My Adventures and Travels

Our first long weekend of the year is Spring Break, in September. As with all long weekends in recent memory, epic rain was predicted, foiling our original plans. A group of 8 of us (5 teachers, 2 spouses, and 1 teaching from another school) was originally planning to visit a lake and beach in Paraguay called Laguna Blanca. However, Laguna Blanca is at the end of a 40 km. dirt road. If it rained, we'd be stranded out there-possibly for days. If we made it. Our backup plan was to visit an Ecolodge outside the town of Concepcion, which is up to the north. It took about 5 hours to get there. One interesting thing was this weekend coincided with a big event, the Trans-Chaco Rally, a 3-day car race, said to be one of the most difficult routes in the world. We did see some of the vehicles while we were driving. Paraguayan Traffic Jam As always, as soon as we got out of Asuncion the scenery changed drastically, and it was beautiful. I love driving through the "chaco"-it ...

After our hike, we moseyed down the road to an iron foundry called "La Rosada." It was used to make weapons for the triple alliance war in the 1860s-and was also destroyed in the same war. Now it has a museum and you can wander around and look at stuff. Parrots! This is a common scene in the countryside. There are many cows roaming all over the place. After all this adventure, we stopped in the small town of Ybycui to stock up on food and drinks, then went back to our hotel and did some more cooking, and leftover heating-uping. Another fun night of eating, games, and drinking led to this: LEMONS! Now for some reason lemons are not even available in Paraguay anywhere. It's not like they don't grow. In fact, on the hotel property they actually do grow on trees. So at 1 or 2 in the morning, Kristi and I went lemon picking. I'm not sure why it was so fun and hilarious, but the beverage selections of the evening *may* have been ...

On Sunday morning, we agreed to get to the falls reasonably early, make a morning of hiking, grab lunch in town, and hit the road to head back to Paraguay. That is what we did. Instead of viewing the falls from above, we went on a great hike to see the falls from below. It was incredibly beautiful. And wet. And we saw MONKEYS! By the time we got to the destination at the base of the falls, the light "pelo de gato" mist had turned into an all-out downpour. I was so glad I bought a mad scientist poncho! The funny thing is, normally that would've ruined a day of hiking and sightseeing. But I was just so in awe of everything, and in such a great mood, that I felt nothing could ruin it. Consider yourself warned. This was just a lame, puny falls in comparison  to what we'd see later. And this is where my jaw dropped. Kristi, Molly, and Ali are being troopers. Somewhere along this trip, having a waterproof camera became really ...

You haven't lived until you have heard howler monkeys. Hearing howler monkeys in the daytime is eerie enough. Being awoken from a sound sleep at 3:00 a.m. is something different entirely. That being said, here are some pics of the animals I was able to actually SEE in Tikal. Monkeys are not that easy to photograph. I credit this little guy to my mosquito-free room. Spider monkey. According to my dad this is some kind of really special and rare turkey. Who knew?