Guatemala

Well, it's official ... I'm going to Guatemala this summer. That was my plan and a couple months ago, I was home and listening to NPR and they were saying if you're planning on traveling, buy tickets now, it's only going to get more expensive, so I just got my ticket without really having a travel partner or plans. So, when I was looking online trying to plan my trip, it was saying that it's dangerous to go there by yourself as a girl. So, I started thinking other options, maybe Peru, Thailand, or many other cool places that would have been more expensive. But a couple weekends ago when I was up in Salt Lake, I went climbing with my friend, Garrett and on the way home I realized I hadn't asked him, and within 20 minutes of asking, he'd bought a ticket, so it's on. I'm stoked. He went on his mission to Spain so he speaks Spanish and is a really good teacher, and he's got lots of time to look online and figure out what cool things we should do. We're going for six weeks and going to Honduras and Belize also and probably going to be doing some scuba diving. I'm stoked. So, if anyone has any suggestions of what to do in any of those countries, let me know.

Last week

This week was a great one on the river. This is kinda turning into a picture blog, but there were a lot of good ones last week so I thought I'd just put them on here. One of the highlights of the week was that this girl, Lindsay Hale was the other swamper and she's awesome. We had so much fun. She's from Orem, and we have the same birthday and she's so funny. (Here we are in matching outfits, both Oakley shorts from Steep and Cheap).

When we go to Havasu, we usually just hike up like 20 minutes and hang out there forever and people just hang in the water and play but this week we were going to stay for like 3 hours so Lindsay and I wanted to run up to Beaver Falls which is about 3.5 miles. So, we and a dude from the trip ran up there. It's the coolest run though fields of grape vines.

However, neither of us had been there so we missed the turn off and were so close, but we were below it and we didn't even know that we just needed to get up and around. But the pool we got to was cool enough.

The water is such and amazing color!

I'm trying out my sweet new waterproof camera, and I love it! (I think the one on the left kinda looks like the Nirvana cover from forever ago)

I'm always such a fan of reflections, and I see so many awesome ones, but a lot of times, pictures just don't do them justice, but this one turned out alright. That was the most clouds we saw all week. It was a hot one! The last couple nights, I had to get my sarong wet and put it over me just to be comfortable enough to sleep. For the derig at Lake Mead it was 113! But don't worry, it's not even hot yet, wait until July they all keep telling me..... can't wait for that.

This is a better picture of The Redwall Cavern with the other launch in it. It's huge and so fun to play ultimate or wiffle ball in.

This last picture is of my alarm. It sucks, but this is really what it looks like when I have to get up. Again, way cooler, than what my camera could record, but we usually get up when you can't see stars anymore. Way too early!!!

But the raddest thing about this week was that I got to drive all the big rapids! The way it works is you have to be a swamper for at least 10 trips, hopefully getting some driving time here and there and then you can drive a little, and when there's a spot available, you might get your own boat and be the boatman. This was trip 7 for me and I'd driven a lot of the little stuff and a few of the bigger ones, but Wiley, who's been down there for a while and I've known, let me drive all the stuff on rapid day! There's a couple class 10 rapids and a lot of 8 and 9s (The Grand is in a 1-10 scale rather than 1-5 like the rest of the world so that there's a bigger discrepancy between ratings for boaters who have never seen it before so they know which ones they need to scout). It was really fun. Super nerve racking, and I was so exhausted from that day from having so much adrenaline, then resting, then getting nervous again, but it was so fun. And I had all good runs except in this class 6 one, Grapevine I hit my motor and had to change out the prop. Anyway, it was really fun. Thanks to Wiley! A lot of boatmen get too nervous to let swampers drive but he's a good teacher and his confidence in me I think helps me relax and do better. So, overall, good week!