Shucks, missed Prince Harry

http://jezebel.com/5987565/prince-harry-grins-his-way-through-a-visit-to-lesotho-wins-at-life/gallery/1

Children, everywhere!

On Monday, I went for a run near the cottage and 2 things happened:
1) I was not crazy out of breath like when I went for the same run the first week, which is awesome because I'm definitely hemo-concentrating!
2) I encountered a few kids, who decided to run with me on the way back. I was like the Pied Piper of Basotho children. People definitely stared and laughed, but it was cool. When they got back to Baylor I gave them a snack, which is why I think they came with me. It was super cute.

And today I asked Malealea (my awesome translator who emails me every morning to ask me how my night was and to assure me that we're going to have a great day) to take a few pictures with some of the patients aka cute babies. Little boys with tinea capitus just aren't quite as photogenic. 

Huffington Post's got nothing on this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-schrader/lesotho-mysterious-mountain_b_2752019.html#slide=more282707

Pretty exciting that Lesotho's in mainstream media, kind of a lame article.

That time I was mauled by a lion! (cub)

Last weekend, Ashish and I went to Jo-burg, but first we had to prepare and present at a journal club on Fri, of which we were informed on Weds. It was a little bit of a bummer to end the week on a stressful note. We presented "Primary INH PPX against TB in HIV exposed children" by Mahdi et al in NEJM 2011. Just in case anyone is interested. It showed that children with and without HIV did not receive a benefit from INH ppx if they have never been exposed to TB, but that doens't really change the way things run at Baylor since everyone has been exposed to TB. I'm curious to see if my PPD converts when I get back!

 So after our presentation we immediately went to the airport, Ashish with all his things, and me just for the weekend. Here he looks longingly at King Moshoeshoe airport, bidding a sad farewell to the Mountain Kingdom.

Our trip to Joburg was easy, we rented a car, got some jams on the radio and headed to Zeitsies B+B, which turns out to be the most beautiful, friendly place in the world. Our bathtub is a good representation of the opulence with which we spent the weekend. Please note the bathrobes. I don't think I can stay in cheap hotels anymore...This trip has ruined me lol

Once we settled in,  it was only 2pm so we decided to start with the Apartheid museum. Here's the entrance way, in the whites only corridor. Our tickets randomly assigned us to be white or non-white, I was white. I had immense white guilt. 

This was a placard next to a very early human skull. 

The museum was very heavy, very dark and stressful. It lacked the emotional connection that Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum in Israel) did though, and no one walking through was tearing, mostly people had looks of horror. I was definitely insufficiently education about Apartheid, and was really aghast that all this happened, and only officially ended in the 90s. It set the tone for a weekend where everyone white person I saw over 30 was suspect moral character in my mind. And every time I heard Afrikaans I felt complicit in great horrors. 

We met someone in the parking lot of the museum that suggested we go to Nelson Mandela square after the museum. So we wandered about a fancy mall and piazaa, and happily found the Peacemakers museum, dedicated to Nobel Peace Prize winners and esp the 4 from South Africa. This was the best possible contrast to the Apartheid museum, and gave us reason to hope again. 

We went back to our hotel for dinner, which was delicious and charming and lovely etc...There are 3 dogs who live there, which only added to the awesomeness. The owner, Elzabe Zeitsies used to be in theater, she may have also lived as a man for 12 years. Either way, she was a very opinionated woman who loves South Africa and was the perfect person to help us guide our weekend.

The next morning, after a delicious breakfast, we went on a Soweto tour with a friend of Elzabe's, Nicholas. Nicholas grew up in Soweto and was very passionate about his township, and offered us amazing insight into being black and young in Joburg today. We did Mandela house, walked outside Desmond Tutu's house...this is the only street in the world where 2 nobel winners have lived. I was pretty into Mandela house because 1) I read his autobiography in 7th grade, and his story still resides somewhere in my subconscious 2) he looks a little like Grandpa Eddie and that makes me fond of him. 

 This was a funny.

 This is Nicholas. He has dreads hidden underneath that hat, which he said he kept covered to prevent police profiling. We told him we thought dreads were great, and he eventually let them down for us. At the end of the day, we pounded it, and he called us real Africans, which was an honor.

