A question for the R.A.T team. Through your journeys through south america and on courses/ expeditions held, what are your worst encounters/experiences/ pant staining moments?
Jeff and Mike should have a few stories. For me personally I have been very fortunate since I began heading to the jungle in 2011. Nothing really stands out as "scary". Just minor hiccups here and there that is all just a part of being in a third world country.
I don't know if I'm on the RAT team or not, but this one time in Colombia, the pilot couldn't get the plane on the ground. We were trying to land in Pasto, which at the time was guerrilla controlled territory. It's way down in the southern part of the country, near the Equator. The airport is on the top of this mountain. Come in too low and you face plant the mountain. Come in too high and you fall off the other side before you can get stopped. We were bouncing around like crazy, the pilot tried several passes and couldn't get it down. Then we tried from the other direction and he couldn't do it. When I heard in his voice that he was scared, I pretty much gave up. We were running out of gas but we limped over to Cali and finally landed. Jeff can tell you about the time I went screaming from a building in El Salvador during an earthquake. And then there was this time I was lobster diving at midnight in the ocean a few hundred yards off the north shore of San Juan and came face to face with a shark bigger than me. And one time in Romania, I had to drive on one of those roads you see that is wide enough for 95% of your truck and there's no guardrail and a 1 mile drop on the side. The driver had gotten drunk and couldn't even stand up. I didn't know where we were and I was driving some old Russian truck of some sort with a 1 candlepower headlight in the middle of the night. Sometimes, to make it through these things, you just gotta already believe you're dead and just make the best of it. One time Jeff and I chased an MS-13 assassin through some market in San Salvador for reasons that escape both of us now.
Of course you're on the team. It's your jet we are usually flying in anyway. Good stuff Expat. My third world stories are "well we got rained on and bug bit...".
I'm the newest to the team and have never been to South America so I have ZERO stories about that.... I have been a cyclist for over 30+ years....raced both Mountain and Road bikes for a number of years...hit by a cars 4 separate occasions...One of those was more scary than the others...my worst actually didn't involve a car but a CHOW...at 30+ mph...resulting in skull fractures and amnesia....but that one doesn't scare me bc I don't remember it or a few days after.. I was also a whitewater kayaker for 20+ years and experienced a few "mulligans" there...one vertical pin and one pinned by a raft, upside down, on the bottom of the river... Having grown up somewhat of an adrenalin junky I feel very blessed and fortunate to be on this good earth. Getting married and having 2 sons tamed a LOT of that urge for risk taking...
I was looking through pics the other day and saw a picture of one of those guys we caught up to in the market. Sucker had about 8 scars in his chest from previous gun shots. I was wondering after looking at all those Ms13 and 18th street guys we met how many are still alive today, if any. And about the lobster diving, well, we have a new trip on the books for that. Reckon that little black headed spanish speaking gal will go with me if you chicken out?
Haven't been to the jungle as much as Patrick, but never really been scared. I'm more comfortable there than here in the states at a concert or around a ton of people. When I fell while on rope and broke my ankle was a bit scary but the right mindset allowed me to improvise a splint and get to the hospital. To be honest, seeing Patrick naked was the most horrific thing I've ever seen- on or off the RAT team.