September 19th, 2007 by benbjamin
hey everyone,
It’s been a while since I posted any news so I guess it’s about time.
I’ve been pretty busy traveling around this summer, it seems like I went everywhere. In September, I ended my trip to Cyprus, and then spent a weekend in Italy and Switzerland, which would have been a pretty good month, but I’m not finished, as next week I’ll head off to Tunisia. I’m really excited about that.
As I mentioned above, a weekend ago I was in Italy (Milan) and Switzerland (Brig), which was a very nice trip. In Milan I really didn’t do much, Catherine and I met up and we just walked around, took in some sights, complained and then didn’t even buy anything. The weather was perfect though. The next day we went canyoning in a gorge near Brig. I’m really sure if canyoning is the right term, but that’s what I call it. My definition of “Canyoning†is when you put on a wetsuit and a helmet, drive up to the top of a canyon and the walk/hike/jump/swim and climb down the canyon. When I first signed up to go I had imaged that we would be walking down some kind of path, man was I wrong.
The trip started out easy enough, we packed our bags with all our supplies and then started walk down a path, and this took about 45 minutes before our first break. That’s where the fun started, during the break and began to change into our wet suits and get ready for the real adventure ahead. It was now time to get into the water, the water by the was ice cold, as it’s a runoff from a glacier, but with the wet suit on it wasn’t bad at all, the worst part being when you come out of the water, a little bit of water would get in between the wetsuit and your skin, man that was cold, you could feel it run all the way down your body.
At the begging the trip was fun, until we got to the first part where we needed to use a rope to climb down. For me the every time we had a use a rope I was terrified, climbing down a slippery cliff with ice cold water hitting pounding on you as you slowly descend down, depending on a 65 year old man to hold you, a rope, a piece of metal and harness to hold you, your life is literally in this guys hands. Oh man was it scary, the worst drop was estimated to be over 30 meters/100 feet deep, all I know was when I looked down, I couldn’t see the bottom. I somehow survived, but not unscaved, because on every climb down I would slip and injure something, my shin, hands, back something.
But my biggest injury came at the end of the trip, we were now out of the canyon walking on a path 30 mins till the end when I slipped on a rock. I fell straight down and cut my figure pretty deep. I don’t think I have seen so much blood come out of my body so fast, and it was just a cut on my small finger, but it was actually squirting out. Luckily our guide had some bandages and he fixed me up.
Well that’s my update for now; I hope to add some pictures soon.
Next week I’ll be in Tunisia, woo hoo a new land and continent.
Take care.
