Beach Break

Today I woke up to the sounds of nature. It was awesome and even better when I realised that I had no extra bug bites. This is quite a success considering we had no mosquito nets or covers to sleep under.

This good start was about to be spoilt though. We went for breakfast at Finca Escondida, had a nice breakfast and as I went to pay I realised my purse was missing from my bag. I was so confused since I had it when paying for my dinner before going to sleep last night. I checked all my stuff and had a look around the beach but...nothing. To make matters worse my purse had my 2 cards in it for the first time in a long time, so typical and the money in it was borrowed off Sarah seeing as my cards weren't even working. Mum came to the rescue later that night and had to cancel my cards for the second time.

I managed to borrow some more money off Sarah and Arny for the rest of my stay. During the day we went tubing which was amazing. It cost £5 and we were giving massive rubber rings that you usually get in water parks and taken on the back of motor taxis to the beginning of the trek. On the way we stopped off so I could use a phone to call home and ended up being held up for a good 20 minutes because Colombians and South Americans in general tend to think this is a normal and acceptable thing to do. In the end Sarah came in and said the things I had been thinking to the woman doing the call. It is these times I really love how honest an brutal Sarah is and her lawyer characteristics definitely appear. Anyways it turned out that the frigging phone wasn't even activated!

Off we went for the tubing at last. The ride there itself was actually pretty eventful. We all were on the back of the motorbikes holding the massive rubber ring in one hand and using the other to hang on for dear life. We were on a rocky path for a lot of the journey which made it a lot more terrifying, not to mention the motor bikes maintaining a distance of not even 1 metre apart. Although I have sort of got used to South American driving and so the last part didn't really phase me. However, I felt very relieved when we arrived and I stepped off the bike.

Then the trek commenced. I think we were all expecting a half easy and pleasant sort of walk through the forest. But most of it was uphill and tricky enough, especially in flip flops and carrying the huge rubber ring. We walked for about an hour or so, stopping off half way when we meet a few indigenous men who were adamant that we stop so that they could do a prayer for us. They clearly expected some sort of donation but awkwardly none of us had brought money with us. We struggled onwards into the heat and humidity and were over the moon when we began to hear and see parts of the river. We actually found it pretty difficult to find a way into the river and had to pass through the home of an indigenous family to reach it.

I can't explain how good it felt to get in the freezing cold water but it was good. Parts of the tubing were terrifying because of the water rapids and massive rocks which I collided with on several occasions but I loved every minute and would love to have done it again. It did last for an awful long time and we were moving pretty slowly towards the end so it was a little boring and kind of cold without much sun. There were also numerous occasions where we had to get off and walk through the shallow parts. But apart from that it was so much fun, very relaxing and a great way to spend the day!

We got back to the hostels and other volunteers had arrived. Sarah and I headed into town for a cheap dinner and to buy the drink and we had a really funny walk back from town in the dark, not being able to see anything apart from the fire flies. The noises of the night made it that little bit spookier. When we got back we joined the others for some drinks and ended up having some langoustines for dinner which has probably been my best meal to date in Colombia.

It was a fun night but I couldn't last much longer than 1am after my lack of sleep in the last 72hrs. When I left to go to bed the others, especially Sarah, were in a pretty drunken state with the bar lady next door giving her lots of free shots for her birthday. I was later woke by a naked Sarah and Arny, hilarious!