the river.

9:00- Dinner time. Our guides roasted chicken for us on the open fire! I’m eating, and I don’t care what happens!

9:15- Dinner conversation is fantastic. We’re sitting with our Brazilian friends, Ivan and Anna, and our Polish friend, Sonia. Our new friends remark on how different we are--less arrogant, more informed--from how they expect Americans to be.  Tree and I both accredit our awareness to our travels, which prompts me to suggest the dissolution of all nation states, and wouldn’t it be great if we could be global citizens instead? The Brazilians, who are both biologists, think about it for a minute but then conclude that it’s impossible because people are hardwired to bond in groups. We need to find commonality on a social scale, even if it’s contrived, for the sake of survival. Ivan says that, instead, what he’d like to get rid of is religion, and too quickly we all agree!

10:00- Laying in my hammock, thinking about Angel Falls, the divine immanence I felt looking up at it and about humans need to bond, I realize that we had it all wrong. We can’t do away with religion.

“Religion” comes from the Latin religio, which means to bind together again. 

It’s the same linguistic root as ligament. Throughout the ages we have always sought connection with higher powers in the sky or beneath the earth, or with ancestors living in other realms, and we have also bonded with one another in spiritual fellowship. This longing to transcend our bodies--to transcend our shit--to feel connected to something bigger than self, will always be with us.

 But why not locate these feelings of worship and deference to the divine somewhere within the Earthly whole? Somewhere holy that is right here right now?

We are all connected going back to the beginning of the Cosmic Mystery.  I don't understand it--the Spiritus Mundi--but this feeling of belonging to the Whole is nonetheless very immediate, and experienced, and known. It becomes a part of my fabric, the part that most deeply celebrates the fact that I am alive, the part that sustains me through discouragement and loss. 

Thank you Angel Falls- Stevie