the well to hell
Contrary to popular belief, the road to hell is not paved with good intentions.
Stephen King believed it was paved with adverbs. And as much as I lean toward agreement with him in his distaste for their gratuitous use, you won’t find them on the road to hell either. That is, unless you’re referring to a very, very, very, very, very, very “lovely”—and when I say lovely, I mean hot, dusty, and miserable 10-minute walk to a secret watering hole.
The sad truth—as many of us stumbled upon today—is that the road to hell isn’t paved at all. It’s a too-narrow-for-a-normal-car-rocky-lined-with-thorns-on-both-sides dirt path in the middle of fucking nowhere, Portugal. No really. The name of the town, reliably translated by an app I downloaded just before we left, is “fucking nowhere.” I know because this app was developed by the same brilliant minds who created my weather app, What the Forecast. That’s WTF for short, so it must be true, right?
Okay, so that isn’t the name of the town. At least I don’t think so. It could be. But true or not, that’s where we found ourselves, and our “lovely 10-minute walk” had us all thinking WTF only halfway there, or about 17 minutes if you’re counting.
That was right about the time we got another sign things weren’t quite like the brochure. Killer goats were guarding the path. Killer goats. With bells. A whole mini herd of them, just lounging around waiting to pounce on unsuspecting hikers and aspiring swimming hole afficionados.
It’s possible these goats had already filled their kill quota for the day. Or maybe they weren’t killers at all. But they were definitely goats. One goat was hiding in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be injured. Just waiting for someone to get close enough. We didn’t know it was evil until Kim poured some water on it to cool it off. It jumped up like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. I could’ve sworn it even hissed at us. Do sheep hiss? Do goats? I also could’ve been delirious from the heat.
We eventually escaped the goats, but we also ignored this sure sign of impending doom. They may not be sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads, but goats with bells in the middle of nowhere has to be a sign that some secrets should remain secrets.
At this point in the story, I think it’s appropriate to pause and wonder on paper why we didn’t just let Chris plan all our excursions. Or at the very least, follow his lead a bit earlier in the journey when—after somehow escaping its clutches—he was headed away from what we now refer to as the “Well to Hell.” Why didn’t we just turn around and follow him to yet another majestic Portuguese beach? Because at that point, we were on a quest. That’s why.
We had invested far too much time when we were so close to... close to... a murky pond with a giant boulder in the middle of it, resting beneath two sentries I’ll call Adam and Eve, who had set aside their fig leaves to avoid those pesky tan lines.
It was just a few moments later when I started to hear things like, “Well, we’re here now, we may as well go in.” And the more practical, “Let’s eat lunch and then head to the beach. Great idea—the baskets will be lighter, then.”
I wasn’t up for lunch—maybe because of the appetizer of dust and bugs I literally inhaled during our walk to the well. And I definitely wasn’t feeling an urge to swim, so I bent down and introduced myself to a little puppy named Prince.
“Hey buddy. What brings you all the way out here?” I asked.
“My dumbass humans,” he replied. “Someone told them about a secret swimming hole, and they just had to see it. Humans are so gullible. And the name’s Prince, not Buddy.”
“We fell for it too,” I said.
“Crazy, right?” he offered. “I’ve been exploring a little, and I think the entrance to hell is just on the other side of that big boulder.”
“No shit?” I asked.
“No shit,” he answered. “I overheard one of those goats talking about it on the way in. I speak a little goat. I’m not fluent or anything. Just enough to be conversational.”
“Damn,” I replied. “I guess you never know when a skill like that will come in handy. Thanks for the head’s up.”
“I know, right?” he said. “My pleasure. By the way... you don’t have any bacon in one of those baskets, do you?”
“Sorry, Prince,” I replied. “It’s pretty much all vegetarian with this group.”
Just about then, Adam and Eve got up and dove off the back of the boulder, presumably to let Satan know he had more guests and to throw a few more ribs on the firepit. 30 seconds later, Diana escaped from the depths talking about a snake swimming right next to her. One more data point as far as I was concerned... I’ll ask Kim to make a spreadsheet about it later to be sure, but I’m already convinced.
The return trip seemed to go much faster, which I attribute to our excitement about leaving, and because I drive a little faster than Kim does. The fact you’re hearing this tale now means we all survived. Well, most of us for sure. The next day, someone said Diana had left the retreat. But she was swimming with that snake, so... who really knows?
