Today we headed out for a whitewater rafting adventure. We were really impressed with how thorough Diego was with his safety briefing. He even made us practice everything before we actually got in the water. We looked ridiculous but felt well prepared. We ended up rafting about 20 kilometers through mostly class II and class III rapids. It was a ton of fun and a minor miracle that we didn't lose anyone! We had a couple of stops that allowed for swimming, but those were not nearly as much fun as watching Diego deliberately flip Peyton out of the raft!
We stopped for lunch at the farm where Sophie lives. She is the cook and caretaker at Jungle Roots. The farm was fascinating. We tried several fruits we had never seen before, much less eaten. We learned about their cacao bean harvesting and they showed us how they strip palm leaves to make the threads they use in their jewelry making. We really enjoyed interacting with Sophie and her family.
After lunch we continued rafting down river for another hour. We finished in an area that allowed for some swimming just as it started to rain; very cool!
Back at our camp we dried off and had some of the fantastic coffee and a quick nap before our Jungle night hike. Diego's brother Daniel took us into the jungle for several hours. We saw really creepy bugs, spiders, tree frogs, phosphorescent mold, jungle mice, and crazy plants. Was a lot of fun but a bit unsettling! Eileen found a huge spider in her boot before we even started...hard to relax after that! Abby and Peyton may have future jobs in the wild, they were crazy good at spotting creepy crawly critters! We headed back to camp for another delicious meal made by Sophie.
When we were getting ready to go on our hike, Sophie headed into jungle with a machete; turns out she was sourcing part of dinner! she cut big leaves that were used to make pouches to smoke our dinner. She also cut some palm to chop up some hearts of palm and diced leaves to add to the chicken and cilantro. The smoked pouches along with the yucca soup and tomato salad were delicious! We played some cards, drank a little (?!) beer and hit the hay!
 |
Tree Frog on our Night Jungle Hike |
 |
| Cacao Tree |
 |
| Dinner |
No comments:
Post a Comment