Canyoning

On Saturday I went canyoning, which is a popular sport here in Merida. I didn´t really know what I was getting into as I thought going in that it was an extreme version of rafting down a mountain river. Not exactly.

We started out by driving up to the top of a mountain overlooking Merida, we got a beautiful view of the city from there. The city is built in a valley with mountains all around it but a cliff on one side, and then another village in a lower valley below it, so theres lots of mountains that you can get beautiful views of it from. We put on wet suits and helmets and started hiking down the mountain for about half an hour when we got to the stream/river. We climbed into the water and just started walking downhill, after about half an hour of this I decided I was totally wrong and would sound stupid if I asked where the boat was.

Anyway, after walking/swimming for probably around an hour we got to the first waterfall that we had to repel over. I´d never done any repelling before so it was pretty intense doing it for the first time over a huge waterfall, but our guide was helpful. Basically all there is to repelling is having confidence in your equipment, once you believe that you can lean back and it will hold you you`ll be fine. The waterfall definitely makes it harder because if you look up you get blinded and the water burns into your face.

We went over 2 more waterfalls. The last one was about 100 feet straight down, which was extremely intense, the water was coming down so hard by the bottom. It was definetely fun though and at the bottom was amazing to look up and imagine that you had climbed down it.

The waterfalls weren´t even the most intense part of the whole day. We had to jump off a lot of little cliffs into the water. One of them was basically jumping about 20 feet down into an extremely narrow pool with rock walls on all sides. We all hit the walls on the way down but didnt get bruised too much. The whole thing definitely helped me get over a fear, although Im not totally sure which one, I guess it was my fear of doing really stupid things that arent a good idea at all. I have videos and pictures of the day that Ill send to everyone when I get home. The waterfalls and river were beautiful when I wasnt in too much fear to enjoy them, and we kept seeing huge blue butterflies that were beautiful.

My Spanish class in Merida is going well, I have a very good teacher. The problem is that Im living with people who also dont speak too much Spanish, so Im not forced to try and speak Spanish all the time. In my room Ive been living with people from Germany and Holland, so Spanish is really the 4th most spoken language behind English, German, and Dutch.

Theres things I really like about this city and things I really dont like. Theres great coffee and a lot of nice restaurants, and the nightclubs are pretty fun, theres one club we go to that plays the greatest mix of music ever...theyll be playing salsa or samba and randomly play a couple heavy metal songs or Rolling Stones songs, its completely random.

On the negative note, it has to be the loudest place on the planet. People blare music outside our window until late at night so loud that our door literally vibrates from the bass. Its not like its just one piece of music either, usually it will be 4 or 5 different cars all competing to play their music the loudest and all of them making the door vibrate. On top of that theres always car alarms, sirens and dogs barking, it literally makes it hard to talk to each other in our room lots of times.

I also saw a dead body the other day. There was a huge group of people gathered around and lots of cops, I thought it was a political rally at first because theres political things going on everywhere right now. Everyone was looking in the same direction and I saw a sheet with feet sticking out of it and blood all around. Apparently the guys store had been robbed and he had tried to follow the robbers and got shot for following them. It makes me glad I didnt try and resist when I got mugged. The crime rate here apparently really wasnt high until the last couple years, and its becoming a big issue. People say that its really the biggest issue in the election and people will vote based on who can fight crime best...whether a candidate is with or against Chavez is really irrelevant in comparison. Most of the political graffiti that isnt for or against Chavez is about which candidate will make the city more safe. Its interesting because the poverty here doesnt really effect you like it does in Brazil. In Brazil youre bothered everywhere by beggars, street children, and people trying to sell you God knows what. Despite this you dont ever really feel unsafe there, just like people are trying to get your money. Here there are a lot few beggars but you get the feeling that they could all pull a knife on you or mug you. I really have no idea why its like this, you would think the place with the more desperately poor people begging would also have more desperately poor people willing to use violence.

I apologize for the lack of punctuation in this entry by the way, for some reason I cant figure out how to use most of it on this keyboard. American keyboards next week will be nice.