Emmanuel Salas heard the snake before he saw it.
“There was that rattle,” Emmanuel, known as Manny, recalls to CNN Travel today. “Immediately, we jumped back.”
Manny tried not to panic, but when the snake came writhing out of a bush and proceeded to unfurl and stand alert, Manny felt the fear kick in.
“It looked like it was kind of aggressive, it was standing up,” he recalls. “We were all freaking out.”
It was early 2019. Manny and two friends were hiking back from the Bridge to Nowhere, a remote structure built for an abandoned 1930s highway project in California’s San Gabriel Mountains.
Twenty-something Manny was born in Mexico but grew up in California, and he was familiar with the state’s more hair-raising wildlife. But it was one thing reading about venomous rattlesnakes, and another thing coming face-to-face with one in the middle of nowhere.
“I’m terrified of snakes,” says Manny. “And we were on this part of the trail where it’s very narrow. On one side you have a clearing, with a bit of a drop and a steep fall. And then on the other side, you just have a whole bunch of bushes, so we couldn’t really go around the snake.”
Unsure what to do, Manny and his friends just stopped, silent and wide-eyed.
“We were just standing there, figuring out what we could do, how to try and scare it, when another group came up behind us.”
Manny turned to see three women, each with a backpack strapped to them, each looking confused. The trio was familiar – one of them in particular – and Manny realized they’d all been at the Bridge to Nowhere together earlier that day.
“Under the bridge you can go and swim in these pools – there’s a river running underneath,” explains Manny. “We’d all stopped there and swam for a bit.”
While bathing in the pools, Manny had been struck by one of the women. She’d been sitting on a rock, laughing with her friends in between snapping photos of the view.
“I remember thinking, ‘Damn that girl looks pretty cute,’ ” says Manny.
But Manny didn’t speak to her. And when Manny and his friends left the bridge, the women were still there.
But now they’d all unexpectedly reconvened to face down a rattlesnake.
Laura’s perspective
While she was sitting on the rock at the Bridge to Nowhere, Laura Binder didn’t really pay Manny Salas much notice.
And later, when Laura and her friends ran into Manny and his group on the trail, she didn’t recognize him right away.
Laura’s first thought was simply: “Why are those guys just standing there?”
Then she saw their expressions and realized something wasn’t right.
“Be careful,” said one of Manny’s friends. “There’s a rattlesnake literally right there.” He indicated in front of them, where the snake was still standing to attention.
Laura gasped. She was from Vienna, Austria, where there is no dangerous wildlife to speak of. California rattlesnakes were new territory.
Fortunately, Laura’s two friends were a little calmer in the face of danger. And Manny and his party felt some safety in their numbers increasing.
The two groups banded together to scare off the snake by stomping their feet, clapping and shouting. Eventually, the snake slinked off into the foliage, allowing the group to continue warily along the path.
In part because of the snake encounter, and in part because it was getting dark, Laura’s group and Manny’s group made the decision to hike the rest of the trail together.
As they put some distance between themselves and the snake, the hikers started to calm down, and the two groups introduced themselves as they meandered down the trail.
The path was just wide enough for the hikers to walk two-by-two. By coincidence, Laura and Manny found themselves next to each other, and they chatted as they went.
The two discussed their shared love of the outdoors, with Laura mentioning she was new to California. She’d moved there in early 2019 – leaving behind her home city of Vienna, where she’d grown up with an Austrian mother and a South Korean father.
“Since I was a baby, we went to so many different places, and I also studied abroad in Japan and in (South) Korea,” Laura tells CNN Travel today. “I love to travel.”
It was Laura’s desire to see the world that prompted her to move to California, to pursue a postgraduate degree at UCLA.
When Laura encountered Manny and the rattlesnake, she was “still kind of new in the city.”
She was in a relationship, but her partner didn’t live in Los Angeles.
“I was a little lonely, and I wanted to meet more people,” Laura recalls. “I think as a foreigner, it’s also hard to make connections that are not just surface level.”
At first, Laura and Manny’s conversation stayed pretty surface level. But soon they were talking about Laura’s life in Vienna and Manny’s experiences growing up in California. The conversation segued into rock climbing – and Manny and Laura realized they shared a favorite hobby.
Manny, who was single, wondered if his connection with Laura might have romantic potential. Then Laura mentioned her boyfriend.
