This is the view from our balcony every morning.
And this morning we could hear the monkeys in the trees making grunting sounds. There are two kinds of monkeys in the area, the howler monkey and the white faced monkey. The ones by us are the howler type and that’s good because the white faced ones are supposed to be mean.
The dark spots are the monkeys
Today our adventure was to go white water rafting. And since we had our new shoes we were set. We left early this morning because it was kind of a drive we heard. We didn’t see any locals herding cattle this morning but we did have a chance to drive in the longest road in the world. The road is the Pan-American Highway and is 29,800 miles long and goes through 18 countries. Cool!
Just one of the volcanos that we drove by today
Once we got to the first stopping point on our adventure we had to change vehicles but we weren’t sure why at first.
But we found out in a hurry! The ‘bumpy’ road was absolutely horrible. It was like if you wanted to drive in our road ditches or something! But we were heading towards the volcanoes and rain forest so I guess we had to just live with it. But the funniest part was that a couple of our guides rode on top of the three rafts that we were hauling. All you could see once in a while was legs bouncing around. We got the the part where we stopped by the river and once we saw the water, it was a little more tense. The water was just rolling where we were and seriously we didn’t think that this is where we would be getting going right? Wrong. Our group was just us four and the guide and soon we were off. We didn’t tip right away but our guide was sure trying to make us! But it wasn’t long and we were upside down looking at the bottom of the raft while trying to stay calm. We laughed (later) when we remembered the training. Feet first and swim to the right. Yea…we just tried to stay above the water. Then the biggest challenge. The water rafting was at a level 4 that day and we found out that there are only 6 levels so we did have our work cut out for us. But towards the end of the ride, there was a 12 foot drop. Now normally you would think big deal right? Yea… Not! This drop had two drops to it and when you saw the raft ahead of you just disappear, you just knew that it wasn’t going to be good. But guess what? We made it without tipping. Even our guide was shocked! And so were we! We were all ready to ‘swim to the ropes and cave’ if or when we tipped. After feeling pretty smug and really good about not tipping our adventure came to a close. Looking back at the day,this morning I wasn’t so sure that it was such a good idea, but at the end… It was Tons of fun!
We did get pictures of the ride and you’ll just die when you see them. But they are on a CD and I don’t have a way to switch them over. I’ll post them later when we get home. I’m just wondering how sore we all will be tomorrow 🙂
