Sunday, May 24, 2009

Today, the little girl came back to the window in the morning and said she’d be back after church, lol. When she said “hello,” we both jumped and let out a slight scream, lol. So, later on, I told the girl not to come to the window anymore because it frightens us. She says she is 8 years old and she lives in the blue and white house across the way from us. Her father is a baker and her mother is a teacher and all together they have 8 children. So, I guess she just wants to be our friend maybe next time she comes we’ll play cards or something.

When Wisdom got to the Gardens, we headed over to the Bike and Hike Tours shop and we chose a 11 km route that looked fairly easy based on the altitude variation. Little did we know that we were embarking on a strenuous adventure. We started off on the paved roads and we went down this HUGE hill, which was exhilarating and a little scary at the same time. I kept thinking that it would have been crazy for Tope to learn to ride a bike like this, he would have surely died. We veered off of the road and rode on a thin dirt trail that wound its way through the mountainside. Our arms were sliced up by the branches and leaves that we passed and we were constantly dodging large rocks, one of which was so obstructive that I had to make an abrupt stop and Alanna ran into the back of my bike. I kept riding but when she screamed, I turn and saw her falling into the brush and then she kept screaming even after the amount of time that it would have taken her to hit the ground. At this point I had started to laugh a little but when she got up and I saw that she was soaked, I just started laughing uncontrollably and to make it worse, I was the only one laughing. She was really pissed after she fell in the stream, so Wisdom stayed with Alanna at the next village and I kept going with Koby, our guide. On the path, we passed girls carrying large stalks of Bamboo, we passed a man with tattoos intricately carved in his face with a dozen large white animals (I think they were cattle); I brought my camera out slowly to take a picture and they started running and broke through a fence, lol. The man just laughed and followed after them. We kept going and the trail was so difficult and tiresome but completing the entire course was very rewarding. While riding, I just wanted to be finished but now that I’m finished, I want to go riding again. Koby was really nice, he also runs track and field. He says that he is the second fastest 800m runner in the country. We exchanged numbers, so maybe I’ll go biking with him again. When we got home, we cooked and ate spaghetti with Wisdom and Tope, nothing like a home cooked meal. :)