Saturday, Sept 26

Today we climbed Mount Celaque to the point where you can see the waterfall more up close. I see the waterfall from school everyday at lunch, so it was really exciting to be able to have a chance to see it up close. We had a big breakfast to prepare for our hike up the mountain and Sarah made us “lunches” of PBJ since she wasn’t going up with us and then we set off. Don Luis, one of our neighbors, knows Celaque well so he was our guide and Mr. Bran, the PE teacher who lives near us, went with us as well. I hadn’t been past our backyard really into Celaque so it was a whole new experience for me. Jacki had been up to the visitor’s center when her boyfriend was visiting, but otherwise we were all new to it. Don Luis showed us all these plants on the way up that you could use for different medicines, as well as different plants and trees that produced fruit or could be used to make other things. He was so knowledgeable about everything. He also speaks Spanish very fast so I often only caught the very general gist of what he was saying and I asked Jacki for specifics because she understood him more. We kept walking up the road until we got to the visitors center, which was very simple, but pretty nice. We had to pay about a dollar to get into the park, but it was totally worth it. We started up the path to the waterfall lookout point and at first it wasn’t too bad, but then it started getting harder and we all started breathing harder. Don Luis was just climbing up these hills and switchbacks like it was no big deal. Granted he lives here and has been in Celaque many times, but he’s still like 55 and he was hauling up these hills that we had to ask him to slow down so we could rest quite a few times. I was looking for a walking stick and he noticed; so he just took his machete, chopped a little tree down, lopped off the ends and gave me a walking stick! It was great and definitely helped when the walk got steep towards the end. It was hard going up and definitely a good work out, but it felt good to know we were working our bodies hard and getting some good exercise. Don Luis was like you’re going to burn fat; haha it was great! We finally got to the top of the trail and peeking through the trees was the waterfall more up close! It wasn’t as close as we expected; I think it’s like a two day hike to get to the actual place of the waterfall. But it was majestic view all the same and was worth the hike. We spent some time up there taking pics and resting our legs and then the thunder started rumbling. We figured we should probably head down since it was going to rain, so we started climbing down. It was easier going down in a sense, but trying to keep yourself from falling was more difficult. I just wanted to run down because it felt like it would be easier, but I would’ve fallen flat on my face after like 10 feet with all the roots and rocks. We stopped at a rest area to eat our sandwiches for lunch and then kept descending. When we were about a half hour out the rain started coming and at first it wasn’t very hard, and then it started coming down harder. We hadn’t brought raincoats (not smart on our part), so we just continued and got wet. It wasn’t that bad because once you got wet and soaked, what was a little more rain? We had to cross this river with slippery rocks, and my foot went in, but I was like no big deal they’re already squishing with water! We got back to the visitor center and kept going back down the road to our house after that, all the while it was raining. It was kinda fun, except I started getting cold because I was wearing shorts and a Tshirt. We finally arrived back home and there we were to greet Sarah and she was like “You’re all wet.” And we laughed and started stripping off our wet clothes to take warm showers and get dry. It took about 5-6 hours total for the trip, but a great way to spend our Saturday. It rained most the rest of the day, so we just stayed inside and were lazy: sleeping, playing with the neighbor kids, and making dinner.