“I was like, ‘OK, this isn’t going to go anywhere romantically, that’s fine. But I may have a new buddy to go with me to the climbing gym,’ ” recalls Manny.
“And then, at the end of the hike, when we got to the parking lot, Laura asked for my number.”
“I felt like we were vibing, but in a friendship way,” says Laura. “I didn’t know anyone who was a climber in LA. So it was just cool for me to meet someone who had the same hobby.”
The two hikers exchanged details, promising to meet up and climb together some time soon
Climbing together
Manny and Laura kept to their word and arranged to go climbing a few weeks after the snake brought them together.
Afterward, they went out to eat. One of Manny’s uncles owns a restaurant in downtown LA, and he took Laura there for her first taste of real Mexican cuisine.
“Mexican food is not very authentic in Austria,” says Laura. “So it was cool that Manny could show me that.”
It wasn’t long before the two met up again .
“And that’s when we started having really real, deep conversations,” says Manny. “It wasn’t something superficial.”
For Manny, it was during this second get-together, that the reality sank in.
“I began to realize, ‘I think I may catch feelings if I keep going with this friendship – and that’s not good, because she obviously has a boyfriend, and I respect that,’” he says.
So at the end of their second get together, Manny was candid with Laura.
“I was like, ‘Hey, it’s been cool hanging out with you. But, the more I get to know you, the more I realize that there’s potential for me to catch feelings. I respect that you are in a relationship, and I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be that guy. So I think we should just not hang out anymore.’”
It was, says Manny, “a little extreme” to cut off the friendship altogether. But he felt it was the right decision.
“I didn’t see it as anything other than a friendship,” says Laura. “I was really devastated, because I felt like we had a good connection. I’d finally made a good friend here, and he didn’t want to see me anymore.”
After that, Manny tried to consign Laura to the past. He figured he’d never hear from her again – that soon enough she’d be back living in Europe. He deleted her number from his phone.
Brought back together
Several months passed. Occasionally Laura and Manny thought about one another, both feeling a little sad about the friendship that could have been.
Then, in early March 2020, Laura visited her boyfriend – who lived elsewhere in the United States – and the two called it quits. Things between them didn’t feel right anymore.
“I came back to LA after visiting him and then two days later, the lockdown happened,” recalls Laura.
The coronavirus pandemic had hit. Now the United States was shutting its borders. Laura had to make a decision – return to Europe or wait out the uncertainty in California.
“A lot of my friends were other international students, and most of them had already gone back,” says Laura. “I really debated about going back home, because it was hard without family, and I didn’t really know what’s going to happen and how bad this was really going to be. … But something inside me was like, ‘No. I don’t want to give up yet. I feel like I worked so hard to build something here.’ ”
So Laura decided to stay in California. The first few months of pandemic life passed by, and she struggled with loneliness.
“I felt like I didn’t have any friends in LA, no one,” says Laura. “And then at some point I was like, ‘Wait, what about Manny? We had such a good connection.’ ”
It was late June 2020 when Laura dropped the guy she’d met on the hike a message.
“I didn’t text him with the intention of, ‘I want to get started with something,’” says Laura. “I was just really in need of a good friend.”
Even though Manny had deleted Laura’s number, when the message popped up, he guessed right away who it was from. He was surprised but intrigued. He wrote back right away.
“Then we talked a little bit,” Manny recalls. “I didn’t ask directly, but I’m thinking, ‘Maybe Laura and her boyfriend broke up?’”
Laura soon volunteered that information, explaining she’d been single for the past few months.
Manny wasn’t sure his feelings for Laura were reciprocated, but he figured he was now free to explore a friendship with her without guilt. The two continued texting back and forth, and Manny and Laura’s ongoing text conversation became a bright spot in both their days.
In one of his texts, Manny mentioned was planning a camping trip to Yosemite National Park over the upcoming July 4 weekend. When Laura mentioned she’d never been to Yosemite, Manny invited her to join him.
“I’ve been to Yosemite so many times,” Manny told Laura. “It’s the most beautiful place in the world, in my opinion.”
“I’d love to come,’ said Laura.
And so together, Laura and Manny drove from Los Angeles to Yosemite. Their goal was to complete the challenging El Capitan hike – ascending to the top of the national park’s famous granite rock formation.
“It’s a pretty intense hike,” says Manny.
The two set up camp, then embarked on the El Capitan trail.
“During that hike, that’s when we really connected again. We started talking, having those deep conversations that I’d really, really enjoyed with Laura before,” says Manny. “That really solidified for me that what I was feeling before, it wasn’t a misjudgment.”
