Off Roading

This week started off like any other, a nice afternoon at the pool followed by yoga next to the beach. Then the next morning the SO organization had organized a hike to hog island.  I almost didn't go because I was feeling too lazy to get out of bed, but I managed to convince myself it would be worth it. And it totally was.

The bridge to hog island

A cool tree we saw on the trail

The hike started out in Lance Aux Epines (a neighborhood in St. George's) and we walked to this bridge that crossed over to hog island.  Once on the island we walked through the trees and such for a little while before coming to a quiet little beach.  Two of my friends and I swam out to a catamaran, they swam underneath it while I watched.  Yes I'm a chicken. Then we just spent some time chatting with other SO's for a while.  When we were done we took a water taxi back across and around so we had much less walking and hiking to do.  The taxi was a wooden boat that seats six people and as it was approaching the driver was scooping out water from the bottom with half of a gallon milk jug. Never a good sign.  I just told myself it was probably just water from the rain. The good news is that we made it safely! The rest of our day consisted of a really big group grocery shopping trip.  We went to three different stores and completely filled the car up.  The trunk was stuffed and we also had groceries all over the floor and on our laps. It was really nice to get our cupboards all restocked.

There's a fruit stand at the bottom of our hill that sells local honey and I have stopped by a couple different times in search of some but they have been out for quite a while. Finally this week they had the bottles of honey and I could hardly wait to get home and try it.  Best honey I have ever had, it's amazing!

Huge bottle of fresh honey

This week there were some free Zumba classes and we decided to try them out.  It wasn't the best class I have ever taken, but we had a lot of fun and it was a really good workout.  I have never sweat so much before, it was coming from places I didn't even know could sweat. One night after Zumba my friend Tessa was driving me and another girl home. Our other friend lives up one of the worst roads in the area. On our way back down the road we hit a huge rock that neither of us saw and it made a terrible sound. A couple days later we had a relief society game night where we played bunco.  Afterwards we gave the same friend a ride home and this time we had Tori with us. All three of our husbands were studying at our apartment so after we dropped our friend off we were heading back to my place.  Tess and I spotted the rock on the way up that got us a couple nights prior and we're ready to avoid it.  Now the road was being prepped for paving so there were ditches dug out on both sides that were about 2 feet deep, but it was hard to tell where the edge was because there was some grass and weeds growing on the edge.  We were taking it slow and being careful and right as I was about to say that I thought we were getting close it happened.  Front tire off the road.

We sat in the car for a second just soaking in the moment.  Then we got out to see what we were dealing with.  All we knew is that we couldn't call our husbands because we wanted to prove that we could handle ourselves.  We were a little nervous though because it was dark and we had no clue what our options were.  Tessa had a really good idea thinking that if we could stack rocks under the tire maybe we could get some traction.  It didn't work, but it was a good idea!  We also tried pushing, but in a two foot deep ditch in flip flops we didn't exactly have the best set up to do so.  A nice Grenadian teenager came over to help us and we were eventually able to get it out.  Tessa decided to try turning the wheel and backing up.  It was risky because that could have resulted in the back tire ending up in the ditch, but she was successful.  Crisis avoided.

The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful.  It rained a ton so we spent most of the time inside.  A lot of the buildings here have tin roofs (thankfully our apartment is not one of those buildings) and the church building is one of those.  During sunday school it started raining and it was loud.  The rainfall progressively got heavier and eventually we could hardly hear the person next to us talking because it was so loud.  There really isn't a point to this story other than it was just crazy!  My favorite part about it raining so much though is that it makes for extra beautiful sunsets.  

The view from my kitchen window.