JMLS_Micronesia

« | »

Lost on the Tamilyog Trail

JBCraig | 03 July, 2008 23:30

Thursday was a nice clear day, and I thought some outdoor adventure was in line. Upon reaching the 4:30 quitting time, I made plans with Bill to do a little hiking on the Tamilyog Trail. The hiking trail chosen is an ancient stone path that connects Colonia, Yap, in the south, to the north shore of the island. I had never been on this path before, and I was ignorant of the challenge that I had volunteered the afternoon for. I was thinking only of exercise (“sport time”).

Bill drove us to the trail about a mile or so from his house, and he parked the car at the side of the road. Taking on the adventure, we headed up the steps and into the jungle. The terrain was flat at first with a couple of elevated bends rising above the taro patches as the path wound around. A little later the path turned into a series of steep steps. The steps ranged from 50 – 100 feet up at each incline. Every time that I thought we had reached the top, we would turn a corner and find another hill to conquer.

After reaching what I believe now to be the summit, we stopped and looked around for a minute. I could see the Philippine Sea on the west side of the island and the Pacific Ocean on the south and east coasts. We could really see how small the island was from this perspective. The scenes were magnificent, and I felt that I had achieved something just from being there.

Continuing on, we traversed several hills and valleys until we reached a fork. One path went up a hill to the left while another went strait along the flat area to the right. Mistakenly we decided to take a right turn. This path became narrower and narrower until we reached an area where you could tell vehicles were driven. We popped out near an abandoned factory of some sort and walked along until we reached the road. Realizing that we had taken the wrong turn, we decide to walk on the road to the other end of the Tamilyog and start from that end to avoid further confusion. This amounted to another mile or two in the beating sun.

Once we reached Target, a little store that is located at the town end of the trail, we re-hydrated and headed to the trail once again. This part of the trail was more lush and green. It was wide, and it looked like the trail was cut out of the jungle like a tunnel. We were constantly looking for the location of our earlier wrong turn to get our bearings of where we were. It was getting near dusk, and I thought we had a little over an hour of sunlight to complete the hike. I was right that it was enough time, but wrong about almost everything thereafter.

Eureka, The fork where we went wrong! We had to be going in the right direction! I felt that we were on pace and then out of the side of the trail emerged one large dog barking at us defensively. As we walked closer to the dog, another dog jumped out and joined in the barking. Still edging further a third dog popped out and brought us to halt. Normally the dogs in Yap are what I consider “low-riders.” They are small like Terriers, with a Chihuahua temperament. These three dogs were different. In the open jungle, Bill and I found the only damn pit-bull on the whole island. The three dogs were the biggest I have seen here, but we both knew that we must precede strait past them.

Bill tried the nice approach to call the dog; kneeling down to pet them. That didn’t seem to appease them very much at all. Nervously I squeezed my water bottle and the dogs winced a bit. Bill’s pace quickened and I sped up to avoid placing a gap between us. We steadily walked by them, and Bill’s pace quicken once again. I guess he knew that he just had to outrun me if things got hairy. Getting just past the dogs, they were on my heels. Having dogs of my own, I knew that they bite at the ankles when you run away from them, so I just tried to keep walking slowly (not really that slow). When I thought I was about to be had, I grabbed my water bottle again to make that crinkle noise. The dogs ran away and back to where they had come from.

Relieved that we had just avoided getting mauled by strange dogs in the Yapese jungle, we had a laugh and joked about the “near death” situation. I guess the dogs’ impact lasted longer than their bark. We proceeded to take the path strait into the jungle and missed an important and admittedly obvious left turn. The path began to get narrower until we were walking in waist-high brush. We knew that this was not the path that we had been on earlier, because we didn’t need a machete last time. We were heading west, and that’s about all I knew.

After a while, it was darker and the path disappeared. We were not on any path at all. Just when we didn’t know what direction we had come from it started raining. At that moment we decided to try to go back the way we came. Bill told me, “O.K Eagle Scout, use your skills to get us out of here.” It was dark, and being from Georgia, I didn’t know if what I knew applied here. I saw some light green grass that formed a line in the jungle, so I rolled the dice. It was the trail that we had been looking for! It was only 20 yards from where we were standing. This detour was very misleading because every little while we would see parts of a stone path, and think that we were going the right direction. Apparently Bill and I found some part of a lost stone path that probably had not been used in many years. It was getting darker and now everything was getting wet. We decided to go back to the road (past the dogs again) to avoid being in the jungle and further. On our way back to the imminent encounter with the carnivorous canines, Bill sees the turn that we missed.

We were wet, tired, sweaty, but not lost any more and on the path back. We decided to avoid the dogs and travel, yes, once again into the jungle instead of taking the road. It was getting dark now and we knew that we had to hurry. The relief of being on the trail was quickly overcome by the trail ahead of us. This part of the trail is the most treacherous. The same huge hills that we struggled with before when it was light and dry were now wet and in the dark. The moon was at half of its brightness, and I knew that the jungle canopy would block most of that light. Bill and I took every step as if we were walking on broken glass. I took the lead and tried to tell Bill when there was a step up, a step down, a stone bridge, and avoided mentioning the steep drop offs on either side. I was talking to Bill, but I was really calming myself down. My eyes were getting adjusted to the dark, but any wrong turn could end up with an injury. Any injury that impeded our ability to walk could have been disastrous. “Baby steps” I said while remembering the Bill Murray movie, “What about Bob?”

We still had about two miles after discovering that we were really on the right trail again. The walk was slow, steady, and hell on my ankles and knees. I imagined that people hundreds of years ago traveled this path the very same way (without the detour of course). Adrenaline had kicked in and I felt like Survivor Man or Bear Grillis. The buzz from the adrenaline rush and the fear of imminent danger was quickly washed away when we heard voices through the trees from the house near the entrance of the trail where Bill’s car was. We made it! It was dark and we were wet. But we were out and on our way back to civilization.

After this incident, we have agreed to a rule about the Tamilyog: only go in the first part of the day, and don’t go if it looks like it is going to rain.


General :: Comment (0) :: Permalink :: Trackbacks (0)

comments

 
Accessible and Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS
Powered by LifeType - Design by BalearWeb