Laura was also struck by the depth of conversation, by how much she enjoyed Manny’s company.
“It was such a connecting experience that I also was like, ‘OK, I guess I’m feeling something else other than friendship here too now,’” she recalls.
Connecting on a hike
It takes somewhere between eight to 12 hours to hike to the top of El Capitan. As Laura and Manny ascended to the summit, they opened up about some of the challenges in their life and talked about what was important to them. Laura spoke about Vienna, about her childhood spent traveling, about the places she still wanted to visit.
“That’s when I told her, ‘You tell me that you’re a traveler. You told me that your mom’s a traveler. Your whole legacy is traveling. I don’t have the ability to do any of that. You should know, I can’t go on a plane outside of the US,’” recalls Manny.
Manny had already told Laura that his family was Mexican and that he was born in Mexico City. But as they ascended El Capitan, Manny sketched out some more details.
“I’m in the US under the DACA program – deferred action for childhood arrivals – meaning that if your parents brought you here illegally as a kid, which is what happened in my case, you’re allowed to get a work permit,” explains Manny today. “But I can’t really travel outside of the country, everything is very limited. All of my options here in the US are very limited, but I’m still grateful for the program regardless.”
DACA was introduced in 2012, under President Barack Obama’s administration. Individuals in the program are deferred from deportation and able to work in the United States. But they don’t technically have permanent residency – and leaving the United States is doable only under certain, very specific circumstances.
For Manny, embarking on a relationship with a person from the other side of the globe was a tricky one. If Laura wanted to go back to Vienna, it might be difficult for him to follow. And he also worried his inability to explore the globe might be a dealbreaker for avid traveler Laura.
But Laura was undeterred, inspired by his positive attitude.
“What really stuck to me was that Manny said, ‘We are in a not ideal situation. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. And if we really want it, I’m sure we’ll find a way to figure it out,’” she recalls.
Manny’s assuredness was also an antidote to the loneliness and sadness Laura had been feeling for much of 2020. At the top of El Capitan, Laura and Manny surveyed the view, and smiled at each other. Both felt increasingly certain they had something worth pursuing.
“It was just really bonding,” says Laura of the day hiking. “We just talked about what ifs and what things would look like. And I really liked that.”
When they eventually returned to the bottom, night had fallen. Laura and Manny were tired but happy. They stood, for a moment, feeling proud of the day’s excursion and excited for the future, admiring the surrounding landscape.
“There was this river at the end of the hike, and in the background you could see the massive, beautiful mountain that we just climbed,” recalls Laura. “There was a full moon – or pretty close to a full moon, right above it. So, it was really beautiful, picturesque.”
“Then we were both like, ‘Let’s do something crazy,’” recalls Manny. “We said, ‘Are you down to skinny dip?’ And then we just jumped in the river. I’d never skinny dipped before. It was a very unique and euphoric experience.”
For Laura and Manny, this was the moment they knew they were meant to be.
And they returned to LA together, certain they wanted to make it work.
“It really brought us together and connected us,” says Laura of the Yosemite trip.
Making it work
Laura and Manny navigated the rest of 2020 side by side. Manny introduced Laura to the city he’d grown up in, to his extended family and friends.
Together, they got through the pandemic ups and downs. In time, Laura completed her postgraduate course and found a job that allowed her to stay in the United States for the time being. Eventually, the couple moved in together.
“It was very interesting when we moved in together, to kind of see our culture clashes,” says Manny.
As a kid, Manny’s Mexican parents taught him to “never walk barefoot in the house, because the floor is dirty.”
“So I always wore shoes in the house,” says Manny. “But I think Laura’s Korean side – and her Austrian side – had a different point of view.”
“I was like, ‘No way are we going into our house with dirty shoes,’ ” says Laura, laughing.
“Now I have my house slippers,” says Manny.
As they made their new home their own, Laura and Manny faced challenges bigger than the shoes-on-or-off question. The status of DACA recipients in the United States remains uncertain.
“Every so often I get scared, thinking, ‘Oh, they might revoke the DACA program. What am I going to do then? What’s going to happen with everything that we’ve built so far?’” says Manny.
“But no matter how bad the uncertainty gets and how low the emotional roller coaster goes sometimes, at the end of the day, Laura and I, we really love each other now, and we’re really committed to each other.”
