Sorry We've Been Gone So Long

Wow... So much has happened over the past few days--- so I am going to try and send a few emails while we are traveling today... I have three days to write about so here goes...

Monday afternoon--

Our train finally arrived in to our destination at around 5pm. The city is a big tourist destination in the country, and it lies basically in a desert area. At the train station we met one of the family members from the mountian village that would host us for the next few nights. All the guys were pretty excited about going into a secluded area with no running water and roughing it a little bit... the girls were a lot more hesitant. After about an hour and a half taxi ride... We arrived at the first mouintain village. The native people in this village have been here for over five centuries! The sun set when we arrived, so we couldn't see as much... But the landscape is absolutely breathtaking! The home sits on the side of a mountain covered in beautiful flowers and fig trees... As well as cacti. The cacti have these beautiful flowers on them that are beginning to bloom. Below the home in the valley there is a beautiful river that winds around the mountains in the distance.. After a long day of traveling, we had tea and coffee with the family and then had a fabulous dinner in their house. They treated us like they had known us for years. Everything is about family here. Even eating is about family... a certain level of trust is gained when you break bread together here. You share food out of a large community dish in the center of the table. It was getting late, so we shared our favorite moments of the day with each other night, then we went to bed. We were very excited about getting up on Tuesday, because we got to hike deep into the mountains to another secluded village.

Tuesday morning and afternoon---

Happy Birthday Garin! We were all really excited to wake up to the beautiful mountain views this morning. When we got in last night, the sun was going down and we couldn't see as much. We explored around the area for a while before breakfast... I got some georgeous landscape shots with Dad's camera. After having breakfast outside overlooking the river, we packed for our hike to the secluded village high in the mountains. On the way, we went to a nearby town to go to the market... this day was the one day of the month where all of the local villages come to buy foods, spices, livestock, clothes... etc. Goatheads were all over the place. You also would get your haircut this day, so there were a bunch of tents with just barbers. I got some great shots of a donkey parking lot where everyone parked while shopping. After the market, we left to go straight to the second mountain village. We were all laughing on this awesome hike because Mike Penny told us we would do some "light hiking"... Yeah right Penny. The first day hike took five hours and we were at a pretty high altitude!!! One of the girls wasn't feeling well and got to ride on the donkey that was hauling all our stuff. Pretty cool!!!! This trip was such an awesome time for me because it truly required a significant fitness level! We went through many villages along the way crossing rivers and going over other mountain peaks. When we finally made it to the village, it was absolutely beautiful! They have terraced gardens all up the side of the mountain with carrots, figs, oranges, lemons, potatoes, prunes, peas, and my personal favorite... Fava beans. The family took us through the gardens all the way down to the river. We also got water from the community well and carried it back to the house. A couple of our team members helped bake bread and prepare vegetables for the evening's tagine. Of course we don't eat until 9, so our leader took Garin out to do some "chores" while the rest of the team set up a suprise Bday party - with cake! Needless to say he was very suprised when he walked back into the room. Its never wrong to eat dessert first! After indulging in cake, dinner was brought out and again everyone ate together. One notable event was the guys' first experience scoring a touchdown in a squattie. For those of you that know what we mean know how awesome it is.... For those of you who don't, we will explain when we get home. The highlight of the day (although hard to pick just one) had to be sleeping out on the veranda looking up at a perfectly clear African sky. There were millions of stars and quite a few recognizeable constellations - we even saw a couple shooting stars!

I will write about Wednesday and today(Thursday) in a little bit. Thanks for following along!

David and the team