last weekend I went to Cajas with Claudia and her friend Micktie, Cajas is a very large national park to the west of Cuenca. We decided that we would go and stay over the night in the tent and do a bit of hiking, we took the bus and after about 3 hours it dropped us of at the rangers lodge, where there was also a refuge that you could stay in, once we had paid our entry fee we asked the ranger about the best camping sites but he informed us that it was too boggy to camp at the moment and that we would find it very hard to find anywhere to pitch a tent, so we decided to stay in the refuge.

Once we had put our bags in the room we decided to have sommert to eat before hiking around the lake that was near the refuge, we had ham and a baguette, I used my Swiss army knife to cut a piece of bread , no problem, Micktie (Claudia's friend) cut a piece of bread, no problem but then we came to Claudia, lol , Claudia did not look at the knife when she picked it up and after a few seconds said to me “martin this knife is blunt” I said it cant be its razor sharp and when I looked at her cutting the bread she had the sharp side of the blade against her finger and the blunt end on the bread, the whole time pushing down on the the bread and pushing back and forth in a cutting motion, and with every movement the blade going deeper in to her finger (which she had not noticed!) lol, luckily we had a first aid kit with us so I cleaned up the wound and put butterfly stitches on to it, once we finished eating and performing first aid we set of on our first days hike, the pathways that you have to follow sometimes got quite tough and Claudia kept slipping on the mud (she only had trainers on) which was very entertaining, she was walking along like she did not want to brake a nail or dirty her hands so she kept ending up on her arse.

While walking round you get to see some amazing views of the mountains which surround you wherever you look, with beautiful waterfalls around every corner, it must have took us about 3 hours to get around the lake and by the time we got back (about 5.30) to the refuge it was starting to get dark, now the refuge is very basic, bunk beds, toilet and that's about it, no tv, radio just beds, and by the time it got to 6pm it was pitch black out side so there was nothing to do but go to bed! So we all got in to our sleeping bags and ate some of the food we had brought, while we were eating Claudia decided that we should tell scary story's as we were in the middle of nowhere and it was pitch black!, so we decided that as it was Claudia's idea she should start, but the time she had finished telling her storey about a woman from Mexico who travels around South America killing people in there sleep she had scared herself so much that she was nearly crying, it was so funny so for the rest of the night we just kept telling her “there's the woman” and without fail every time she would scream. Once we got bored of frightening Claudia and had ate all the food we went to sleep.

The next morning we woke up at about 7am and headed out for another hike before we seat off back to Cuenca, we decided to go along a different path, while we were walking we seemed to have gotten of the path but it was not really a problem coz we were not that far from the refuge, now Claudia had to be the worst hiker, lol first she decided that the best type of shoes to hike in was trainers, and the puddle we came to was a little bite deeper than she expected, to the point that her whole foot vanished in to the mud!!, and when she pulled it out it was just a big ball of mud. Then she kept walking with her hand in her pockets, so every time she slipped or lost her balance she ended up flat on her arse, now this was very entertaining for Micktie and me, until she decided to pull me down with her right at the top of a big slope, we ended up sliding about 15 foot down a muddy slope, because we had gone off the path we came to a point were we had to cross a wide stream, now for me and Micktie this was no problem but for Claudia it was too big a challenge, even though it was a shallow stream, in the end I had to stand in the stream and spend about five mins trying to arrange large rocks across so that she could get across.

We had decided to get back to the refuge at about 1pm so that we could wait for a bus to take us back to Cuenca, the problem was that the ranger told us that there had been a landslide about 70 miles away that had completely blocked the the road so there was no buses coming or going so the only way for us to get home was to hitch-hike the 3 hour journey, by this time the rain had got harder and we were stood at the side of the road waiting for any vehicle to come along we must have been waiting about 30mins before the first car came, and we were all at the side of the road with our thumbs out but the man in the passenger seat just shook his finger side to side this went on for about the next hour but no one was willing to give us a lift, in the end guy and his son came by in a pick-up truck and said that he was willing to give us a lift but he only had room in the back of the pick-up, we were very OK with this as the rain had not subsided so we got in to the truck and started the 3 hour journey back. Now I think this guy must have been in a hurry coz he was doing about 65mph around the mountain roads the three of us were sat in the back in hysterics, just at the fact we had to hitch-hike and it was still raining and we were all trying to hunch up and stay low trying to stay out of the wind and the rain, it had to be one of the most enjoyable journeys so far!.