Our next stop was the Hunter Pieterson museum, which is a memorial for the Bantu Education Act Shootings, which killed 600+ students and injured thousands in the 1970s when the police ended up shooting into a peaceful student march of 150,000. The Bantu education Act wanted to make Afrikaans the official language in Joburg schools which 1) is not the language these students know- they know Zulu and English 2) the main reason they need to know AFrikaans is if they are going to be house servants in white dutch homes.  Hunter Pieterson was a 13 yo boy who was among the first shot that day. That picture shows him in the arms of the neighbor that carried him back to his house, and his sister crying beside them. 

 This is a Soweto bunny chow sandwich. It is a large slice of a loaf of bread, hollowed out, filled with a pickled salsa, french fries, bologna, a russian sausage and cheese. IT's legit, Nicholas took us "into the walls" of Soweto. It also cost 15 rand (less than $2 USD)

 After Soweto we went to the Lion Park! Since we didn't have time to go on a real game drive, this is the next best thing. It's only 15 minutes out of Joburg, and there are lots of rehabbed and not, animals in this mini safari. Here's ostrich charging the car.

Here's a lion gettin' it on.

The zebras were really stunning. 

It also had Cub World, where you could interact with lion cubs that had been rejected from their prides. This is Ashish being wary of a cub.

See that top cub, the white one? I went to take a picture with it and it swiped at my leg in a playful way.

This is what happened. Ashish has an action shot of claws in my leg, I'll post it when we manage our picture exchange.

After getting some first aid, we went back to the cubs and finally got a good picture with them. 

We stalked this baby giraffe that was led into a pen for the night. It figured out how to stick its head out and we went over and fed it/pet it for a while. It loved me, I got to touch its horns and face...meanwhile it rejected multiple attempts by Ashish to feed it. I think it smelled his fear.

We also watched this adult giraffe jump the fence and wander into the parking lot. None of the staff was concerned though. On our drive out, we met out friend again, who stuck his nose in the car. Oh, hai there!

That night we went to Melville, which is a super hip neighborhood where we grabbed conveyer belt sushi. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and enjoyed the complimentary sherry in our rooms, looked out over Joburg's skyline and listened to some Taylor Swift. This is a view of the B/B's outdoor space the next morning. Our final destination was Arts on Main, a hipster food market that we may have been a little too full from our excellent brunch to enjoy.

And then we went to the airport, parted ways (SADNESS!), I made it back to the cottage without incident and met my new cottage mate, a second year peds resident from Loyala chicago.
And I think Ashish should be landing in Dallas just about now...
I can't believe it's 5 days until I fly out back home!

Some pictures from clinic this week

This Monday was Back to School Day at the clinic. All the staff wore their old school uniforms to work, and got kind of rowdy around 9am with a little song and march in and out of the clinic.

We were both feeling a little down on Monday, since we had a 9 hour drive the night before and 4 hours of sleep. I snatched up these super cute twins from the waiting room, and we had a few minutes of cuddle therapy in an empty room. 

Durbin adventure!

So our trip had a VERY rocky start, where we didn't know how we were getting to Durbin and were choosing between renting and borrowing the car we borrowed last weekend. Someone had suggested going to Ladybrand, SA to rent a car because it's cheaper, and then we found out that the car we borrowed wasn't registered in SA so we hired a taxi (a driver we know well, Pabalo) and went across the border to rent a car. That didn't exist. There were no cars for rental in all of Ladybrand, SA, and as far as most people are concerned there are no rental places there either. We persevered and found 2 places to rent, neither of which had any cars. But a very helpful agent in the second place we went called places in Maseru for us and we were informed there is in fact 1 car available in town, but it's a manual. And we need to get there in the hour. So across the border/customs again, and we made it to the rental place in time. During the drive over, our taxi driver taught Ashish how to drive a manual and we/he decided to take the plunge and go for the manual car. Which I think was brave. 

So at around 5 pm on Fri we started our journey to Durbin. The beginning was kind of rocky, a border official may have told Ashish to "Relax" and get out of the car so the official could drive it through customs for us (There's a lot of starting and stopping involved, passport checks etc)  but once we got onto the highway (the one lane in each direction high way) it was pretty smooth sailing. The first road on our trip (R26) goes through wheat and sunflower fields- sunflower fields are outrageously beautiful. (The trouble is Ashish and I both took pics this weekend, and only I have a cord for uploading, so his half of the pics will come after he's in the US) And then there was crazy weather, and really hard rain, and lightning bolts across the sky...and then this rainbow!

