Last
week I promised to tell
you more awesome (and sometimes scary) stories about living in South America’s wild
open territory in the middle of nowhere.
Today we’ll
take a brief walk from our house, through a low jungle area, to el lago, the
lake. (See photos below.) Countless escapades happened there. Renowned as the venue for high
adventure, pranks, romance, and sometimes fear—my, oh, my, if that lake could
talk, what stories it would tell!
El lago, the site of swimming, sailing, water
skiing, and washing the dog.
A place of
canoeing and hunting for orchids and monkeys, a place for fishermen to reel in pirañas
(piranhas), dogfish, and silver dollars.
A backdrop
for sunrises and sunsets in bronze, pink, gold, and purple.
A setting for
skinny dipping in the moonlight.
At el lago, howler monkeys yowled high
in palm trees and frightened little boys and girls. And full-grown boys and
girls, too. Howlers let out eerie, loud calls, and their bulging eyes spooked a
lot of people. For most of us, howler monkeys were unseen creatures that woke
us up at sunrise. They didn’t live near our house, but we could hear their
calls which, in the distance, sounded breathy, breezy, whooshy.
The lakeshore
hosted birthday parties, picnics, campouts, school parties, baptisms, and
glittering Easter sunrise services.
It was a place of sunburns and mud fights
and rope swings, of squawking parrots
and chirping frogs and singing birds
and palm fronds clattering in the breeze
and symphonies played by countless insects.
The lakeshore would one day witness a
murder, but it would also witness a wedding for a lovely bride and one of
Lomalinda’s young men, all grown up.
Matt,
Karen, Dave, and everyone—except for me—cooled off in the lake despite the
stingrays that lived there. Yes, stingrays. Big stingrays.
Before
entering the water, swimmers slapped the lake’s surface with a board or tree branch
to drive the critters away.
But
if humans forgot and invaded their territory, those monsters defended
themselves with their stingers—slashing a swimmer’s feet, leaving him writhing
in pain while someone pulled out the venomous knife-like barb.
Deep,
long gashes became infected quickly in Lomalinda’s heat and required a thorough
cleaning, pain meds, and antibiotics. Sometimes patients had to fly to Bogotá
for medical treatment. Recovery could take months, always painful and slow.
People
admitted their fear of stingrays,
but
they went swimming anyway.
I don’t
understand it—
that’s just
too much adventure for me—
but then again, you already know I'm a foot-dragger.
But a lot of
people went swimming,
and they’re
still alive to tell about it.
C’mon back next week for more adventure stories!
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