El Bejuco Falls

 So, after our swim, we dried off..well, not me because I was still hiking in wet clothes from my time in the river. We  start up towards the other waterfall....remember the part about only 80 meters? I don't think that was accurate. After 2 hours, Kiah was sobbing and we were all soooo tired with no end in sight. Poor girl. The only thing she could say was "I hate hiking!" "I just want to go home." Finally by about 2pm, we reached the waterfall and ate our lunch. We were exhausted. Most of our path up to the falls was climbing over steep boulders and rocks. They were so steep the guide would have to climb up and then lift the kids, while the guide behind him would push the kids up. It was so hard and so long and so steep. I just can't express in words how dangerous and tiring it was climbing up those huge rocks. We sat for a few minutes and took pictures of the waterfall.

Finally, we were ready to head back to the lodge. Louis asked the guide about how long it was to get back. He said "4 hours or so." If you need a reminder of what I said in my other post, this was supposed to be a quick little 2 hour family hike. We were already 3 hours into our hike and completely exhausted.
 I knew Kiah just couldn't go too much farther. One of the guides said that just a bit farther up, the path got less steep and would be easier. After about 45 min. more of uphill stairs and rocks, the trail finally leveled out a bit. However, it was so full of leaves that we kept tripping on small rocks hidden under them. We wouldn't know from step to step if the ground was solid or rocky until we took the step. Kiah and Gabe were both in crocks so they slipped a lot even without the added problem with leaves. Anyway, I got carried away in the memory. Let me hop down to the end of our story, or you will get just as tired as we were just reading this. After we were certain the bridge was nearby Louis asked the guide again how much farther. He said "2 hours." At that point, I think I felt like Kiah and I just about broke into tears with her. She was just so tired and couldn't get her energy between sobbing tears. The total hike ended up taking 6 hours. We returned sore and tired, but perhaps with a greater sense of what we could accomplish as a family. For the rest of the trip, we all returned to conversations about what we learned on our hike and I think even Kiah mentioned that she could tell her class she could do anything she put her mind to since she could do a 6 hour hike. The only person not completely exhausted at the end was Gabe, who was still bouncing around and playing with a little toy car waiting for the driver to come pick us up after the hike. Of course you knew that is how it would be, though,  huh.:)