The sound of a car engine shutting off awakens me from my slumber. I cracked my eyes and propped my elbows, looking around the car with half-opened eyes. Everyone was still asleep with Kayden’s snore filling the empty spaces. This was the first time I was the one to wake up before everyone else.
I looked at the car window and got confused. It was still pitch black outside. Yet I can see the silhouettes of the people from the other parked cars, through their faint camping lights. They tidied up the sleeping bags they slept in as more cars approached, filling up the parking lot of Hualapai Hilltop.
I ran my hands through the white soft carpet where the three of us girls slept at to catch a touch of Luna’s phone.
As soon as I felt the cold screen of Luna’s phone, I pressed its power button. Despite the blackness of the sky, it was already quarter past six in the morning.
This explains why people are tidying up and more cars are approaching. They are preparing for the long trail hike to Havasu Falls. I continued to observe from outside the car as I waited for the alarm Kayden set for us to prepare for the trek.
Last night, right after we ate at Mr. D’z. We used Luna’s credit card to buy the other missing necessary gears we needed for the hike. Such as our own water bottles, blankets, foods, and utensils to use for eating.
Thankfully for Kayden, his car was made for campings, and since the trek to Havasu Falls doesn’t recommend a day hike. We didn’t have to buy bigger gears such as a tent and sleeping bags, for he already has one at the car’s compartment. As well as folding chairs, a lamp, and a portable stove.
A squeaky voice of the singing Chipmunks replaces the snore of Kayden inside the car. I covered my one ear to reduce the high pitch alarm I am hearing as everyone groaned and switched on their sleeping positions, covering their ears with either their hands or a pillow.
Luna raised her head slightly with her hair nesting above. “Do you wake up with that every day?” she asked in her groggy voice as she sat up and wiped her eyes.
As soon as the first ray of sunshine struck the top part of the canyons, everyone was quiet for a while, contemplating the diverse scenic colors of the canyons exhibiting outside the car. Kayden finally clapped his hand. A sign for us to get our asses ready, stealing the little momentum we are sharing with the terrain scene.
The hike to Havasu Falls is not just a long trail hike. It is a strenuous and complicated trek because before we could get to the falls; it requires an eight miles hike to get to Supai Village where we can buy our ticket to the falls. So, to avoid wasting any more precious time, we carried our gears to our shoulders and started our trudge.
The sun was already up and the sky was a clear blue sky with little white clouds accessorizing it when we hiked the sandy trail. Along the way, we saw some horses by the side of the trail eating plants.
Asides from the chirping of the birds and thumping feet of the other hikers with us, Kayden and William’s complaints about not taking the horse service to carry our gears were heard at the back.
The horse service was costly, but that is not the reason we took our stuff with us. The motive was to challenge ourselves into hiking with our weighty bags.
Consider it as a rehearsal before you carry all the bad stuff the world offers at your back. And I love animals. Horses are animals and they are magnificent creatures. They don’t deserve hefty things on their backs.
But I reckoned it will not be the bulky stuff we carry that will challenge us. Instead, the patience we were willing to hold off with the simultaneous complaints from Kayden and William.
Erin let out a pissed off sigh and paused her trek and looked back to the four guys behind us, “Listen, before all of you complain. If you were a horse..”
Nico raised both his hands and cut off Erin. “I am not complaining.”
“Me neither and I don’t want to be a horse,” Damien added.
Erin looked at them. “Fine. Well, the two of you listen.” she pointed at Kayden and William. “If you were a horse, how would you feel carrying luggage that is not even yours? It feels bad, right? So then, we should leave the horses alone and carry our own stuff.” Erin lectured as she turned her back to the guys and continued to trek.
“But why can the horses get to chill and eat plants if they can help us carry these?” William complained from behind. I shook my head, trying to resist the annoyance from the two.
“You two have no right to be chill because you are not horses! Okay?!” Luna said while hiking as her voice echoed a little, “Now shut the fuck up and carry your own shits.”
“Geez, fine mom,” Kayden said.
I once again shook my head. I hope we are all still friends when we get to the falls.
The first part of the hike was a trek down. And though it seems very difficult to descend the slippery sandy ground of the trail, it was made easy because of the switchback road.
The aftermath of the trek down was the difficult one. A dry river bed carpeted with more gravel of sands and varieties of rocks greeted us once we finished the hike down. Bearing in mind that we were not in our proper hiking shoes, it made our hike much harder to deal with.
The more we trudged to the dry riverbed, there were more trees than of enormous boulders and narrower paths that made the people become thinner compared to the hike down. That ensued us in losing track of the trail several times, for we are just some dumb hikers as soon as we don’t have any lead of people we can follow ahead of us.
