"have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary.”
Steve Jobs
The only thing my heart and intuition were telling me were to wait behind in the cantina with a nice cup of tea and send the kids on the adventure alone. I was already exhausted from riding the dirt roads and it was only just after 8am. We'd had to leave the house at 6am just so that we could make it to Rincon de la Vieja and have enough time before nightfall to horseride, zipline, rockclimb, water tube and soak in hot springs. Quite the full itinerary for an uber adventuresome day. Doug, our fearless tour guide picked us up in the jeep and within 3 hours of crawling from our beds the kids and I were whizzing down a canyon on the side of a volcano.
I really wasn't sure what to expect. I mean I have been on a zip line here and there, I think I've even been on one that was called a flying fox. My expectations were pleasantly exceeded on the first line. Zipping through the greenery of the forest was actually an easy slide through the beauty of nature with the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. No manic jaw clench or stomach tensing type of fear, more a bemused widened eye, heightened senses sort of edginess. On the second slide the ground far below disappeared completely into the steep drop of the river gorge. I started to scream on that one, then turned the noise into a sort of wahoo triumphant yell to cover up being uncool and hiding my moment of sheer terror. The kids were behind me, I was crash test mom I had to bbbbrave. Did I mention I don't like heights? Particularly the kind of height where you balance on a bridge or metal platform of mesh where one can clearly see what is below. I tried to keep my sights skyward, high above me towards the impressive magnificence of the mountain which cloaked the volcano.
The Rincon de Vieja volcano has a macabre folk legend. The name roughly translates intoThe Corner of the Old Woman. The story is of an Indian princess who fell in love with the chief of an enemy tribe. Her father disapproved and threw the man into the volcano. The princess, broken hearted,stayed on the mountain and gave birth to a child which she threw into the volcano to be reunited with its father. She then lived out her life as a recluse on the mountain and became a healer. Too many references to old women and throwing kids in volcanoes to make a joke about that one. I'm sure International Child Services is already monitoring me for abusive homeschooling infractions. We'll just file the fable under another gory story from the ancient Indians.
By mid morning I was hanging upside down being the star of my own gory story. Soon after I slid head first down a rope to the water level, we made our way downstream by swinging from rocky outcrop to rocky outcrop until we reached the climbing wall. The guides kept checking that I was aware the rock wall was strenuous, then another one would check again. So much so I was starting to doubt my own abilities. I came to the conclusion that either the early morning had aged me well beyond my years or I just looked pathetic. Anyway, the guides all looked like they had just left elementary school, perhaps I shouldn't trust a boy with acne to clip my carabiner and rattle my resolve?
“Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain.
Adventure is an attitude that we must apply
to the day to day obstacles of life.”
John Amatt
I am happy to report I threw myself up the sheer rock face at breakneck speed to show everyone what a mountain goat I could be. My silently wide smile, upon conquering the summit, allowed me to suck in extra air and catch my breath while pretending it was nothing. Whats that about pride and a fall? There was no way I was falling back to the bottom and have to climb back up again.
“A man does not climb a mountain without bringing some of it away with him, and leaving something of himself upon it.”
Sir Martin Conway
Once my nostrils had flared their way back to a normal oxygen consumption, I stomped onward to the hanging bridge. Indeed, it would seem I had left my illusions of youth on the side of that particular mountain. I'm not too sure what I took away apart from a grazed knee and a refreshed sense of mortality.
“Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure
your life is meant to be.”
Steve Pavlina
Okay, so now I needed to embrace the horse adventure which looked like something of a cowboy operation to me. Why was it I was having a feeling of being herded?
"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"
William Shakespeare, King Richard III
Meet Frank the rapido caballo. He didn't really have a name but Josh christened him as he struck up an immediate affinity with his steed. Upon leaving the stable yard, they rushed off to the head of the line with Josh talking loudly to Frank in broken Spanish. Frank was clearly in control and liked to be one of the lead horses hence his desire to trot all the time. This of course would set off a chain reaction to all the other nags who would stampede off at breakneck speed leaving me kicking and yahooing at the back of the pack. Needless to say, those pimply faced youths from the zipline must of tipped off the cowboys I was an old maid and thus required a slow donkey to keep up the rear. I say rear and not ass because by the time we reached the half way intermission there was not much keeping my ass up there in the saddle.
"It is not enough for a man to know how to ride;
he must know how to fall." Mexican Proverb
What I lacked in speed and mobility I feel I made up for in style and panache. I went for a Germanic Little House On The Prairie style look - bonnet style hat with white socks and trainers. I don't think my horse (who shall remain nameless) really opened its eyes, it sort of rested its head on the quarters of the beast in front and followed its nose. On about the 8th stumble I feared he was lame.
“Somebody ought to tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying.
Then we might live life to the limit every minute of every day.
Do it, I say, whatever you want to do, do it now.”
Michael Landon
I fervently hoped that my half dead horse would at least make it to the waterfall for the midpoint break. I hadn't seen the kids for much of the ride so it was nice to check in and make sure they had figured out the braking system. Arrival at the waterfall felt like an entrance into Shangri La. Apart from the fact we had to share it with the stragglers from the previous horse riding group.
“if we have not found the heaven within,
we have not found the heaven without”
James Hilton, Lost Horizon
“Romance often begins by a splashing waterfall and ends over a leaky sink”
Author unknown..
