Pam recounts the journey of special project X-Ray Papa

We were a special project – X-Ray Papa. But really, I’d like to think of us as X-Ray WOW. And now looking back on the last 13 days of our journey through the northeast of Nicaragua I think we certainly earned that praise.

By the end of Phase 1, I’d been asked if I would like to be part of the recce team to scout a new trek in Nicaragua for a future expedition. We would be led by James and joined by former host-country venture, Sofi.  My main role was as interpreter; we wouldn’t just be guided by 30-year-old topographic maps and a compass throughout the trip but also by directions from local folk. We would have to knock on doors to ask for board and water, sleep in schools, churches, community centres; any place, really. Always game for a challenge, I happily accepted the role – I didn’t think it was an option anyway because a Spanish speaker on the team was crucial, although Sofi is Tica, but hey, two is better than one.

Setting off in Bravo 1

Volcan Momotombo

With Bravo 1 team

The wonderful lake, where this trek should theoretically end

The thought of covering 200km in 10 days, mostly on foot did freak me out a little bit. Seeing the battle scars of the other trekkers from Phase 1, I had vivid images of painful blisters and my toenails falling off from too much boot abrasion. I asked every medic on expedition for foot care advice.  You can never have enough zinc oxide tape so I literally mummified my feet. Dr Sarah’s advice probably saved my fragile size 37 trotters – daily dressing, apply talc at night and be liberal with the Vaseline.  Later on I would extend to taping my hips and my shoulders too.

Bound feet for protection

We set off to cross the border with Bravo 1. It was an easy few days. We spent a night at Leon, had a lavish dinner (I qualify that all things are relative), and we circled Volcan Momotombo, the beast that we would have to conquer in about 10 days. The drive ended in the village of El Rodeo, Miraflor where we spent the night with X-Ray 7; and from where the real journey would begin. 

We were dropped off at EL Coyolito, a village just 3km from EL Rodeo, at about 6am the next day.  We headed for Las Brisas, a mountain 1,600m above sea.  James did not ease us in and I had a first taste of what trekking with a high-octane mountain leader was like. We did 22km that day and it soon hit me that this wasn’t going to be a hike for sissys. We beat another 20k or more on the second, and the third, and the fourth, well you get the picture. It was on day three, during a coffee break from the grueling 25k hike we were to do that day that we realized the hardest was yet to come. James took out the maps and showed us that we had only done a quarter of the trek. We spent the night in El Llano with a lovely Nicaraguan family. It was also the day that Sofi ran into foot complications … pobre cita…  A huge blister had formed beneath her big toe and its nail was threatening to fall out.

The cow whisperer

A rare siesta for James

The fourth day got even tougher for us two muchachas. I took a fall and bruised my knee although nothing serious, and Sofi hit her dreaded wall. James had an unwavering will to push the limit and I tried to keep up, although hardly ever able to match his stride.

It was hard but I never once felt like giving up so I kept pushing it. It wasn’t always fun, though and some days were harder than others because I felt like I was battling it alone. However, being awoken by James’s coffee and porridge every morning did help to ease the beginning of each day. The nights always rejuvenated me because we never failed to encounter the kindest Nicaraguan families willing to share their humble homes with us. Being invited into a Nicaraguan home, to share their food and shelter and chatting with the family were some of the best moments of the trek. I remember Rafaela, who offered us a night at her sister’s house which was near a pond in which we swam. It was a real treat to have fresh fish and to laugh at the irrepressible curiousity of her little girl who was fascinated by my short hair, foreign accent and belly button piercing.

We busted on to La Mojarra on day six and then got a ride to Tamarindo by a driver named Chupahielos which literally means “ice-sucker”. Amusing names, the Nicas give themselves but it seemed appropriate, under the sweltering heat. We then caught a bus to Malpaisillo and then to El Papagonal to meet our guide, Payin, for Volcan Momotombo. On the bus, we got to chatting with Maria Ines who by a stroke of chance turned out to be the sister-in-law of Payin. Our shelter for the night was sorted.

By then I began to sense the creeping fear from the thought of our colossal hike up the 1,297m volcano. But there was little time to fret. At 4:30am the next day we made our way. It took us two hours to get to the base of Momotombo and we had to bushwhack through a lot of terrain. It was a three-hour steep and hellish climb with me mostly on all fours. The thick sulphuric gas at the top stopped us from lingering on for more than 15 minutes at the summit. But I remember thinking, that this was the craziest thing I had ever done. It was so satisfying to know that we made it to the top. We hurried down by 20m from the peak to stop for lunch and enjoy the view of Momotombito, a smaller volcano on an island on Lake Nicaragua. Descending Momotombo felt like an eternity but it was made easier by chatting to Payin. He told me about how he fought with the Sandanistas in the civil wars when he was a young man of 18. He spent three-years of guerilla warfare in the jungle. Now weathered and 43, Payin has no steady income after being laid off by a farm where he used to work.

I did it mostly like this

Payin, our guide

We got back to Payin’s by 3:30 pm and were told that we’d made a record climb and descent. No one had ever conquered Momotombo in such a short time. I guess so far, no one has had walking-machine like James leading their expedition!  We spent another night with Maria Ines and her family, cooking dinner and watching Latino soaps. I politely declined a marriage proposal from her 20-year-old brother, pointing out the huge age gap between us, to which Maria cheekily remarked “Para el amor, no hay edad.”

The next day we beat a path for Leon for our bus back to Costa Rica. Our last test of the trip was one of patience as we had to wait for a dreary four hours in the sun for our bus. But we were duly rewarded with executive class and meals on a coach back to San Jose.

The experience has been altogether stupefying, awesome, incredible and insane. I left for Nicaragua with nail-biting apprehension and fear, but returned feeling like Demi Moore in GI Jane.--Pamela Martinez