So we drove onwards, realizing that this car didn't have a GPS and we didn't bring our guidebook (oops) and it was too late to get a map. We stopped at a KFC in Bethlehem (there were a few jokes about wandering in the night to Bethlehem..) and got directions to go towards "Harrassment" aka Harrismith NOT Clarence. And onwards we drove, until we reached Durbin. Then we wrongly followed signs for the south coast and ended up wandering a beach town kind of early in the morning trying to get a hotel. And then got back into the car, got into central Durbin, and got rejected from all the hotels we saw..which was a blessing, since most of them had hourly rates. But then, finally, HALLELUJAH, we found the posh side of town and walked into this hotel, sopping wet and asked for a room and they told us they only have a suite left, is that ok? And yes, it was. So we found a home base at the Balmoral hotel, on the beach/boardwalk of Durbin. We also booked a safari trip (Ashish was done driving...) which in the morning was changed to Zulu and wildlife (which would go to a closer game park) for some reason I don't remember. Our tour guide was an Indian man (did you know Durbin has like 7 million Indian people?) who's grandmother is Gandhi's daughter, and he gave us a good narrated tour of Durbin as we drove out of town.

So the first place we went was Phe'Zulu, kind of a Disney land with Zulu flavor. We watched a dance/show, then walked through a crocodile and snake park. I made friends with a snake! It's actually kind of old hat now, after all the Indonesian animal parks, but still very cool.

Afterwards, our guide told us that our game park was rained out, and the animals weren't going to be out anyway since it's rainy. To soften the blow though, he took us to where all the taxi drivers eat, and we had some good grill, polenta and sides.

In an attempt to make up for the loss of half our tour, we went to Pietermaritzberg to see the train station where Gandhi was kicked off the train, which set off the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and ultimately the movement against castes in India. THe train station is really just a train station with a few plaques, but this statue is in town and is pretty awesome.

 After Pietermaritzberg, we drove back into town and saw a large Hindu temple (which had a large Hindu wedding in it!) and went to the Victoria street market, kind of a bazaar. Ashish got this baller shirt there. 

That pretty much summed up our guided tour. We went back to the hotel, changed then went to the beach. The beach at Durbin was great!! The boardwalk was huge, there's a carnival outside our hotel and the water is the perfect temperature. I could have stayed in it all day. This afternoon, I was kept out of the water for quite a while to take pictures with lots of South Africans who kept coming over and asking to take pictures with me. Here's a less flattering picture, pre-swim suit, on the beach.

I eventually slipped away from my newfound celebrity to join Ashish in the water and bopped in the waves for a while before going back to the room to rinse off, then go off in the hunt for Indian take out. Along the way we bough some art on the street (sorry David, a little more art to hang?) and ice cream at shop rite. We spent the rest of the night from 6pm onwards eating food and watching hotel TV because EVERYONE, local and not, told us it gets dangerous at night for tourists and we should just stay off the streets. We had only slept 3 hours the night before, so this was a pretty easy burden to bear.

The next morning, we woke up early and spent a few hours on the beach, swimming and watching surfers. Then we had another delicious breakfast at the hotel, and went out on the boardwalk to explore. We rented longboards, which last about 20 minutes until we switched them out for bikes. Then we were really going, and went down to the end of the boardwalk on one side, which was also where the soccer stadium is.

This is one of those fun signs with the distances to around the world. Mostly I want everyone to get how beautiful it was here, and the palm trees look extra picturesque here.

On one end of the stadium, we were sweaty so the fountain seemed like a good idea. 

Inside the stadium on our tour. It's very impressive. Our good stadium pics are on Ashish's camera. You can bungee jump off the top of the stadium into the field, which I thought about for a hot second. If anyone wants to come back and do it together with me (someone I'm traveling with is not so keen on heights) I would do it. We watched someone jump, and it makes me stomach writhe just thinking about it.

After the stadium, we biked to the other end of the boardwalk (it's about 5km I think) and saw U-Shaka marine world, which is a water park, dolphinarium, tourist trap. It looks like a lot of fun, but it was so crowded with white people (who could be locals...we are in SA) but we happily biked past, returned our rentals and rewarded ourselves with some ice cream.

