Cerro Cumpleaños!

    This weekend, I went on another hike with some friends from the program. We decided to try a hike in Cacheuta, where another friend had already been and told us about. We got bus tickets and left from the terminal early in the morning. After an hour on the bus, we arrived in Colonia Suiza, and then tried to find the hike. The bus dropped us off on a dirt road in the middle of the desert. There were a couple restaurants near the road, but no trailhead. Instead, we saw somewhat of a dirt road and a sign that read, "peligro de muerte" which means danger of death! So clearly we went to check that out, and we found a river (it was only dangerous at that part because it was an acequia type of situation with wires near the water). But we crossed a bridge over the river and started to try to find a trail. We saw the mountain that we thought was Cerro Comision, which we wanted to hike, and decided to try to find our way to the mountain, continuously thinking we would find a trail on our way. We ended up following a dried up riverbed for a while that was taking us closer to the mountain. We were hiking through mostly sand, but also thorny bushes and a bunch of weeds, and when the river bed would turn in a direction away from the mountain, we would bushwack it for a while towards the mountain until we found another sort of trail/riverbed. We found a road at some point, but that ended too. It was very confusing because we were very convinced that the mountain we were trying to hike was Cerro Comision, but I knew there was an actual trail for Cerro Comision, so after a while we realized we were just hiking up a random mountain. At this point we were dedicated to get to the top, and ended up hiking up some pretty steep slopes which involved some rock scrambling and making our own trails. We followed a lot of trails that looked like animals walked there a lot, because the were somewhat packed down, with a lot of horse or cow poop all over. Our legs were getting very beaten up by all the weeds and rocks and thorns, and I was really glad I chose not to wear shorts. The whole way up I kept thinking that I had no idea how we were going to go back down without slipping in the dirt and rocks.

We reached a couple false summits, ascending really slowly as to not fall on the rocks, had a picnic at the top of one, and kept going until we finally reached the top. It got sandier as we reached the top, which was much better than trying to climb up the rocky slope. We confirmed that we did not hike Cerro Comision because I know from pictures that Cerro Comision has a sign on top with its name, and there was no sign on top. We'd all hoped that we would find the real trail at the top, and maybe we had just started on the wrong side of the mountain. Instead, we conquered a new mountain, and named it "Cerro Cumpleaños" because this hike was in celebration of Skylar and Amanda's birthdays on Thursday and Friday. 
At the top, we decided to try the other side of the mountain for our descent, in hopes that it would be less steep and rocky. The top was still sandy, and we pretty much skied down sand for a good chunk of the mountain. That was followed by a few really steep hills that involved a lot of maneuvering very carefully. I fell at one point when the rock underneath me slid, because the ground was really soft material for most of the mountain. I flew forward a bit, but luckily no injuries. Finally at the bottom, after the treacherous parts, we had to follow the riverbed back to the road. On our way we found a cave in the mountain that looked like the beginnings of an old mine. We explored it and found a couple tunnels that ended after a few feet. We also had to duck under some wires and luckily ended up back where we started. And celebrated with some beers and empenadas at the restaurant at the bottom of the mountain. It was fun making our own path, but I really want to return to Cacheuta to hike the real Cerro Comision. I checked Google maps after, and we had been really close to the start of the trail. We just walked in the wrong direction after getting off the bus. Next time!