Adios Clases, Hola Jungla

It took a good nights sleep, but after about a 12 hour long comatosed sleep, we woke up ready to go today. The first week has been alot of fun and alot of work, but it is nice to feel tired at night knowing that the day was productive. Our Spanish is getting better and the chance to talk to medical patients in their own language has been interesting. The nursing home here was a sad place to visit, just like those in the US, and the women we visited at their houses yesterday seemed appreciative even though the point of the visit was really to practice talking medical spanish.......

Anyway, today the batteries were recharged and knowing that we were going to hit the jungle in the afternoon was enough motivation to plow through the past tense in spanish during the morning class. In the afternoon we signed up for a tour called canyoning. Basically, this means getting through part of the jungle using an obstacle course for adults. We had to repel down 3 waterfalls, zipline across three valleys and walk across one really high bridge that had only a few short planks that you had to jump to get from one to the next. It was a blast. Since this is the slow season, we were the only people on the tour, so there were 3 guides and only two of us. The pictures are from the waterfalls that we went down. The jungle was beautiful and we didn´t see any snakes but a few tiny frogs, a ton of birds and a handful of brightly colored butterflies. It was a perfect time to get a good workout for a part of the body other than the cabeza. The picutre of the two of us is from the lodge afterwards where they have showers and serve you a cup of hot chocolate after being soaked for about 4 hours.

Tomorrow we´ll be rafting down the River Paquare which is supposed to be one of the best in the world (or so they tell us here). Its 18 miles of class III and IV rapids. It should be a blast, we´ll keep you posted....and hopefully make it out alive. Yes mom, i´m wearing a big life jacket....

Kenton and Rachele