Our adventure yesterday started at 8am--to conquer the Citadell! We piled (literally) 18 people into the small Toyota pickup. It is a 4 door that holds 6 (tightly) with a small bed in back. We squished 7 people in the cab and 11 people in the bed of the pickup. About half had to stand and half could "sit". It was about a 45 minute ride with only a few miles being a smoothly paved area--Jess thinks only about a mile paved.
We picked up a tour guide at the bottom of the mountain--he jumped in back to make 19. After locking in the front hubs to switch into 4 wheel drive we snaked up the stone road half way up the mountain--thankfully it wasn't raining as the tires occassionally slipped the way it was. As we neared the end of our drive people saw us and chased after us for the last quarter mile to swarm us when we stopped trying to sell us trinkets, horse rides up the hiking portion, and to be our "tour guides" up the mountain.
We then started our hike up the last say 1000 vertical feet. Thankfully the sun was behind the clouds, but many of us still were drenched with sweat when we did reach the top--actually, I was drenched after about 500 yards. None of us took a horse though and made it up on our own.
The citadell was amazing! For those of you who like Lord of the Rings it felt like we were in the castle at Minastirith! Very cool. There were sections that could be shut down and even flooded if they were breached as potential attacking forces came in.
We have to mention the toilets. They were so high up you could finish peeing before your pee even hit the ground! (I held Elijah just to make sure he didn't fall through the toilet seat.)
The hike down was much better but a bit hard on the knees.
In other news there have been two new babies admitted in the last 2 days. They are currently adjusting by staying in the volunteer house with one of the long term volunteers, so we all help out with them quite a bit.
Group #2 should be at MSP as I type this. Group #1 misses people and back home a bit, but eveyone is generally sad to be leaving. There has been a lot of talk of coming back already.
Signing off...Kirk (with Jess and Dana's help).
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