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First, a disclaimer: This post will have NO pictures. The subject is a digestive disturbance, so if you don´t want to hear about poo, don´t read this. There is also some minor profanity, as it relates to the digestive process. If you know me well, you know that I believe the bathroom has a door for a reason, and this is one of my least favorite subjects. Therefore...

A dedication: To Hobbit, my dearest friend, who dug a hole in a rainstorm for me.
Consider this your Christmas present. I know how much you LOVE to tell this story, and hear it told, so this is liscence to do so freely. You have been begging me to write a blog on this subject for weeks, so here it is.

The tale begins in Samaipata, Bolivia. We set out on a 3 day trek that was to take us through cloud forests, canyons and river crossings. The first day started well; we spent the day making our way through a valley and up a mountain covered in a forest of prehistoric ferns, as tall as tall pines, but with no wood or roots. It was a long day, trekking through ankle deep mud and climing over 1000 meters in elevation. We made camp in a refugio--a small house, over 100 years old, which had recently been graced with a new roof, but was mostly just a clay shelter on the side of a mountain. The local who was restoring the place and clearing out an area for a garden was done for the day, so he showed us where to get water, and the shovel (which translated means toilet), then he headed back down the mountain to his family.

So Hobbit grabbed a tree branch and started sweeping out the house while I cooked dinner. I had a headache, and my muscles were sore, but I didn´t think too much of it until later. After dinner it got dark quickly, and we sat and watched the stars and fireflies come out, and then a lightning storm coming over the mountain. We said goodnight to the guide (who was sleeping in another shelter) and Hobbit, our friend Laura and I rolled out our sleeping bags and went to bed.

A couple hours later, I woke up suddenly with a feeling of imminent disaster in the pit of my stomach. I frantically unzipped my sleeping bag, searched for my shoes in the dark, grabbed the toilet paper and ran outside. Well, almost. The hundred year old house has door frames that are about as tall as the middle of my forehead, so I smacked myself pretty hard, stumbled a bit, then stepped out into a full-on thunderstorm. The temperature had dropped from the pleasant afternoon warmth, and the light of the moon was gone behind the clouds, so I waited, shivering and clenching my butt cheeks until I could see the shovel by the light of a lightening strike. I headed into the bushes, and did what had to be done. I have never had such horrible diarhea. I burried my poo and toilet paper and stumbled back into the house (hitting my head on the way in).

"Hobbit! Are you awake?" I asked.
"No. What the hell are you doing?"
"I think I´m sick," I said. "Do you have some toilet paper, or water?"
"No. You´ll be fine. Go to bed." He mumbled and rolled over.

What happened over the next 8 hours is pretty hazy for me, but this is what I´ve piece together. About every 20-30 minutes or so, I raced against a disaster in my pants, out into a thunderstorm of epic proportions, to dig a hole in the dark, fill it back up again, and then crawl back into my sleeping bag. If this doesn´t sound terrible already, consider that everything that could possibly make the situation more miserable, did.

My muscles started to ache and cramp, and sleeping in a bag on a clay floor offered little relief. I started to burn up with a fever. The chills and sweats were helped along by the exposure to the cold, driving rain every time I exited the shelter, at which point I routinely slammed my aching head against the doorframe in my hurry to exit. I was desperately thirsty, and despite all the rain, had no drinking water left. At some point, Hobbit was woken up by my mumbling incoherently, and discovered my fever and distress. He headed out into the storm and got some fresh water (I don´t know from where) and came back to find me in a terrible state.

"My head hurts, my bones hurt! I can´t stop shitting!"
"Hey, you´re ok, I got you some water..." Hobbit tried to console me.
"No, this is bad." I started crying. "And now my socks are wet, and I can´t dig a hole because it´s too muddy! And it´s so cold!"
"You´re fine, you´re ok. Just lay down for a minute and I´ll help you."

And then, my dear friend Hobbit put his own sleeping bag over me, in my sleeping bag, grabbed the shovel and a headlamp, and headed into the storm. He dug me a hole deep enough to make it until morning, got me a new roll of toilet paper from his pack, and started feeding me ibuprofin. He slept under a towel since he gave me his sleeping bag. "We have a car coming in the morning," he said. "They were going to transport us to the next base camp, but we´ll take you back to town and to the doctor. You can make it til morning. You´ll be ok."

The hours until morning were almost unbearable. It was a perfectly designed torture. I shivered and sweated, shitted and ached. I lay waiting for minutes at a time, clenching my butt, waiting for the rain to let up, just a little. When morning came, I was full of hope, but my digestive tract was as empty as it´s ever been.

Hobbit woke up and headed over to talk to the guide about getting out. While he was out, the only thing left, the one thing that could make this all worse... it happened. Hobbit walked back through the door with his characteristic sunny smile and saw me standing in the doorway to the little side room.

"Feeling better?" he asked brightly.
"No!" I was horrified. "I am not better! Shit in my pants is NOT better, Hobbit! No!"
"No. No. You shit your pants. No."
"Yes," I wailed. "This is not good!"
Our friend Laura woke up. "Wait what´s happening?" She asked sleepily.

Hobbit headed for my pack, got me clean clothes and some cleaning supplies. Then he delivered the bad news.

"Listen, Sarah. Just don´t freak out now."
"Hobbit," I responded, "I cannot possibly BE more freaked out than I already am."
"The road is washed out."
"What does that mean?"
"It means... The driver that was coming to get us couldn´t make it up the mountain. No one can." I stared at him. "We have to hike out of here."
I just stared. He continued.
"The guide says it´s about a 2 hour hike, normally. We have to go over the mountain, but after the first part it´s on a gravel road and the end is flat."
"There´s no one coming to get us?"
"No, Sarah. They can´t. The only way out is to hike. We could wait here, maybe tomorrow they could get up, but even then, it´s not sure. We´ll empty your pack and carry your load. We are walking out of here."

Thus began a miserably long trek, over a mountain, in drizzling rain, with frequent poo-breaks, a fever and shaking, aching limbs. Hobbit cheered me on the whole way, secretly gleeful about the story unfolding before him. An adventure in the backcountry AND diarhea? What could be better! As he has often explained, diarhea is the funniest sickness.

I eventually made it to a waiting car, which deposited me at a hospital, where a doctor sent me home to the hostel to sleep for the next three days with instructions to drink and rest and eat simple foods. In the normal course of things, this would have been a mean sickness, but the circumstances were just so perfectly awful that I can´t help but laugh. Why can´t I get sick near civilization? But then, not all was terrible. I couldn´t have asked for a better friend for the situation; he did everything but carry me out of there.