The Jungle Trail

Everyone who came to visit us wanted to see the jungle, so we created a short, half mile makeshift trail through a section of the primary growth jungle behind Neddy and Augustina's place. It took the hiker through thick primary growth jungle, then by the place where Mark and I caught the barba amarilla (so I could stop and tell the story), and then over a small gully on a giant dead tree that formed a bridge over the gully. From there it went through an area where we usually saw spider monkeys in the trees, and then completed the loop back to where we started. The entire walk would take a couple of hours because of the frequent stops to quietly watch different animals we spied from the trail.
When my mother, and two of my sisters, came to visit we took them for a walk on this trail. It was when we were first trying to create the trail, and the path was still not well defined. It was easy to lose your bearings when walking through primary growth jungle. After walking for a while, and marking trees as we went, we finally came back across a previous tree mark. We had been going in a circle. Not a very impressive display of navigational skill for "jungle boy" in front of his family.
My mother is neither very tall nor athletic, and was an inexperienced hiker. I remember having to boost her up onto the tree bridge, an old fallen tree that ran over the gully. I gave her a long stick to help her with her balance. She had a handful of flowers, which she had picked along the trail and refused to put down, in one hand and the long stick in the other hand. A few moments later we all heard a splat. Mom had fallen off the log and face down into the mud. No one ran to help her right away; everyone was too busy laughing and taking pictures of our mother caked with mud. My mom was a real trooper during the walk, and never uttered a single complaint. She has always had such a zest for life. I figured that if she could make it around this little adventure trail, anyone who we brought out could as well.