Before and after La Ruta Quetzal

I was a confident girl during my early teenage years, but after participating in La Ruta Quetzal, I felt like wonder woman. I lived in a tent for two months, camping through Central America and Spain with another couple hundred teenagers. We faced challenges and climbed mountains. We passed tests, kayaked down roaring rivers, and flew across the jungle’s canopy. We were left without lunch or dinner for punishment. We enjoyed fruit for rewards. We washed ourselves and our clothes in oceans and rivers. We suffered endless nights in wet sleeping bags at bellow freezing temperatures on top of mountains; and during the days, we collapsed of dehydration hiking for hours down endless trails. In a very Survivor style, cameras followed us: the ones that gave up and left crying, and the ones that held on.

When you reach the top of a mountain, after many hours of climbing and hiking, and see both views (the one you left behind and the other side), you earn your right to touch the clouds. You feel that if a mountain cannot stop you, nothing can. Before La Ruta, I used to give up before trying many things, especially those that were physically challenging. After La Ruta, I thought back to those days and said: “If I could do that, why couldn’t I do this.”

When you share treasures like a piece of bread when you have not eaten in a day (a day full of physical activities, that is,) or a chocolate bar when all you have been eating is rice and beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week, you understand the true meaning of communality. Before La Ruta, I thought I had shared a lot with my friends. But in La Ruta, I made friends to whom I will never be able to repay the favors, the hugs during chilly nights, the support when you feel like the altitude will not longer let you breath, the voices that accompanied you with songs that somehow made it possible for us to keep on walking.

When you know how much a scorpion bite hurts, when you know how fast your heart can really pound, when you know how many days you can go without bathing, you understand how trivial and unnecessary TV is. On the other hand, when you have to eat mud and bugs with your food in the dark, and constantly use latrines or take long walks away from the camp site to take a shit and then bury it, you appreciate the toilets and the refrigerators.

I was about to give up many times throughout those weeks. I did not comprehend how much I would have regretted giving up, until the months went by and I was able to look back at the experience and feel so proud of all I learned and everything i experienced during those weeks. More than changing my life, La Ruta changed the way I look at life, at challenges, at the opportunities we run into, at the blessings we often take for granted.