The ecstacy of gold

I thought yesterday was the day of my life.

Midmorning today, I decided to go for a run, this time staking out a route on gmap-pedometer – haphazardly, though, as many of the roads here in Punta don’t have names, and some don’t even show up on Google Maps.

Upon leaving, it soon became more convenient just to run along the beach again. Not entirely preferable, as depending on the segment of the course the sand can get pretty dense, but obviously quite beautiful.

Once I hit the end of the beach, I began to lose my motivation to stick with a consistent pace, and eventually decided to slow down and explore some of the trails in the woods.

The initial route will take you to a rather developed abandoned army base:

If you go a bit further, you hit the main road that parallels la playa, but that’s means you’ve gone too far, and missed out on a handful of incredibly peaceful lagoons:

And then, this other trail, which wanders for a bit, before, right out of Exodus, the reddest swamp you’ve ever seen:

No artifact of photography.

Now here’s the thing. I had heard vague legends of a “mango forest” somewhere in the area. Such an exotic thought, you can’t really even conceptualize it until you see it.

And then, I did.

It wasn’t a forest in the sense of mango trees on all sides, though it may have become one if I had gone further down the trail. But seriously, plodding through the woods, coming upon a red swamp, vague legends of mango forests in mind, this, my friends, was all you could ever ask for.

There was only one tree, with a few low-hanging fruits and a number of groundlings scattered below. But just imagine walking down a concrete path, and then suddenly realizing you were on a yellow-brick road.

The remarkable unveiling of a timeless wonder, the immediate feeling of accomplishment, the sheer joy at the sight of the fruits of your laborious trudge through the (veritable) desert, is matched only by Tuco’s arrival at the site of imminent treasure in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

Unlike Tuco, I got to keep it all.