Ziplinging and Tubing Day

I've noticed that most of the time I write about what we did during the day in the evening before bed and don't actually end up posting anything until a few days later.  Hence the date below:

February 15, 2010

We have been here in Lanquin for 4 nights now and this will be our 5th. Its so green and lush with all the rain and mist. The birds here are pretty loud and so are thier colours. We saw some bright yellow and orange birds at breakfast. I love all the dogs and cats hanging out everywhere. I had the cat with the bright green eyes in my lap and the local boys were looking at me like I was crazy. They probably have fleas and the boys wonder why on earth I would ever touch it. Today we planned on just sitting around and not doing much but we met this english couple last night and we made a plan to go ziplining and tubing on the river. We hopped in the back of yet another truck that took us to the ziplining park. We had to hike up a little ways to the first platform. There were about 7 lines. The first was long and super fast. It was hard to enjoy the surroundings when you are flying through the air and worried about braking in time. Chad, always the hooligan, didn't listen to our guide at all and was very reluctant to use his brakes. On the second line he rammed into the platform with some good force that shook the tree we were in. After flying through the trees we headed to the river up the road and hopped into our tubes for a 20-25 minute ride down the river back to the hostel. Chad, still the hooligan and always reluctant to follow instructions, decided that he would grab the rope hanging over the river (the very same roap that the guide told us not to grab). He did a bit of a scramble but didn't even lose his tube. There is a "surf board" attached to this roap that if you are light enough you can ride in the river. Chad mastered this skill much to the suprise of the local boys watching the crazy gringos flail in the river. When we got back to the hostel they got the sauna blazing and we cooked ourselves thouroughly. Here at El Retiro its buffet style supper every night. Tonight is Typical Guatemalan food. Chad is already down in the restaurant priming his appetite with litros of Brava beer, yay for happy hour!