The ups and downs of travelling

Today I went on a 4x4 ´trek´. I like these kind of treks as they involve absolutely no walking at all! Instead you are picked up in a 4x4 and driven along unmade roads, mud tracks and along the lake shore until you reach the site where you will have lunch. Now that all sounds pretty straightforward, no? Well, they use 4x4´s for a reason - and that reason is the sheer joy the drivers gain from pushing the vehicles to their limits. We went up near vertical slopes, down near vertical slopes, along at impossible angles where the only thing I could see out of the passenger side window was the road. We went through mud so deep that it came up to the tops of the wheel arches and through water so deep it came up to the top of the bonnet. And we did all this without getting wet ourselves. It was amazing just how calm and competent the driver was (of course, he does this just about every day of the week) but he had a mischevious streak and pushed us as much as possible to get a reaction. I loved, loved, loved it. Remember I love rollercoasters and this was better than the best rollercoaster ever. On top of all this I had the front passenger seat (I don´t know how the hostel arranged this but it was reserved especially for me) so I got to see everything and take some photos.

For lunch we had a barbecue by the lakeside and while we were waiting for it to cook we all wandered off - and I saw a fox, I even managed to get a photo of it. Of course, this was slightly spoiled later when the fox came back a practically posed for us - it could smell the cooking food and was waiting for us to disappear - still, I saw it first.

We were supposed to go canoeing after lunch but the weather turned a bit off (very windy and squally rain) so that was cancelled (can´t you tell how heartbroken I am) and another rollercoaster 4x4 drive was substituted - Woohoo!

On another note, I´ve managed to catch a nasty cold (sore throat, temperature, blocked nose) but I´ve been to the pharmacist and I´ve got some kind of drug. I´m hoping it´s just that week two of the holiday illness that everyone gets. Whatever it is it isn´t going to stop me doing stuff - if I can teach like this I can 'trip' like this.