White water 2

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No pictures i'm afraid this time, I don't really want to risk taking my camera on the raft with me!!!

Well,

I have had another completely wicked day! I took another rafting trip with the same company on Saturday and it was a lot of fun. It was a catgory 3 river and was only 25km but it still took up the whole day. In the group was 2 swedish girls, a Norwegian Guy, a Dutch guy, a Danish girl and two German girls and the leaders were 2 Irish guys and finally and Ecuadorian guy, so all in all a very international group!!!! The majority of them had come together from a Quito lanuage school and they all spoke excellent english.
We set off at about 10:00am and the weather was pretty cloudy. A couple of hours later the clouds disappeared and its was brilliant sunshine. We paid for it later though, as towards the end of the trip it downpoured majorly, but it was all good. I have got used to the quick changing weather conditions of Ecuador.
Although it was a lower catgory, i thought the rapids were a lot bigger than the last time I went(which I think is a result of a lot of rain in the last week and the river levels rising) and they got the better of me more this time. I fell out four times and there was one time I ended up miles away from the raft which was interesting, in the middle of a rapid, but parents, I survived and thought it was actually quite a lot of fun!

After lunch, we decided to stop and the guides took as into this sort of cave which came out onto the river. It was really beautiful as the entrance was thick in rainforest and the further you went in and the light got less, there were loads of bats flying around.

Towards the later stages of the days I had already said that I would love to do some kayaking and so as the rapids had got a lot smaller I swapped with the safety kayaker and had a go. My second rapid unfortunaty was bigger than I had thought and I rolled over and I was unable to roll back over, as I have never been taught, and so had to get out. It was all fine though and after empting the kayak of water I got back in. I think that is what I have my next eye on, whitewater Kayaking and you never know it could possibly my next weekend adventure!

At the end of the day I caught up with the lanuage students and went out in Tena, it was a bit crazy as I was so tired but I had a good time. Sunday morning, I had to make up hours of sleep, and nurse my pulled muscles (I always find that when you do something new like this, you do always discover a load of muscles that you never thought were there!!!) and apply a load of after sun to my burnt knees (again!)
I had to get up at 7:30 am as that is breakfast time in the house I'm staying in but then went staright back to bed untill Bilma knocked on my door to tell me lunch was ready!!!!!! Not bad huh!!!!

Anyway, Next week is Semana Santa, which means holy week, obviously our Easter. Most bigger schools have a week off but my Kinder Garden only have Friday off. This area is dominantly Catholic which applys to the family I'm staying with. Its really interesting to read my guide book again after being here as you can really relate to some of the things its says. For instance, It says about the main religion being Catholic but although most people don't actually go to church, and its very ture, my family haven't once been to church while i've been here and I don't think that they will be going next weekend. I do know that there is a special stew made during Semana Santa and its apparently really nice, so, even though I'm not quite sure its a sufficent substicute for chocolate easter eggs it will be fun to try!!!

Happy Easter everyone if I don't right in this blog till next week. I hope that I will be cruising down a rapid next weekend so I'm sure I will also be having a lot of fun.

Kez

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Comments

[Helen]

holy week
was nice to speak to you earlier. Maybe I can catch you again? It's odd hearing about Holy week in other parts of the world as it feels like its just the here and now. If you know what I mean? Been singing for Holy week at the cathedral all of last week and most of the services were quite interesting. Easer vigil was quite tiring though and it finished at 11pm!