Their relationship is a continued source of stability, always providing “reassurance,” as Laura puts it.
And while Manny’s not able to visit Laura’s loved ones in Austria or South Korea, he’s met up with Laura’s Austrian friends when they’ve traveled to the United States. And last year, Laura’s mother came to visit Laura and meet Manny in person for the first time.
“That was so meaningful,” says Manny. “I’ve always wanted to meet Laura’s mom, and the fact that she came out here also meant a lot to me. That’s very special to have someone come out because they want to meet you.”
And when Laura goes to Austria to visit her family, she takes Manny with her in virtual form.
“I show him favorite places on video calls,” she says. “We get excited talking about how one day I’m going to bring him there, and he’ll see it in person. It’s a little bittersweet, because you’re like ‘Oh, I wish you were here right now.’ But I know one day we’ll do it. And it’s going to be really great and special.”
In the meantime, when Laura travels, Manny’s always in her thoughts. She imagines seeing destinations through his eyes.
“I see things with a different eye, thinking ‘Oh, Manny would love this,’ ” she says.
Growing up, Manny dreamed of visiting London, Rome and Paris. All those cities have since been bumped down the list.
“More than anything, I want to go to Vienna one day, and I want to see where Laura grew up,” says Manny. “Because she’s in LA, right? This is where I grew up, spent my whole life. She’s seen everything that I wanted to show her, but I have not seen anything regarding where she grew up, regarding how her childhood was, what special places she has that mean something to her …”
While Laura sometimes feels sad that Manny’s never visited her home city and that the two have never traveled internationally together – she says the positive is there’s always something for the two of them to look forward to.
“Even after four years of dating now, there’s always new things, still, that we haven’t done yet,” she says.
And for now, Laura and Manny are enjoying exploring the United States together – usually by car, but occasionally via airplane.
Through Manny’s childhood, teen years and much of his 20s, he traveled only by car.
“Because I’ve been DACA my whole life, I think it was very instilled in me to just be scared of traveling, be scared of going outside of the state, be scared of getting on a plane,” says Manny. “So I had never gotten on a plane before I met Laura. She convinced me, she helped me get through that fear of getting on the plane and traveling.”
Manny was “terrified” going through airport security for the first time. But Laura coached him through the experience. And when the aircraft took off, Manny held Laura’s hand, and felt exhilarated.
“It was very special, and she helped me get through that fear,” says Manny.
They enjoy at least one big backpacking, camping trip and rock climbing adventure each year. Their goal is to visit all 63 US national parks.
“The beautiful thing about being stuck in a situation like mine is that if you were to be stuck in a country, the US is such a big country,” says Manny. “There’s just so much to explore, so much to see.”
And the couple still treat every long hike as “as an opportunity to bond, to have a deep connection in the outdoors,” as Laura puts it. As they ascend mountains, cross bridges and marvel at stunning panoramas, they talk about everything and anything.
Laura also brings along her camera to capture the moment – she loves taking photos, and often uploads snapshots of her adventures with Manny to her Instagram account @laurabyeol. Byeol is a shortened version of Laura’s Korean middle name, Byeolnim.
The couple’s dogs, Jupiter and Nova, who became part of Laura and Manny’s household last year, have also joined their recent adventures.
“They make us so happy,” says Manny of their pets.
Feeling grateful
Laura and Manny have been busy enjoying new adventures across the US, so they’ve yet to return to the Bridge to Nowhere together.
“We always say we want to go back,” says Laura, of the spot where they first crossed paths.
“Although I’m honestly a little scared of going back. Because as much as I love that one snake that brought us together, I’m super scared of snakes,” adds Manny, laughing.
Still, Manny says he’ll always be indebted to the snake that brought them together. It’s a bit strange, he jokes, to be grateful for a venomous snake, but it’s true nonetheless.
“It’s the randomest thing, that a rattlesnake put us in a situation where we had to talk. If we hadn’t met, I can’t even imagine what my life would be like,” he says.
“Thinking back to that particular moment, there are a lot of feelings of gratitude – for that snake, for having been in our way, and making us bump into each other. And, just the chance, the statistics of that happening. … I’m incredulous. I still can’t believe that it happened that way. And then on top of that, not only did I meet a girl this way, but I met Laura, who is from Vienna.”
“I love when people ask us, ‘How did you guys meet?’” says Laura. “All these little things that came together to make our encounter happen. If just one little thing was different, we would never have met.”