22 now.
That’s right I just had my birthday a few days ago.
I got to thinking about the experience and now I’m putting it down in my blog.
What are ways that it was different.
Well the obvious is that I was on the race and it was in another country. This time it was Nicaragua. The tradition here is to sing happy Birthday to the person, at 4 in the morning. So yup that’s what my team did, they sang it to me while I was still in my sleeping bag. That was the major cultural thing that we did for my birthday.
Then we got up at 6 in the morning and went to town so that we could catch the bus to Somoto, A town nearby. Well the first bus came and was way too full to get on so we got breakfast and waited for the next bus. Then we got on the next bus, I lead the charge and I pulled myself on to the bus. Using my arms for the most part luckily this time the whole team fit on the bus we were packed like sardines. Then we got to somoto, and got another bus heading to the border, we got off of the bus a while in so that we could go to a national memorial, Somoto Canyon, it’s a large canyon in northern Nicaragua that was discovered by the non-locals only 6 years ago. What does that mean well its basically pristine. Lick nothing you can imagine. We decided to float slash walk the canyon on the longest trip they have which is the full length. So we started we had life jackets and went for it. We walked a while and floated some, and then our guide took us to a cave in the canyon where we had to bushwhack our way up and climb down a cliff to get down. Then we floated some more seeing amazing views of Gods creation, and then we got to ride some small falls with just our jackets, it was great. Then we got to the jumping point where you had to jump well some jumped at a short distance and some at a long distance. But before I get ahead of myself, I need to just tell you something, at the jumping point there was a shoot, and I got sucked into it, But that is for another blog. So of course I then got back up to the jumping spot and I had to go for the tallest jump. It was about 60 feet tall. I climbed up and then when I got to the top I just jumped. I didn’t wait or anything like that I just went for it. It was awesome I think my next birthday I might just be going skydiving… But back to the canyon, after this several others went and then we floated out to the end of the canyon where we got on a boat and rode back then walked a little then got in a taxi and then on the bus back. When we got back to town we had dinner at a local restaurant, I had beef it was a huge piece of meat and some of the best beef I have had on the Race so far.
So how was my Birthday, It was great. I truly felt like people carried it was my birthday, That is a first in a while other than my family, so it meant a lot to me to have friends around me all day. I truly have friends.
