July 7th I

July 7th am

We just finished a great breakfast with eggs and bacon and Honduran coffee. Ryan made the food, I made the coffee. Mark took a plate and coffee up to Jane who was still asleep on top of the boat. It was very sweet, totally different side of Mark Mang! Where was that side when I was 16 years old?

I didn’t write at all yesterday because we were running most of the day. We started off by moving the boat to a new location. I laid out on the front hull for a while then Mark had me drive the house boat. I drove it for about 30 minutes. I felt pretty cool!

Jane and Darcie found a good spot but it was a little crowded and there was not a huge area for the boat. We had to tie down 4 anchors. I actually felt like I was of help because I was pulling the ropes on the boat and tying off the anchors. Ryan taught me how to tie the knots around the cleats on the boat and I even did a climbers knot when we needed to tie two ropes together.
Ryan and Mark decided they needed to tie the boat on the rock towering above the boat, so Ryan climbed up a rock face with the rope and they tied it around a rock, that didn’t look very sturdy to me. To test how strong the rock would hold, Mark repelled down the rock face with the rope. Then he told Ryan to do it. By the look on Ryan’s face, I could tell he was not thrilled about the idea. BUT… Ryan can’t not do something that Mark does because he knows he will get ENDLESS shit for it, so down he went. Mom, you will be proud, I held back the urge to do it myself, but I think I am going to volunteer to take the rope off!

Later I took one of the jet-skis out and found a canyon to go down. It didn’t go very far before it got too narrow and I had to turn around. Then I went down a little further and found another canyon that went really far back. It was amazing because it would narrow into about a 2 jet-ski wide channel, then open up into a beautiful pool. I felt like I was a bond girl zooming and swerving around the turns with the canyon walls shooting straight up. I was pretty far back until I turned around because it was too narrow. On the way back my wake had disrupted the still water and the waves were crashing against the walls, and then consequently into my jet-ski. Very quickly I went from feeling like a hot bond girl to a drowning wet dog… not nearly as good of a mental picture! After being thrashed around a bit I got back into one of the wide open pools. It was so unbelievably beautiful. I killed the engine on the jet-ski and jumped into the pool. The water was refreshing and again, I just can’t believe how beautiful this place it. I am totally amazed by the beauty of the lake and the canyons.

After the jet-ski jaunt I went for a hike behind the lake up into the canyons. I walked probably about 3 miles up rock faces, through bolder fields, and over sand dunes. As I got further down the cove and the channel narrowed I decided to swim across to the other side instead of walk all the way around. It freaked me out a little bit because as I was swimming I could only see about 5 feet in front of me. There were a few trees on the bottom that freaked me out and made me swim faster. When I got to the other side I started up a rock face that was pretty steep. About half way up my mother’s voice popped into my head. Before she left me she gave me her usually speech about being careful, not doing anything stupid and all that. One line she gave me was, “Before you do something, please think about your safety.” So half way up the rock face I thought, “wow, this is steep. I can make it up, but how am I going to get down?” So I turned around and slid down, one foot out in front of me and the other tucked under my butt. I was actually impressed with the agility I had getting down so…. I decided to go up another one. Sorry mom! Amazingly though, not a single scratch! Yes!

Up and down a few more rock faces and I was sweating pretty bad. Back in the water and across to our side of the channel, I started back to the boat. Instead of tracing the coast line I went in a straight line back to the boat. This resulted in having to swim across two more small inlets where the water cut into the rock. It was so cool, jump in the water and swim, climb up the rock, do it again. I loved it!

The rest of the evening was laid back. We made dinner and hung out on the top of the boat. The boat near us was setting off fire-works that Molly enjoyed. At this point the sun was down and the air had cooled off, so the next thing to do was to give into the droopy eyes and go to sleep under the stars.