Sensations Fortes

My friends are awesome because they anytime I say "one day, I would really like to do such-and-such," they say "Ok...let's all go Saturday!" And then they plan everything and show up at my house Friday after school, where I am packed and eagerly awaiting the next adventure. I seriously vow to be such an excellent tour guide when I am back in the states and have visitors...

This weekend, we planned to go up in the mountains for a little bit of rest in nature. We rented rooms at an auberge for Saturday night (I'm thinking the equivalent idea in English is Bed and Breakfast...but way more rustic, closer to camping life than the B&B $250/night antiqued rooms...). We would rest, be outdoors, and then go horseback riding for a few hours around a beautiful lake.

That's when Richard decided we would take a small detour on the way to the mountains to rock climb up a waterfall.

I'm not sure why I agreed to this. I'm also not sure why I wasn't scared until we got on the ladder. For the next two hours after that, I'm pretty sure I didn't breathe. I have never been more terrified in my entire life. There is a small line between being scared but liking it, and being too scared. I crossed that line about ten minutes into it, when I got stuck trying to figure out which rock to put my left foot on, because none of them really seemed like viable candidates.

So up and up we went...and they told us in the beginning that once you start, there is no turning back. Knowing that I could only move forward, I climbed, cursing the stupid waterfall every time I successfully made it to a new rock without falling. I decided to not look down, to pretend I was Angelina Jolie in some badass movie, and to just get it over with as fast as possible!! I'm not going to lie...a few times it crossed my mind to just stop and cry. But I knew that would do no good, because after that I would be tired and I would still have to finish the damn thing.

Here's the best part. When you get to the top of the waterfall, you tightrope across it.

I'd like to tell you it was a beautiful view and totally worth it. But you are seriously walking across one tiny rope (although you're attached to two others above you) and all three ropes are moving and twisting and bouncing, and it would be so easy for you to fall and just dangle there, helplessly, over the waterfall until your rope snaps or something else happens and all I could do was think about breathing and watching the nice side of the waterfall, the close side before everything just falls.

After that you climb down at little bit and then zipline back to safety. I actually like zip lining so that wasn't so bad.

Climbing back down. We are very tiny.

During the climb I really wanted to kill Richard for his dumb idea but when we were finished, I was pretty proud of myself so I didn't kill him. 

We got to the auberge and it smelled like rain and Earth which are my two favorite smells. During summer, it seems that the weather in the mountains is the same each day...beautiful and sunny in the morning, then the clouds roll in around 12:30, which turns into rain later on for the rest of the night. 

 I think there are some spiders above her door...

My humble room 

at night the clouds are so thick they cover entire mountains! 

the next day, same place 

We had a large three course Creole dinner, with lots of homemade rum punch and wine. After that we headed to the Mariée in the middle of town for an inpromptu musical sing along. We were very fair about our song choices: first French, then Creole, then English. The English songs they knew were mostly 80's love ballads, which was perfectly fine with me :-) 

The next day, horseback riding became more like a rodeo. The guide was a complete idiot and had no control over the horses. Sylvie had only been riding a few times before, so she didn't know what to do when her horse started crazily galloping away. This happened in the first ten minutes. After that, she was too scared to have fun anymore, and took my stance from yesterday...not breathing and just praying to stay alive until it's over...

It was a three hour ride through the mountains and around a magnificent lake...

Geranium and I got along pretty well

Halfway through, stopping to let the horses eat and drink a little

Sylvie is not having very much fun. 

Although, it was kind of stressful...the horses were tripping down the hills, Sylvie's horse had already run away with her on it twice and  bit Richard pretty hard on the leg...another horse was determined to kick you in the face if you entered his personal space, and while he was having one of his bucking moments, someone else's horse bit mine, which sent my horse flying off for a few minutes and directly into an oncoming car...

But we survived!!! And we set off to recover by having a picnic (and a little nap) in the forest. 

So yeah, just another weekend here...