Row Row Row Your Boat

Well I survived the trip back. It actually wasn't all that bad. Except for the fact that it hurt to move my legs at all. Doing all that hiking is a beating. My quads were really tight this morning, but I felt better when I looked over and everyone else was really sore too. We hiked down along the river for about 2 hours and because the weather held up we got to take a boat across. I'm glad that we got to take the boat instead of the 10 hour hike out; however it was a little weird to have the guys keep asking me if I could swim. I'm not a fan of trying to swim across the 3rd largest river in the world right before it gets to the flood stage. We did luck out in that the leader of the village took the hike with us and told the guys who own the boat to take us across. C_ warned me that the boat was pretty old and worn out, but it wasn't that bad. It was just interesting trying to cram 7 people in the small rowboat. After about a 10 minute trip across the river and another 20 minutes of hiking we made it up to a hydro-electric plant and waited for the van to come and pick us up. The van was running late so one of the nationals suggested that we go swim for a while in a stream. The hydro-electric plant runs off of one of the streams that flows down into the river and there is a nice pool of water right under the bridge. Since it was about 80 degrees and we'd been hiking all day, I was all about it. We all stripped down and jumped in for about 20 minutes. One of the guys decided he wanted to take a bath; which was kind of awkward, especially since he was upstream of me. But as soon as we got out the van made the trip around the corner of the mountain and we made the hour and a half drive back. So I'm feeling pretty great right now. The stomach settled down yesterday afternoon and when I got back to town I went and got some Kentucky Fried Chicken. Normally I'm all about sticking just to the ethnic food, but after spending several days in villages I just needed to eat something American. Normally KFC ranks pretty low on the food chain back home, but it sure did taste amazing today. After a shower and a nap C_ and I went out to eat and then got the ol' hour long massage. The quote of the night had to be during dinner C_ and I were talking about family and I told him that he and my brother had the same name and it was spelled the same way. C_ asked if my brother was mean and I said "yeah, he can be." He replied "you know why? Because he has a girl's name." I thought it was funny. The massage was pretty great. I'm pretty sure that was the best $7.50 I've ever spent. I've only had one other real massage and it was the last time that I was out here. I kind of had a bad experience (let's just say they were interested in giving more than massages), and I haven't really been back since. But this thing was pretty great after a long hike. We were both sitting there groaning once they started working on our legs though. I'm thinking that the best remedy for this is to go back again tomorrow.