We walked around town after that, where I was really happy to be traveling with a guy. The men there were a bit leery, and stared a little too long for our comfort. But we saw downtown, and the markets and I was pulled into a street show and laughed at by what felt like hundreds of Africans. We started our way back around 4:30 pm, But this time we had 4 cds, bought for 10 R each (about 1.25$) of what we thought were 90s hip hop and boy bands. In fact they are covers of said songs...which were executed to varying degrees of success. It did make the drive back in radio free SA a lot more fun though. We got back around 1am, stumbled back to our cottage and got ready for another week of clinic.

Alive!

Internet has been shotty in the cottage, but we survived our weekend trip to South Africa. We made it to Durbin, and schedule a safari drive that was canceled 2/2 weather and animals hiding from rain. We had an awesome awesome time in Durbin though, which will be thoroughly covered tomorrow, with pictures!

The Big 5, we hope

Another Friday, another adventure. The plan is to rent a car in ladybrand, South Africa (the MD's car we borrowed last weekend isn't registered in S. Africa) and drive from there to Durbin and then to the Hluhluwe Game Reserve where hopefully we'll see some big game!

Wish us luck!

Basotho Blankets

It's been a quiet few days here in mountain kingdom. Clinic is getting routine, though it's still amazing to be a legit "ngaka" (doctor), unless an American MD is precepting and then you're just a med student again. Today I went on an outreach day, which was interesting for the 1 patient I saw with a pleural effusion 2/2 TB but other than that I was mostly listening to people speak Sesotho while sweaty. And picking at my sunburn, which continues to be a major issue in my life.

So, today I wanted to share my passion for the Basotho blanket. First some background, from "The Blanket Wrap"
"Nowadays the Basotho tribal blanket (Seanamarena) is such a common sight in Lesotho, that tourists tend to assume that it was a local invention. However, its origins can be traced back to the European traders and missionaries as far back as the 1800s. The popularity and assimilation of the blankets by the Basotho people can be traced back to one single incident.

Sketch of King Moshoeshoe I by Eugène Casalis (1833)

A blanket was presented to the then King, King Moshoeshoe I in 1860 by a man by the name of Mr. Howel. The King was by all accounts quite taken with the blanket (“a handsome railway wrapper made of light blue pilot cloth, heavy and hairy”) and wore the blanket in preference to his then neglected traditional leopard skin karosses.

The blanket has become part of not only their everyday life but as a status symbol. To outsiders it became a mark of ethnicity and therefore a token of cultural identification. In fact Lesotho is the only nation south of the Sahara that illustrates the culture of an entire nation through such an individualistic item such as the tribal blanket." (http://maliba-lodge.com/blanketwrap/2010/lesotho-stories/the-history-of-the-basotho-traditional-blanket/)

MY favorite part of the blanket tradition is that babies are often carried in them. Our friend Lareto, who works at the clinic, graciously let me blanket one of her babies!

Overheard in clinic today

" I like working with Grace, she's loud and fast" - a translator

Semongkong weekend: the narrative

Friday is an administrative day at the clinic, so we were able to leave for our trip at 2pm, after lectures from the National TB program and one about epidemiology of HIV in Lesotho. (Did you know Lesotho has the shortest life expectancy in the world?!)

We drove Teresa's, a doctor at the clinic who is on vacation, car, which was thankfully an automatic. It was also a 4x4, which gave us a second stick to be confused about. Our drive was pretty uneventful, though we did end up driving the whole way in 4 wheel drive... There aren't that many major roads in Lesotho, so it's a pretty straight shot. We also found an African GPS in her glovebox which was pretty helpful. About 30% of the way out of Maseru, we started climbing up into the mountains on unpaved roads. And these roads are really unpaved, and pot holed, on windy mountain roads. I was really grateful that Ashish drove while I manned the stick (we used 2nd! and L! ) and took pictures out the windows. The views in the mountains were ridiculous, every time we wound around the view changed and somehow got more gorgeous. Having just seen The Hobbit, it really looked like The Shire, green, mountainous, wild with small huts dotting the landscape.

Lesotho is a really friendly place, and every time we passed anyone- construction workers, people walking the side of the road, shepherd boys, men on horseback, we would greet them with a shout and a honk. In one of these greetings we picked up 3 people hitch hiking their way to Semongkong, they were very nice and very quiet. We got to Semongkong around 6ish, 4 hours later- it was a slow and careful drive up the mountainside.