The water was crystal clear and ice cold, deliciously refreshing and numbing on the parts of my body that already felt numb. Of course the kids were instantly swimming under the waterfall while I worried what parasites lived in the suspiciously clean water and how many were being swallowed as I watched. Swimming around, I tried to clear my head of thoughts of gastroenteritis and enjoy the moment. As the kids asked if they could leap from the rock above the waterfall I felt my anxiety gland swell and compromised by having them jump from the side. When did I become such a worrier?
"Worry is a misuse of imagination." Dan Zadra
“We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand
and melting like a snowflake.”
Marie B. Ray
The H2O hiatus was all too short lived and now we had to remount in damp clothes and ride slowly back up the dry river bed. At least lunch was waiting for us on our return.
"Riding: The art of keeping a horse between you and the ground."
Author Unknown
Lunch seemed an all too brief interlude into the world of non-thrill seekers. Watching the other diners I noticed that not everyone seemed to be hell bent on using up a year's supply of cortisol in one day. Some seemed positively well dressed and relaxed as if they were merely here to take in the therapeutic qualities of the volcanic waters. No time for me to envy the way they languished over lunch. We had 30 minutes to spare before the white water rafting so we had just time enough to fit in a quick tour of the snake garden. I point blank refused to have a python draped over me in a rebellious last ditch attempt to keep my pulse at normal levels.
The heat of the day was definitely rising as we boarded the old yellow school bus and bumped over to the start of the whitewater tubing. The way the guides fretted over my bare feet you would think the river was laden with jagged glass shards. Suspiciously I wondered if the zip line crowd had forewarned them of my elderly and infirm status.
“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet
and the winds long to play with your hair.”
Kahlil Gibran
Kitted up with helmets and life jackets, we were soon clambering down the steep canyon to the Rio Negro. During the one minute safety briefing I did start feeling the first flutters of anticipation. As we lined up ready to launch into the waters I made an assessment they were definitely rushing way faster than a "Class 1". After a few minutes I started to wonder what the holdup was. After another 5 minutes, I realized that the lady who had been in a wheel chair at the top of the hill was slowly crawling down the stairs carved out of earth and rock. The guides carried her in a innertube the last part of the way. I felt a huge lump in my throat and in a croaky voice offered to race her to finish line for a beer.
"Success is not measured by what you accomplish
but by the opposition you have encountered,
and the courage with which you have
maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds."
Orison Swett Marden
Sometimes it takes someone with a heart so full of courage to pass by before you can realize your own good fortune and how your own idea of what is risky can pale into insignificance when compared to the perspective of another.
“It is never too late to be who you might have been.”
George Eliot
This was it the piece de resistance, the final feather in my adrenaline soaked helmet. Summoning up the last remnants of my bravado, I launched off into the foaming white water.
"Living at risk is jumping off the cliff
and building your wings on the way down."
Ray Bradbury
With a large multicolored tyre as my water wings, I felt increasingly like I'd jumped off that cliff and was now stuck up the proverbial creek without a paddle. I felt a couple of large boulders graze the underside of the tube through a layer of thin lycra which was the bottom of my raft. I decided I'd have to go for a Kegel lift every time the water got shallow so as to avoid bruising my coccyx. Unfortunately, due to my bare feet, I had to keep my knees bent to avoid wacking my toes on the large boulders littering the river banks. It was a delicate balancing act to avoid getting injured. It left me looking like I was precariously perched on a toilet seat.
"I am always doing that which I cannot do,
in order that I may learn how to do it."
During the brief briefing we were warned to just sit and wait in the inner tube if you happened, on the unlikely event, to get stuck. I had set off at such a helluva pace I was quickly so far ahead of the kids I just had to hope Doug was being the responsible non parent and watching them from behind. Sure enough, Josh got stuck and caused a bottleneck of tubers leaving me as the lonesome lead flotsam on the Black River. Luckily before the pile up turned into complete gridlock, Doug bent the guidelines and waded through the current to push him on his way.
“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
Katharine Hepburn
“If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough.”
Mario Andretti
There were a couple of choke points that took my breath away they were so fast and furious. During the final speed section, hanging on grimly in my inverted crab position, I realized that I just had to be Zen, let the moment literally wash over me and surrender to having no control over my fate. After I survived each rapid I just had to hope that the kids would cope with it when they came upon it.
"To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily.
To not dare is to lose oneself."
I can't even tell you I felt any jubilation as I hauled my sad and bedraggled being from the river. I waited for the kids and Doug and silently breathed a huge sigh of relief. Zipline - check, horse ride - check, tubing - check, ah all that was left now was to soak in the curative thermal hot springs, the real reason I had agreed to all this in the first place.
"The old ox ploughs a straight furrow"
English proverb.
Just time for a quick vault onto the ox. I had to get a little forceful in telling the ox keeper to leave me alone and not to pick me up and swing me astride. Hadn't he heard how decrepit I was? It was straight to the hot spa for me. Unfortunately we were running out of daylight fast and the hot water comfort which had been beckoning all day would be a short lived experience. No time for healing mud facials, just a quick soak in a few of the 40 degree rocky pools alongside the river. Still, it was enough to ease away the aches and pains of a most adventuresome day and soothe the thought of our 2 plus hour drive home.
“If we all did the things we are capable of doing,
we would literally astound ourselves.”
Thomas Alva Edison
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