Day 44 23.08.15
We woke up excited for another day of action. The activity of the others started earlier than ours (they went white water rafting) and we had a little more time to enjoy breakfast at the panadería (the bakery at the side of the road) and wait for the van to take us to go Canyoneering.
We hopped onto the van and drove to a place to pick up other participants. Here you can normally see the volcano if there are no clouds, but now we just had to imagine the volcano.
We then drove on another bumpy road towards the canyoneering place. We arrived and dressed up in our gear. I was again lucky to snatch away the only helmet with a go pro attachment. We then got to our first rappel. It was a test for everyone to see how they were going to get on. It was quite high too though and we all got a mixture of anxiety and excitement. It went surprisingly easy, after overcoming the first turn around trusting the gear to hold you.
After the first rappel we walked down a small stream to another rappel, this time down a waterfall where the guide was sure to make you really wet by “accidently loosing grip on the ropes and letting you get completely engulfed at least once by the waterfall”. “Oddly” that happened to everyone.
We carried on and had more intense rappels, a suspension bridge, where I, to the joy of everyone following me jumped up and down enough to make the bridge wobble so much that by the time and sprang into a gallop, the boards were bouncing up and down, making it nearly impossible to walk on it easily. Too much fun – every single time I do it :).
We also came across a rappel where we were stopped by the guy at the bottom, meaning we were doing a hands free rappel. After seeing some guides do this rappel upside down and swallowed my growing fear and did it. Upside down like Spiderman, going down a long way. Even though I did scream, a lot I had so much fun!
We even had one zip line included in this canyoneering, which was a nice way to break up the different stations. After that we only had one last rappel, where the height increased a little bit further too. Here I let myself a lot of time, enjoying every last minute of the experience, looking at the nearby waterfall, the jungle around me and the stream and the guy at the bottom securing me.
Overall I felt very safe with the guides and the equipment, and although we did some crazy things (like the upside down rappelling) I never felt endangered. The guides were additionally to that also very funny and we joked around with them whenever we could. For example, while waiting for the guides to finish rigging up the gear for a rappel, another guide asked us, “so what are we waiting for?”, obviously knowing the answer. I just responded to him, “We are waiting for the bus.” The guides were all still very young and so a lot of splashing around water was involved.
After the main action, we hiked back up from the lowest stream to the place we received our gear at. Here we had the chance to look at the photos that were shot from us as well as eat a crazy amount of pineapple. At one point I felt like a hamster just stuffing more and more pineapple into my cheeks. It was absolutely delicious! We got changed and headed out for lunch, where we had a great dish with rice, beans and chicken, as well as a lovely view out onto a beautiful resort.
After that straight back to the hotel as the other wanted to hike to a waterfall. I opted out as I saw a different part of the town celebrations act out. They had a parade of horses passing through the town, showing of their dancing skills, by making them trot on the spot and let their muscles play.
It was a great vibe. Especially as you could see some of the older men, riding their horses, the horses working hard, pretty much enjoying a full work out whereas their riders were holding a drink in one hand, the reins in the other and enjoying a chat with their friends.
Music was blaring everywhere and restaurants were handing out food and drinks for free for the riders.
I sat down to watch the procession in a bar and started writing all of my postcards. Yes it was time for another round :) I am glad a lot of you received them and enjoyed a little bit of vacation.
I headed back to hotel, packed for the next day and got ready for dinner with the rest of the gang. We met up at a restaurant called the lava lounge. It’s a cosy place where I had some Pasta Louisa (pretty much pasta with tomatoes, onions, ham and a tomato and cream sauce). We also celebrated that evening the birthday of another of our fellow travellers. It wasn’t her exact birthday but as she wasn’t a fan of celebrating them, we just chose to move it to another day to make it less “birthdayey”. The birthday cake was great and a good way to end a yummy dinner.
After that we stocked up on some drinks, especially on the cocktail side, determined to enjoy a great night out. Again however we were exhausted from an action filled day, but managed to pull through and have some mojitos. We then moved on to a sports bar from where we were told a shuttle bus would take us to a disco. It turns out though, that the disco is closed on Sundays. We therefore stayed in the sports bar, didn’t go dancing in the end and had a couple more drinks and some heated “arguments”. At the peak of these arguments we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.
