Mannyelanong - Where Vultures Poop

So I climbed a hill this last weekend. Me, my 51 year old boss, Richard, his 9 or 10 year old son and 3 teen aged girls, who have befriended me in my neighborhood.  We were picked up at 7 a.m. and drove 15 minutes to the base of the hill and headed straight up the side of it. Richard is no nonsense and I had been forewarned by the previous volunteers that he is the best one to take me up there, but that he goes like a bat out of hell. If hellbats were to actually climb things instead of presumably flying to the top.  Come to think of it, maybe we did fly up there, it went so fast. 

I had my day pack full of food for the kids and water on my back.  It and my knit cap conveniently got caught on every low hanging branch and bush we scrambled under, but at least it wasn’t an eye.  There were no well-worn human type pathways, only goat and monkey droppings to show us who was who in the hill climbing hierarchy.  Yeah, that’s what we were climbing. We saw a bunch of monkeys up ahead of us on the hill early on. Far enough away that we could never catch up to them, of course, even if we could have, which of course was never to be.  The climbing was fun, but a bit hard on the old ticker.  We would stop and rest once or twice in the whole hour, mostly so we could take off garments, and pack them away. Or yes, to make sure my heart hadn’t jumped out of my throat and been left on the rocks somewhere, to be forgotten but then sorely missed later.

I didn’t have time to take pictures on the way up, not wanting to be left behind in the seemingly mad dash up the hill. What was our hurry??  Oh, Richard had to be back in town by 10.  When we got to the top, it was well worth it and the view was spectacular even if you had to be sure not to forget you were standing on a very small space and could easily fall 100 feet before hitting anything remotely soft like a thorn bush. Assuming the bouncing off the rocks didn’t already make your landing surface a moot point.  We sat at the top and I served the kids bread, apples and hard boiled eggs for what was most assuredly their break-fast.  Then, after about 15 minutes, we were off again, headed down hill.

The real reason I will never climb Mt. Everest, or Kilimanjaro or any other oversized hill is because of the trip down. They never talk about that aspect. It’s always about the summit. But climbing downhill, especially with bad knees and now overtaxed quadriceps ain’t a cake walk. It could be a long downhill role/bounce.  Richard went easy on us so we didn’t have to try to maneuver down the same rock faces we climbed up. Instead we followed gulleys, sans water, with lots of loose rocks and boulders and tree branches to grab hold of for balance and to stop freefalls.  Jeez, this was actually fun. Once we were done I looked back up the hill. It is called Manneylelang which loosely translated means the “hill where vulture’s poop.” Nice. Didn’t see them or their poop, but how cool is that to say you climbed a hill where vultures poop.  Okay. Maybe not, but its true. All of it.