2 Hot 2 Handle

This past weekend brought the sad departure of one of our friends who was visiting for 10 days. I became aware of and eventually joined this program because of my best friend from childhood, Allie Horwitz, and will be lucky enough to share my 6 weeks with her and one of her roommates from college who I have befriended over the past 4 years, Jill Kohaneck. Their other roommate, Livia Rizzo, decided that she just couldn't let the 3 of us get away with sharing this experience without getting a little peek for herself. Aside from the jokes and the fun that she always brings with her company, it has been great having Liv around for me especially, given she was the only person in the entire country with worse Spanish-speaking abilities, having not taken Spanish at any point during her academic years. In typical Liv fashion, we decided she needed to go out with a bang  and so we took a trip to the nearby volcano called Mombacho that serves as the backdrop to our everyday view of Granada. After hiking up about 2/3 of the volcano, we reached a coffee farm with a beautiful view and even more important, some free samples! We even got to see the beginning of a wedding ceremony taking place on the farm. Realizing that, as always, we were a bit late due to a combination of our late start and our slower than expected hike up the volcano, we opted to skip out on the rest of the climb in order to make time for a canopy tour down back to the main road. Within minutes, we were strapped up in harnesses, helmets secured, lives signed away, and ready to go! Over the course of an hour we soared from tree to tree through 11 different lines, including a number of obstacles, such as a tarzan swing, trapeze rope, and straight drop decline. I will have to work on getting out some pictures because somewhere between the natural mist of the trees and the downpour from the ominous cloud above us, I became reluctant to take out my phone for pictures (Mom and Dad give me a pat on the back for finally learning after 20+ phones). On the way back from the volcano, we struggled to find a taxi or a bus home, so when we came across a 3-wheel  motorcycle sort of vehicle meant for the most obvious tourists, we readily climbed aboard. Luckily, after Jill talked our driver up a bit in the front seat, he took us to a nearby site with rock from the volcano. We stopped and got out, climbing in the rock and fulfilling our touristy duties by taking 942 pictures of the massive red walls. Later on, Liv's trip came to a fitting end as we finished off with a delicious meal at a local restaurant called El Camello.