A Morning at the River

One of the kid's favorite things to do here is go and play at the river.
Kaitlyn loves to catch tadpoles, and they like to play games where they are
animals and crawl around on the rocks, or lie down in the (freezing cold!)
water. Sometimes they like to build dams across part of the river and make
the water flow another direction, or build up a pool behind it.

The kids have been asking to go to the river ever since the day we got here,
but because of the gloomy, rainy weather, we haven't gone yet. So when
Saturday started out sunny, we decided we should finally head down to the
river.

Matt took along our shovels so that he and the kids could build dams. As we
were walking down to the river, Kaitlyn told us that the river looked very
different. (she had gone down there once on her own, but that's a story for
another day). And she was right! As we came down the mountain, we realized
that the river looked Totally different from ever before. We were trying to
figure it out, and then as we got closer Matt said that it must have been a
flood.

Usually, the river at where the trail crosses it is wide open, but just
above that place, the jungle encroaches and the river disappears from sight
among all the various vines and bushes and trees and other plants. But as
we came down the trail, we could see the wide, rocky river bed winding up
the mountain. The whole area looked so different. There used to be some
HUGE boulders that we would put our shoes on, or sit on, but they were
totally gone. No where to be seen at all! And rocks that didn't used to be
there were lying jumbled around in new places.

2004

Same view of the river now

We've been here in the village when we've gotten a LOT of rain. Like 10
inches in a week or so. But even then, with all that rain, I've NEVER seen
the river at more than ankle deep. So it's hard to fathom how much rain it
must have taken, and how much water there must have been to clean out the
entire river bed (and many people's gardens which had been planted along
the sides of it!) But it must have been massive, to clear it completely out
of all vegetation/trees/bananas/gardens and just leave the wide, rocky river
bed.

But that wide open river bed winding up the mountain was just too tempting
to leave unexplored. So we spent the next hour or so climbing up and up.
Even Julianne climbed along well, although she had to stop at each little
pool of water and sit down in it, no matter how cold it was! Matt, Kaitlyn,
Nathan and Justin went quite a lot farther on, but they still didn't come to
the spring where the river starts. They're going to save that for a future
adventure.

After we climbed back down to where we started, Matt and the kids had fun
building some dams and trying to make the river flow in certain directions.
I think eventually they gave up though because there were just too many big
rocks that they couldn't move or that the water went under. But they had
fun.

Then we came home and had one of the biggest rainstorms that afternoon that
we'd had so far during our stay out here.

Hopefully things will start to dry out a little around here and we can get
out on some more hikes or adventures!