The canoe trip cannot really be properly written about as one entity. I like to think of it as two separate events that happened to involve the same boat and river, and happen in sequence.
The first two days of the canoe trip were AMAZING. It was around 105 degrees, the water was green and murky but warm, the river was a little shallow but that was fine... We spent most of those days in our bathing suits, liberally applying sunscreen and paddling along, occasionally singing random things that came to mind, stopping occasionally on the Mexico or US side for lunch or potty breaks.
For the first half an hour of the trip, we had a Mexican man on a donkey occasionally meet us on the river, waving a bag over his head and yelling in Spanish. We had a few Spanish speakers on the trip, and one of them translated that he was laughing at the group of white women in canoes, and trying to sell us pot. It was kind of cute, in a mildly creepy sort of way.
When we entered the canyon, there was an old Mexican man living in a dilapidated hut with (I presume) his son, selling walking sticks. He had a beautiful singing voice, and sang to us an old classic song in Spanish. It resonated off the cliffs hauntingly, and as a group we all stopped talking, our paddling slowing as we floated into this majestic canyon to the unusual voice and melody. It felt like something out of a movie, it was so cinematic and amazing... Just remembering it sends chills down my spine.
The first night on the river was restless- the wind in the canyon is very hard, and battered our tent all night. There were flocks of wild horses around, and they would occasionally gallop by our campsite, whinnying and snorting. There was also an irritable donkey (there seem to be a lot of those in the south) that kept us up with frantic braying.
The second day went as well, we were all adjusting to river life. I was amused the first time one of us had the idea to go into the river to pee, instead of squatting in a bush. I tried it, and had the unusual experience of peeing in a river while 14 people waved encouragingly from the shore. It was... liberating, I suppose?
We ended the night at another campsite near a trailhead up one of the mountains. For dinner, Elise, Theo and I cooked a strange concoction of beans, rice, and canned vegetables. One of the canoes had sprung a leak during the day, and our whole food box was doused in Rio Grande water, which is definitely not safe for drinking. As a result, we lost a great deal of our food supplies.. It was unusual to ration to precisely- we had, of course, overpacked, we were never in any real danger of starvation, but you're much more careful about waste and servings when you've recently lost food.
The next morning, everything changed.
I woke up in a puddle of water, in a collapsed tent. At some point during the night, the poles had unstaked themselves and broken on me and Kristina, so we were essentially sleeping in a wet pile of green ripstop. We emerged from the tent to find that it was cold and raining.
In the desert, there is rain (a light sprinkle) and RAIN (a monsoon). To date that year, the area had experienced 2/10 of an inch of rain. The heavy rains don't typically come until late June.
Well, we must have brought some Michigan weather with us, because it RAINED.
We tried to wait it out, me and the other two unprepared women (we didn't bring windbreakers) huddling under the dining fly for warmth while everybody packed up. Group cuddling with stinky people becomes pretty awesome when you're freezing your butt off. Around noon, we realized that we had to go, cold and wet conditions aside, to make it to our pull out point the next day on time.
Joe gave us tent annexes to wear for warmth. I was doubtful that a thin piece of ripstop would keep me warm, but it did. I was very soggy, but mostly warm... Or warmer than I would have been, anyways.
We paddled down the river, singing and making strange jokes to keep our spirits up. I started speaking pirate for a while and became an aggressive canoer, paddling feircely past everybody else while telling them to, "Sod off, yee skurvy bilge-rat!" Another (usually quite reserved) group member incited laughter by shouting to a group of us floating near a rapids, "My nipples are harder than they've ever been!" Hey, you do what it takes when attempting to keep spirits up, I suppose.
We landed at our campsite and everybody was soaked and cold. It was probably actually somebody's private property, but regardless we set to work tearing down dead mesquite bushes and grass to light a wet fire. Technically, that's not allowed in the desert, but everybody was turning blue so bending the rules was important. Joe found a rock ledge that we could just barely squeeze the 15 of us under, and we started a fire to warm it and dry ourselves off.
I discovered my secret talent at gathering wood, every time I left I'd return with a huge bushel of wood.. At one point, Brock stated, "Jeez Irisi, what did you do, cut down the whole tree?" That night I was working blindly through the cold, and a few days later I realized that my legs were covered in bruises and scratches as a result... I'm rather proud of those wounds, actually.
That night, I had opened my sleeping bag out to spread over me and Kristina, and couldn't hide in it from creepie crawlies. I was sleeping near an anthill for some sort of biting ant, and they crawled all over me in my sleep, getting into my clothes. If I moved the wrong way, they'd bite. Six inches above my face was a rock surface with a bunch of spiders. My feet were literally almost in the fire, I was worried about the health and well being of my boots. I slept like a baby.
The next morning, it was raining again. We hit the river in our annexes once more, canoeing on with the silent numbness cold promotes. There was a little more bickering on that day, but thankfully at noon we arrived at our pull out point and got out of the river, carrying our gear and canoes to the designated area.
.... At 1:30pm, the sky suddenly cleared and the sun came out.
Go figure.
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