RAPPELLING AND BUNGEE JUMPING...DAY 5

We had two more days left in Huaraz and with nothing to do. We had done the three most popular Huaraz tours. We decided to see about doing any other activity we could find, so we went to the main strip, Av. Luzuriaga. It was around eight in the morning and we went into quite a few offices. We finally found this one place that offered bungee jumping and rappelling for S/80 each I think. It was quite expensive because it was just the two of us. If we had had more people, it would have been much cheaper per person. We continued looking around to see if we could find it any cheaper, keeping in mind that we had to call that S/80 place by 10 o'clock if we still wanted to go. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any other place that offered both activities so we returned to our room. We decided we were just going to go on the S/80 tour and began packing our change of clothes because the man had told us we were going to get really wet. I called the agency to reserve the activities and the man asked us to be back in the office by 11 o'clock because he needed to call the guide and have him get the equipment ready.

At 10:45, we headed back to the office and the man in charge, began explaining what we were going to do. He asked us if we had open toed sandals for the rappelling activity because we were going to get our sneakers wet. Once again, we didn't have the right stuff for the activity, so he asked us to try to find some sandals or bring another pair of shoes. My guide told me he possibly had some sandals I could borrow but not for Daniel since his feet were ginormous. He told us where we could go to try to find sandals for him. We must have looked in all the shoe stores in Huaraz for his stupid sandals! None of them had his size.... stupid tall people with big feet! We're a country full of short people (a great deal of the population is so please don't be offended fellow Peruvians) so it's hard to find anything bigger than a size 10 here. We headed back to the office. Daniel was just going to have to get his feet nice and wet. From there they informed us that our guide had to go do another tour and they gave us a new guide. We followed him to a bus stop and he paid for our bus ride to this one place on the side of the road. When we got off, he had us follow him uphill on this path that isn't very noticeable from the street. We were going to rappel first. Since neither of us had experience in this sort of thing, he told us we were going to do three descents. The first one would be as a practice run with no water involved and the other two were going to be down a waterfall. Our guide went down first to show us how to do it and less than a minute later, he was back up to where he had left us. We were amazed he had made it up there so quickly. Neither of us had too much trouble going down. I was actually a little afraid of doing this activity because I have small, weak arms but I did just fine.

Once down, we waited for our guide to get all of the equipment so we would go to our next descent. He led us to this steep area where we had to grab onto the trees to keep from falling down just so we could get to the waterfall. I had forgotten to change my shoes for the sandals they were going to let me borrow but he was nice enough to go and fetch them for me. He seriously looked like a little mountain goat or something with the way he zigzagged his way up to where I had left my shoes and then came back to where we were just as easily. I decided Daniel would go first because I wanted to record him. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch the part where he slipped and swung through the waterfall into a bolder right at the very beginning of his descent. I was worried but at the same time it was hilarious! He got really wet! He managed to get down safely and so did I. I barely got wet at all but there were times where I thought I was going to because the wet rocks there were really slippery and I clung onto my rope for dear life every time I slipped.

Our third and final descent was the trickiest of all. The guide gave us two options. We could either go down the water and actually get wet the entire was down or we could go down from the side where it was nice and dry. I was definitely not going to go down the wet way because that mountain water is excruciatingly cold or at least to me it was. Daniel, who loves being difficult and likes proving his "machoness" when he's with me, decided he was going to be cool and go down the wet way, so the guide had him go down first. He was freezing his butt off the entire time and managed to get down in record time! I laughed so much watching him go down.

It was then time for me to go down. I was a little afraid of falling to my death that time because I saw that the rope the guide was using, was a little torn up. That and the fact that he tied my rope around a bunch of thick branches as opposed to Daniel's big bolder and tree. As I began going down, I could feel that the rope was looser than the other times. I began to freak out but my guide reassured me that it was ok and even helped me pull on the rope as hard as he could to show me that it wouldn't break. Everything was going great but when I was more than halfway down, I realized I was going to end up getting completely soaked! The last twenty feet or so of the rock wall did not go straight down to the ground like a wall would. It curved inwards making it so that I would end up swinging into the waterfall's path because the curved part was wet and slippery. I was hoping Daniel would come to my rescue but being the gentleman that he is, he just sat on the rock laughing his butt off because he knew I was finally going to get soaked. It was horrible!!! HORRIBLE!!! I swung into the stupid waterfall like Tarzan and it felt like ice water! But it was hilarious! After I made it to dry land, I began laughing about it and I crack up every time I see the video.

The guide asked us to change into dry clothes so we could go bungee jumping next. We headed back up to where we had started this whole ordeal to change. I saw a huge savila plant (SAH-vee-lah: aloe vera) and had Daniel take a picture of me with it. There was this small house opposite where we were that we hadn't noticed the first time around so I moved inland to change.

We walked down to the road to wait for our guide. From there, we took a combi to this bridge where some workers were in the middle of painting. Our guide began working like crazy, tying the bungee rope all around the bridge bars. Daniel was going to go first and boy was he nervous! He couldn't stop smiling and laughing. I soooo enjoyed watching him. The guide put the harness around him so that when he let go, he would just swing back and forth like on an actual swing.The guide went to the other side of the bridge to grab onto the rope. He told Daniel he could now jump. Daniel gave himself a little pep talk and then let go. I was very much impressed that he actually had gone through with it. The guide slowly released both ropes equally to let him down slowly.

I was up next. I was as calm as could be. I just wanted to get it over with, but as soon as it was time for me to let go, I realized I just could let go of the stupid bars. Daniel, the guide, even the workers gave me pep talks so I would let go lol. It was an interesting sight to say the least. I guess I must have looked like a cat clinging onto something so I wouldn't fall in water. I asked Daniel to take my turn for me and he just wouldn't give in. I even asked the workers if one of them wanted to go but they said they had to finish working. I wasn't scared of the actual falling, I was afraid of hitting myself on the bridge once I let go. The guide even changed my harness around so I could go head first if I wanted to jump away from the bridge. After THIRTY minutes, that's right people, thirty minutes, I decided I just wasn't going to do it and was mad at Daniel for not taking my turn. He finally gave in and did it for me. The second time seemed much easier for him than the first. Daniel always does something hilarious when I go on vacation with him and that day he did two of the funniest things. One, the whole waterfall incident and two, he got stuck in a tree during his second bungee jump! There was a tree at the bottom of the bridge he got stuck in. I had been recording him the whole time but right when I stopped recording, this boy decided to get stuck and it was the funniest thing ever! All of us at the top were having laughing, especially me. Daniel later told me that he had been pulling on one of the sides too hard, which is probably why the guide released one more than the other, causing him to go flying straight into the tree.

After it was all over, we finally headed back to Huaraz. In the evening, Daniel and I walked around to see what other tour we could go on the following day. We finally found a place that charged us S/100 each to take us to Laguna 69. Another place we had asked earlier, wanted to charge us about twice as much. The man convinced us that we could easily get lost along the way and that going with a guide was best option even though we could still go on our own if we really wanted. The tour could have cost us S/80 each if we had had more people. The moral of this whole vacation at the end of it all was to have the right shoes next time and bring more people so it's cheaper. We had to be at the office to meet our guide by six in the morning so we went to sleep as early as we could.

Overall, I had a pretty good time on the trip. We both laughed at each other a lot and it was a really relaxing day compared to all the other days. We even got back to Huaraz early enough to go eat some anticuchos (ahn-tee-KOO-chos: Peruvian shish kabobs) and drink some delicious emoliente.