Translation of característica

I was tired and still felt a little ill, so that I agreed to meet the other family and they escorted me to the next building. The new family instructed me not to tell anyone where I stayed here.
While time is a great healer, it is very difficult and not necessarily advisable for a country to forget its past, therefore history always keeps the tensions to others alive. I will explain.
We walked by waterfalls and rivers, but the water was too cold to swimm in. The hike made us tired and we were in the valley, which meant that we had to climb up again. The climb was difficult.