A Corky Time

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I don't know if it was excitement or having slept too much the night before, but I had an awful time getting to sleep. This made our 4:30AM wake-up rather difficult for me. Fortunately, we packed everything the night before and met up with our tour group without incident. Our guides are Homer ("Jimmy"), Hebert, and Hilda. We have a large group of 19 very nice people. There are Scots, Aussies, Danes, Germans, and of course Americans. Our first day wasn't too strenuous, but it was a lot of fun just hiking and shooting the shit.

I am also very excited to have Scots in the group because I just love listening to their accent. Our entourage includes a Scottish father and his twin kids. One seems to take after a billy goat and the other is a very cute lass. In particular, I love the way the Cute Lass talks - it's really very very endearing. Does this make me a dirty old man?

Back to the trek. We hiked over some fairly flat terrain for 12 km. There were some short uphill stretches at the end of the day and I found myself feeling good. The high altitude wasn't bothering me too much. Maybe it had something to do with the cocoa leaves I was chewing. It's funny to see what the raw ingredient for cocaine looks/tastes like. Kinda minty in my opinion. Anyhow, at our first stop where we had lunch, I had an unfortunate incident occur. I was just standing by myself minding my own business when 2 girls from another tour group passed by me. One of them drawled out, "El banyo?". When I replied that the bathroom was down the road a bit to the left, she became very embarrassed and was surprised that I spoke perfect english. I suddenly realized that I was mistaken for a porter. Now, I know I don't dress the best, but c'mon. Jimmy saw the whole thing and had a laugh as well. Speaking of porters, they really do awe me. Each porter carries around 50 lbs. They all wear Teva-like footwear (w/o being Tevas) and were able to dash by all of us, reach our lunch site ahead of us, and set up lunch. Then after lunch, they would leave after us, pass us on the trail, reach our camp site and have our tents set up by the time we arrived - amazing.

So at dinner tonight, I had another embarassing moment. Since we had such a large group, the organizers included a couple bottles of wine for us. For some reason, I had the honor of uncorking the first bottle. I got the cork screw in, but didn't have the muscle to pull it out. So Jimmy took care of that. I was given a second chance. And again with 18+ pairs of eyes on me, I inserted the cork screw and as I was pulling it out... the cork snapped in half. Again, I let everyone down. Saggy Buns had to step in and represent properly for Colorado. My shame is endless.

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