NARRATIVE WRITING: BETWEEN MARINILLA AND GUATAPE

NARRATIVE WRITING (Using of past tenses)

Between Marinilla and Guatapé.

BY: Luna Lily García

I want to share this story with you because it was one of the scariest days of my life.

It happened like 9 years ago. My brother was 8 years old and I was 12 years old. I was with my family in our farm in Marinilla. My brother and I were spending some days there because we were on vacations. So we had been in the farm for 5 or 6 days with my grandmother Martha, my aunt Janeth and her husband Jorge. That farm was very nice because it had like 4 rooms and my brother and I could play in the trees, search for guavas in a mountain, make bonfires in the night and play with a dog called “muñeco” that always arrived when we were at the farm. We also were there with our dog from Medellin “Lucas”.

On December vacations we (my brother and me) always spent some part of the vacations in Abejorral with my father, other part in Medellin with my mother who was working on those days and other part in Marinilla with my mother’s family: grandma and aunt.

Well, we were in Marinilla and my aunt decided that we should go to the Reservoir of Guatape to have a different day. So we went to Guatape in our “Lada” car (a Lada is like a jeep) but first we stopped by La Piedra del Peñol. This place has been a typical symbol of the East of Antioquia. There we took some pictures and we climbed up the big stone of El Peñol. My grandmother Marta didn’t climb the stone because she had a little problem in her legs so she got tired very easily. For that reason she waited for us in the first floor of that place while we were going up with my aunt and her husband. From the top part of the big stone there was an amazing view. In general, the landscapes of the east part of Antioquia are gorgeous, full of big and colorful mountains.

Then we went to the first floor of the place and we got into the car to Guatape. My aunt decided not to go to the central part of Guatape but to some farms there were in the surroundings of the reservoir of Guatape. We stopped in a little farm close to one of the bends of the reservoir. There, my relatives started talking with some people from the little farm and they said that they had a small boat and that they could lend us that boat to go around to the waters of the reservoir.

My aunt and her husband immediately said “yes”. The person said that his granddaughter could be with us in case that something could happen and that she also knew how to drive the small boat.

My grandmother decided to stay in the farm that was in a hill because she is scared of water. So we went down the mountain with the granddaughter that was more or less 11 years old. She took the boat and she said to my Janet, Jorge, Juan (my brother) and me to get into the boat. When we were in the boat it started to become full of water and we asked the girl and she said that it was very normal, that we shouldn’t be worried about it. My aunt said that we should be in calm if something happened because we were together. But when we were in the middle of that bend the boat started to sink and the girl jumped into the water and started swimming to the shore of the bend. The boat turned over and my brother and I were under the boat. I remember that the water was very cold and I couldn’t breathe. In my feet I felt a lot of big plants; those plants were like creepers that get stuck in our feet. I tried to take my brother by his hand but he knew how to swim. My aunt and her husband were trying to find us under the boat and Jorge could bring us to the surface of the water. I remember hearing a lot of voices up in the mountains and some guys from a farm went to the shore by running very fast down the mountain. They threw us some life jackets.

The girl was in the shore, very calmed. She was never in danger because when she felt that the boat was sinking she took impulse and jumped and arrived to the shore in minutes.

With the life jackets we could got to the shore and then we walked to get to the hill where my grandmother was. She was almost crying. She said that Guatape is one of the places that she won’t ever go again. And since today she never went there again. I remember her fear because when the boat was full of water she started running with our dog Lucas. When I asked to help with the story she said that it was one of the worst days of her life. That she felt like paralyzed and impotent because she was up in the hill, very far from the lake. That night she couldn’t sleep and we went back to Medellin the day after that: a sunday.

When I arrived to Medellin my mother said that at 11 am of that Saturday she felt so sad because she was feeling that something bad was happening to us. At 11 am of that Saturday we were at that bend or lake of Guatape’s reservoir. The sensation of drowning has been one of the worst I have ever felt.