The Rest of the Story- Mt. Patmos

We hiked out Wednesday morning, the 31st, and it was such a beautiful day! After 30+ inches of rain, all the dust and loose dirt was washed away, leaving all the colors bright and clean. Of course the trees and plants were wind battered, but the air and earth were so clean and bright. I saw colors in the rocks that I never thought existed there, great streaks of red rock that were normally covered in dusty dirty brown. I fancied that those big red streaks were where a dinosaur was squashed in the flood and fossilized! Not really, but it was something to laugh about! We loaded up the trucks and headed out, Jeriah and Michael driving. They have both driven over everything that is passable with a vehicle (and some that weren’t), so I wasn’t nervous about the trip out. A couple of the others were nervous- to a degree! We had had men fix the two washed out places in the road to the riverbed, and the one place was so steep that I could not see the hood of the truck (I was standing in the bed, right behind the cab). It was interesting to say the least. We arrived at the river, and there it was roaring away through a long S shape, fairly deep, and very bouldery. I know that is not a word, but “rocky” doesn’t describe it. We had hired 6 men to come with us and walk ahead of the trucks, clearing boulders away and making a place to drive. We had to cross the S part four times in two or three hundred yards, and each crossing was difficult. The first one, just needed rocks moved. The second was deeper, and had even bigger rocks. I’m really surprised that the men were able to keep their feet while rolling rocks away! The first truck roared through the water, but the second got hung very firmly on a rock. There was no going anywhere. The water was up to the bottom of the doors, so you can imagine how it was with a whole bunch of men trying to push the truck off the rock. It didn’t work. We finally backed up the other truck and try to pull it off. No go. So we backed up farther, and pushed it bumper to bumper, yay! This time it worked! But oh no! now the first truck spun out, it’s wheels just sinking into the loose gravel of the river bottom. All the men got behind and pushed, and out it went, towing along the second truck too. That was only the second crossing. The third wasn’t so bad, but the second truck again spun out in a gravel bed and had to be pulled out. All this time, we had been crossing the river pretty much straight across, but the fourth time was a DEEP narrower spot. No driving straight across this one! Before each of these crossings, the men all stood at the edge surveying the area and talking over the best place to try. They finally decided to drive with the flow for a short way, and gunning the engines both trucks pulled safely out the other side. The rest of the way, was talked over, cleared, crossed, and repeated more times than I remember. The water kept getting deeper little by little, till we were hearing reports of it being muddy and deeper and uncross-able close to Jacmel. We reached the road Michael hiked up over the mountain, and decided to try getting out that way and not risk being stopped by the river father down. The road was steep, and it had a few places to fix before we could proceed, but we finally made it to the top. It was SO wonderful to finally be on the top of another mountain looking back over the swollen river. The rest of the trip was uneventful as far as Haiti traveling goes.

And that dear friends, concludes my tale. Here are some pictures that hopefully are like the proverbial “thousand words”!