The Semongkong lodge is run by South Africans who decided they wanted to stay there forever. IT's a beautiful lodge, very Western and a bit posh too. We opted for the 145 rand a night dormitories, which was still really nice in the end, especially since we didn't have strangers to room with. We had dinner at the lodge restaurant, chatted with other guests...looked up and saw more stars than I'd ever seen before. I could really see the Milky way in all it's milkyness, and Orion's belt. Too bad my apps are sad here, or I could have Google sky mapped it. It was breath taking ... I did spend a while laying down and staring at the sky.

Saturday I got up bright and early for abseil/rappel training. There were only 3 guests doing it, and I was the only one who had rock climbed/rappelled before. We went 5 minutes from the lodge, and rappelled a small rock face (20 meters?) three times. Supposedly some 74 yo Dutch man did the abseil, and someone who was blind, and I have no idea how they did they training because every time you go down, you have to hike back up a pretty tucked away path that was not easy to scale.

After training, breakfast at the lodge where I met Ashish. After a quick meal we hopped on our horses and rode out to the falls. I think we rode for 30 minutes or so, on horses that were less tame than the ones that are used for rides in the US. There's a road, but not really a trail, so the horses can go where they want, and occasionally break into a trot or threaten to jump... When we got to the top of the falls, I met up with the abseil group, and Ashish met a guide to hike down to the bottom (he's not so keen on heights..) I had a great chat with a 19 yo local male Victor, about religion and HIV in Lesotho, and it was just so great to see how well educated he was, and kind of inspiring about hope for Lesotho's future.

I was the first to go down the abseil once it was ready for us- there was a staff person who went first to catch us at the bottom. The rope used for the falls was much heavier than the training, so while in training it's work to keep your speed slow, I actually found that I couldn't go as fast as I wanted to. They do a great job setting up the gear and I was really comfortable in my harness, so the hard part going over the edge wasn't quite as hard. The rope provided so much resistance that I didn't worry about falling over the edge- I really had to push and pull for every step, so it was very deliberate and controlled as I went over the edge. The rest is just bopping down the cliff face, stopping to take some pictures, stop and appreciate the awesome flowers/succulents that grow in the cliff face. As you get towards the bottom, you start getting caught in the water fall's spray (Semongkong means place of smoke, a reference to the spray of the falls- smoke ~ SeMOnKong) At the bottom the guy who was already there is standing in a bright orange rain suit, un straps you  and gets out over really slippery wet rocks to John, the husband part of the team that owns the lodge. You then tromp over to a dry spot to watch everyone else come down.

From the bottom, I met up with Ashish, and we all hiked up the valley with John as out guide. The hike was beautiful, but rigorous, almost so much that it was hard to appreciate the view when you're staring at the ground to get your footing. Also, at altitude everything is just that much harder. We probably hiked up for an hour straight, lots of grabbing onto things with your hands - not much of it was spent standing upright. Also there were stinging nettles!!!! Which thankfully only sting for 10 minutes.. And I had banged my elbow bopping down on the rappel, so it hurt (and still does) to extend my left arm.

At the top, we got back on our horses, rode past the lodge and into town where we finally had some authentic Basotho food. Papa, sort of a plain, dryer polenta is the main stay of their cuisine and is accompanied by various cooked meats, vegs which are well seasoned to make up for the plain papa. We then hopped back on our horses, got back to the lodge and were told that our donkey pub crawl was right away!

The donkeys were much milder than the horses and much easier to ride (and easier on the backside) We rode into town with our guide Musa, and another Mahoa Josh, who was american, and lived in Italy working for the UN. It started out pretty embarrassing, riding donkeys while everyone who passed you was on horses, but a few beers into the crawl and everyone was really excited about the donkey riding. Our first pub was a pretty plain spot, not too happing yet, and all men. We didn't stay there too long. Second pub was better, friendlier, had a pool table which we watched but didn't play since there was a queue. Third pub was really a small tin shack where someone made sorghum beer in a plastic bucket, served in tobacco tins. Like, a liter at a time. It's pretty sour and unappealing, a little too thick and milky...but brews in 2 days to make 5 percent alcohol for 5 rand a giant cup, so it's cheap and easy alcohol in the community. We ended up buying a round for the room and tried pretty hard to avoid drinking very much of it. Our final pub was really fun, we had a few drinks and stayed and talked to our guide, our guide's high school teacher..random people. Finally we got back on our donkeys, who were wandering around a soccer field enclosed in really dangerous looking barbed wire and sauntered back to the lodge.