We stopped once in a while to give way to a swarm of horses trailing back to the Hualapai Hilltop, carrying luggage at their back.
After a long hour of hiking and losing trails for several more times, we finally saw an orange sign with an arrow pointing left that showed we were getting nearer the village. We stopped in front of the sign with our hands on our knees, several sweats dripping to our faces, and took a rest and dehydrate.
“You know, an average person takes thirty minutes to hike a mile. Considering this is an eight-mile hike, it should only take us four hours. But this feels like forever,” William yet again complained. Ladies and gentlemen, this is William being stupidly smart.
We all sighed, except for Kayden.
“He’s right,” Kayden acknowledged William as they both nodded at each other. I presumed he didn’t even know that an average person takes thirty minutes to hike a mile. He just agreed with him because they were both whining asses.
“My dumbass smart cousin, sure this will only take an average person a four-hour hike and that is if we were hiking on smooth terrain and with no hikers who complain so much. But this is not a smooth terrain. We are far from an average person and we have whining ass hikers in the group, for example, the two of you,” Luna said, pointing at William and Kayden.
With that, the two exchanged an argument with each other and started to catfight verbally. The rest of us watched them in dismay, yet with amusement.
“They are older than us, right?” Erin asked Damien, but it wasn’t him who answered her question.
“Yes, they are,” Kayden replied.
“Why do they act like kids?” Damien asked and preceded by Nico, “You sure they are related to each other?” Nico asked me.
“Crystal clear,” I said, giving him the okay gesture.
“Well, families ain’t perfect. Besides, where is the fun if there were no family members bickering at each other?” Kayden shrugged.
I thought of what Kayden said. Looking back, I never find bickering with family members fun. I have been doing that with my mom and it was never an enjoyment for me.
But maybe because I was an only child and knew none of my cousins to bicker with. And that, what my mom and I have was not just some petty bickering, it was arguments done by our own heartaches.
We carried on with our hike as we followed the arrow from the sign. Trudging further, the surroundings were becoming more of trees with the little hinting sight of canyons. The bird’s chirping changed to a rushing sound of water at rapid current.
A river bed cascading with a potent flow were the ones making the rushing sounds of water we heard from afar. The creek drifts the same way as the trail. And we, as inexperienced hikers who sucked in following directions, it served as our compass to the Supai village.
We continued our trek with the companionship of the resonating stream of the river bed. More trees field the surroundings along with big rocks and twigs of branches as the trail becomes confusing to us again. But that’s fine. We have a creek bed where we literally go with its flow.
Soon enough, we saw another sign that pointed us to a bridge above the stream that will lead us to Supai Village. After a few minutes of trekking, the enormous canyons were once again in plain sight as we walked to Supai Village.
There were few buildings in the village that included the registration place, a cafe, a lodge, and even a school. We also spotted several people lining up outside the registration and some waiting for the horse service they paid for.
It was already eleven in the morning; we were tired and despite not having breakfast before the hike; we weren’t that hungry but were so dehydrated. Hence, seeing the long line of the registration we rested for a minute as Damien walked around and played with the dogs running around the vicinity.
“Uh.. guys,” Damien’s voice ringed through our ears and we looked at him, “I think we have a problem. The people at the register have some kind of reservation number. Do we have any of that?” In unison, we all looked at William.
Long story short, a person is required to reserve his or her hike prior to his/her visit at the Havasu Falls. And with all the things we got on our bags, none of those is the key requirement for us to get our wristbands to hike to Havasu Falls.
“This is unbelievable,” Luna uttered, “C’mon, let’s at least eat at the cafe. There are Mexican foods there,” she said, walking towards the cafe.
All the sweats, the pain in our muscles, getting lost several times, and the fucking over four hours of hiking we bear through the heat of the sun were just for us to eat Mexican cuisine?
I heard a big sigh beside me. It was Damien. “I want to go swimming so bad, Ellie,” he uttered.
“Me too, Damien.” I sighed back at him as we follow the others to the cafe.
“Excuse me!” I heard a scream from afar. Damien and I both looked behind us to see a long-haired man waving at us.
“Do any of you know who Mrs. Donovan is? She left her seven wristbands by the registration.” The man asked us, showing the papers Mrs. Donovan filled up with black ink along with the seven wristbands.
I did a headcount of us on my mind.
We are seven.
I looked at Damien with my eyes gleaming as a light bulb popped above my head. I think I just found ourselves the most creative way we can hike our way to Havasu Falls.
Or might as well, I say, the most creative way we could all get to jail.