This morning I woke up to the sound of birds twittering. Little, high pitched tweets that told me the sparrow eggs had hatched. The sparrow pair recently made a nest in the eves of our banda busily flying back and forth between the grass, hedges and the banda. This early morning bird calls and the fact that I got to roll over for another half hour was a great start to the day. Exams are now over. Since my last update I have pretty much done nothing but study, eat, sleep and take tests. However, today breakfast was moved back til 9:30 and non-program day stretched out before us. Getting up and answering email passed the time until I the breakfast bell rang. And what a breakfast. First of all it was outside! We had all the usual things (eggs, pancakes, fruit, potatoes, oatmeal, and toast) as well as granola and yogurt!!!!!! It was amazing.
For the main activities of the day one car went to Karatu and three cars went to Mto wa Mbu. Most everyone (including me) was going on a new hike up to a waterfall which started a little outside Mto wa Mbu. On our way we dropped three people off to do some painting in town and then we kept driving. We quickly left town behind and began winding our way through banana and rice farms making the drive very green and jungle like. The dirt track ended and the hike began. We started out walking through the banana trees and the smell of wet earth and the loud sounds of the nearby insects continued the jungle trek feel. We stepped over a small irrigation stream and began to climb. The change from farm to bush was very sudden and the terrain went from damp path to rocky and uneven. The path was not super steep but we were climbing as we went from stepping over the rocks to climbing over them. As we continued the climbing turned to scrambling on large boulders and the sound of water increased. Clambering over about five more large boulders we came to the base of the waterfall. The top was about twenty five feet above us and the water ran in several different streams down the rock face to the small pool at the base. The sun was high in the sky and the temperature right at the melt point but nothing could detract from the beauty. From our spot on these large rocks we could see out over the surrounding bush as well. We spent some time here before we decided to go higher. There was no trail for this part. And it was almost straight up. Hanging on to roots, tree trunks, and any finger holds we could get on the rocks we pulled ourselves between obstacles and up to the top of the waterfall. Climbing down to the flat area by the top I crossed the stream and climbed up to a prominent rock sitting about ten to fifteen feet further up stream. Pulling myself up I had a great view of not only the top of the waterfall but of the bush and into the distant Mto wa Mbu. The sound of the stream going past and then falling off the cliff along with the talking of my fellow hikers made for a restful spot. I found a comfy spot on the rock and ate my lunch while enjoying my spectacular view. A few times I wished I had my camera but in the end was glad I had no electronics to distract me from the experience itself. Eventually of course it was time to head down and this proved to be very entertaining. Many of my fellow hikers don’t have a lot of hiking or rock experience. That is not to say that I’m an expert but I had a clue where some of the clearly didn’t. So the straight up portion to the top of the waterfall? Yeah it looks a lot nicer going up than going down. Lots of breath held, loose rocks sliding, and encouragement later everyone was down to the waterfall pool and ready to get going. Being impatient was second in line behind our guide as we headed down and the front group made it back to the cruisers in half the time it took us to get up. We had lost the slower part of the group and got to chill in the shade til until they got there. And while we were sitting there two men ran past with huge stalks of bananas on their shoulders. We thought this was pretty funny and unanimously agreed it should be an Olympic sport. So while we waited for everyone else we watched the first Running of the Bananas and cheered loudly whenever “a runner” passed us.
The rest of the afternoon was spent at Happy Days tourist bar in Karatu before heading back to camp. One of our fellow students had decided to make dinner so we had spectacular enchiladas for dinner and the ‘80s themed prom is starting in ten minutes. Should be an interesting evening overall
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