Naps and showers were a necessity, and I discovered I was super sun burned. It is terrible!!!! I under estimated my sun exposure and am paying for it dearly. We had plans to go into town for dinner with Musa to save a little money and increase our local experience, but a thunderstorm changed those plans. Instead we had another delicious meal at the lodge with Musa, Josh and our new South African friends. The highlight of the meal was definitely some really fantastic ostrich carpaccio, whom apparently live in South Africa.

The next morning we mostly took care of our room, sunburns, breakfasted again with our new friends and most importantly changed the flat tire people pointed out to us. Vans, our S. African friend, led that venture. And we were taught how to use the various gears in our 4x4 drive. The ride back was equally beautiful, some of the way in the rain, and we picked up another hitch hiker who was going to Maseru. When we got back to town we dropped him off, went to the mall where I got speakers (yay, this laptop's speakers don't work so this means I won't live in silence my last week here when Ashish is gone) and a Basotho blanket (I'll post about blankets later)  We also stocked back up on groceries for the week.

We'd been getting some random texts from Basotho people we had met around all weekend, and we were home for just a few hours when the girl we met on the hike near home came to our cottage with her friend, and a woman who works at the clinic, Lerato, came over with her twin girls. This was a lot of visitors for what we thought would be a quiet afternoon in. We played some soccer, played with her twins, and ultimately ended up going out, back to the mall (which is kind of the only thing to do in town) to watch the Africa's Cup Soccer final at Spurs, a south african chain restaurant. The best part of this whole interaction was when we went to pick up Tahbiso, her baby daddy and sig other...she does not get along with his family, and sent me to his house to get him. When I came out with his sister who was going to help us find them, she apparently took her twin toddlers and ran out of the car to hide .. the sister got in the car and directed us to the bar where Tahbiso was. When he got in the car and saw her purse sitting there he knew something was up, and was pretty amused, but not surprised, that we had to circle around to find where she and the kids were hiding. One more stop to drop off the toddlers and then we were finally able to get to the soccer game. Nigeria won, over Burkina Faso, we dropped everyone off at their houses and then finally called it a day.

Today I saw patients by myself in clinic. I had my own room, with my own interpreter and just signed out my patients if I had any questions with a precepting doctor. But really, I was their doctor and that was awesome.  I admitted one boy who was 12, but only weighed 16kg. I have never ever seen a skinnier person, eyes totally sunken, all bones on palpation. His temperature was below the capacity of the thermometer to detect and his last CD4 was 21 (2% of normal) 3 months ago. But for every sad patient, I had little girls in pink dresses, twins who were roly poly and lovely and a few babies who were just a few months away from their final HIV test that would declare them negative and discharged from the clinic. I discovered murmurs, and wrote prescriptions, ordered labs with an independence I have never had before. It was awesome, and the best part was my interpreter telling me it was a pleasure to work with me and that I did a great job with the patients! woooo! It's good tidings for the next 3 weeks.

This evening Ashish and I did P90x Yoga on our patio while the sun set around us. It was pretty much perfect. It's still pretty hard to believe we're in Africa!

Semongkong pictures part 2, but chronologically part 1

Iron brew is like medicine-y cola. In the background is chutney flavored ruffled potato chips, in the foreground are nik naks, which are kind of like cheetos, also chutney flavored.

Conclusion: chutney flavor is amaze balls. Iron brew less so.

GPS says Unpaved road x 60km. 

We were advised that if we hit any livestock, to speed away so the herd boy won't kill us. Fortunately this was not a problem.

The shire

more shire. Gorgeous right?

every turn yielded more amazing views

the roads were kind of hairy though

our room. I had top bunk! And we didn't have any additional dormers, so we were caddy corner, left to right of the room, top to bottom bunk

lamb shank with my Ashish. candle lit dinners are kind of our thing

the way up to our dorm

our dorm #21

horse back riding to the falls. The guide says to me, "Just so you know, the horses don't like mud, so he might jump" Whaaaat? 

At the top of the rappel/abseil

just arrived at the spot for abseiling 

going over the edge!!

wooo, on my way down! 204 m in 8 minutes! 

farther down. nearing the mist. I am pretty excited down there.