Day 22: A new body mind challenge

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Today was my favorite activity we have done thus far on this trip. We found a company that specialized in canyoning. We met in Benahavis and canyoned through the Angosturas Gorge (the Guadalmina tour). This was suppose to be a great introduction to canyoning with various jumps into the river, climbing through, across and along the river. Our guides were Nikko and Jose who have been doing this for a combined total of 14 years and had recently spent time on the US Army base in Spain working with US troops on canyoning. They were so great as guides and it was a good thing because we quickly found the river was up significantly in height and rapid speed due to recent heavy rains. They early on let us know that this was the highest and fastest they had seen the river...they said with a smile that we were going to get the intermediate exposure to canyoning today. Throughout the entire trek, it was so challenging and fun to try and hold my body between the rocks and how to position my body to fight the force of the river. There were several points where we had to anchor a rope on each side of the gorge to help get us across the water. At one point, our guide Jose got his foot stuck in a rock and against the river and Nikko had to help him free it. However, they were able to talk through each section and get us a path to continue on our way. It was so cool how the river gorge changed with each turn from high fast rapids, to deep drop offs allowing us to jump in, to peaceful areas to just float down. There was one section that reminded me of the Titou Gorge in Dominica. After we got back to the car though, we had to make a rush visit to the ER. Early on Shelby had a miss jumped and hurt her ankle and knee but pushed through to finish the trek. We think due to the compression of the water and her wetsuit as well as the cold of the water allowed her to not feel the pain as much. However, once we started walking she swelled like a balloon. Getting her first set of X-Rays ever and having a specialist have to read them because the tech thought she for sure had a fibular fracture, she was released with a grade 2 sprain (turns out she has a piece of bone that never fused to her fibula).

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