Monday, October 31, 2011

Tuesday, Day 6, 7/26/11

Tayler, me, Serenity and Jen....hanging out...enjoying the day!

 The beautiful lake.
 Where we enjoyed swimming...and the cave we would climb through!
 Where we jumped from...and the waterfall we went down.
 The cave.
 The waterfall we all tried to climb...but couldn't...except Miguel...but he's had practice!
 Ethan and Cam.
 Cam climbing up to get to the little hole we had to climb through...it was interesting...
 Miguel and Teeka.
 God's Beauty.
 The water...the waterfall...the cave....makes for a GREAT day!
 The cave.
 Cam dodging a bat that he didn't know he was dodging...but everyone else did!!!
 Climbing up to get to that hole!
 Not sure WHAT kind of spider...but we steered clear...just in case....
Ethan and Cam...waiting to go down the waterfall!!

Today was, as Miguel put it, the most awesomest, cool, wonderful day of our lives.  And I have to say it was pretty awesome, cool and wonderful!  We got to sleep a little bit later, which was fabulous.  Then we left around 9am.  I rode in the back of the truck with Cam for the hour long ride.  We went through a bunch of little towns and saw quite a lot.  It was a beautiful drive.  The mountains were just incredible to look at.  We stopped at one place and took pictures by the amazing lake that we would kind of play in.  The lake was dammed and we were playing on the other side of the dam where it became a river.  After we took tons of pictures we got back in and went to the other side of the dam.  It was beautiful beyond belief.  I could live here, Jeff would LOVE to live here.  Miguel explained where all of the adventures were.  We got in and the water was freezing but refreshing.  We walked over to the waterfall and fell on the rocks a few times.  We tried to climb the waterfall.  Miguel had no problem climbing it, none of us could.  Serenity and I cut up our hands trying to climb.  We kept falling and getting caught in the current.  Then we climbed a rock wall after I fell into a deep hole in the water and hit a rock on my knee.  I got a nice bruise.  The wall climbing was surprisingly easy.  It ended in a bunch of bushes so thats how we pulled ourselves up was on the bushes.  Dave fell into the same hole I did except he twisted his ankle badly.  Once we climbed the rock wall there was a cliff.  Miguel jumped from one spot, but was sure to warn us that there was an irrigation canal that sucked water out right where you jump, so when you jump you have to be able to swim good and fast to not get sucked in.  Cam and I decided NOT to try that, but then we found a spot right next to that which we could jump from  that didn't suck us into danger.  So Kelly went first and he stayed down there to make sure none of us got stuck in the sucking current.  Others went, then Cam, then me.  It was tons of fun!  Once you jump off that then just about 5 feet away is the water fall.  When you get to the top it is hard not to get pushed down but you get on your feet in a squatting position and slide down the waterfall.  Tons of fun!  That one was scary for me though. 


 ME...climbing to that hole...I did it fairly quickly...I was surprised!

We played around a bit more than had lunch.  During lunch Miguel spoke to us about not having a spirit of timidity.  We are not to be fearful because God is with us.  We need to trust and have faith.  It was a wonderful talk, the best one yet.  Then he took us to this HUGE rock formation that has caves in it.  We went cave exploring.  There were 2 teams.  1 team took the easy route and one team took the challenging route, of course Cam and I were on the challenging route.  We climbed through small holes on all 4's through goat poop and Guana to get to an enormously beautiful cavern...full of bats!  I was feeling wet stuff hit my head, it was Guana!  ICK!  Then we had to literally CLIMB into another hole that was smaller yet to get to the outside ledge.  Beautiful scenery!  Then we had to climb through another hole that was even smaller!  I really didn't think I'd make it, I had to shimmy.  Int the mean time Cam is crawling thorugh the second hold and he is sprawled out and a bat comes down and hits him, he was freaked out, because everyone knew what it was and THEY were freaking out, but he didn't know what it was!   
 Tayler and Cam
 Jen and I
 Random motorcyclists

 Jen, Miguel, me and Teeka
Ethan, Trevor and Cam
When we got to the end of the hole we had to get out on a ledge about an inch thick and find footings to step in order to not fall down the face of this massive rock!  Miguel was helping by teling us where to place our feet, but that was a HUGE scare for me.  Cam did a nice job too.  Then we climbed all the way to the top and yelled at Heather who was down and across the river so she could take a picture.  Then down we went and crossed the river again, one last jump, one last trip down the waterfall, one last try at climbing and we had to leave.  The rest of the day we rested and played more Rage.  Cam played more Hackeysack.  We went to the supermercado to get money exchanged and then we went to the open air market.  That is where all the street vendors are.  That is a ton of fun too!  We didn't stay too long, but we saw some extremely yummy fruit and everything else you can imagine.  When we got back, Miguel was waiting for us.  He was taking us to his house to eat a special dinner.  He lived about a 5 minute car ride away in a nice little area.  He has a nice little house.  I played with Nicole mostly then Francisco brought the food.  It was TACOS!  and they were THE best tacos EVER!  They were Dominican Tacos.  I ate 4!  And they were big!  We cleaned up for Kristin then went home as a storm was coming and we had to ride in the back of the truck again.  One thing I did forget to mention is we almost all got leeches on us in the river.  Some worse then others, I was one of the worst with about 14 bites.  Cam didn't get any.  I have these big nasty bites on me now.  I had noticed a snail looking thing on Darwin's shoulder before, but didn't know what it was.  Apparently it was a leech.   I was so proud of Darwin for jumping in off the cliff because he is terrified of water.  He can't swim.  Ethan can't swim either, but he also did and Ellen is afriad of heights, but she also jumped.  Everyone faced a fear of some sort today.  God is with us.


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