Rednecks in Paradise

It would seem that the rains have let up a bit,,, finally!  I realize that in my last post i may have seemed a bit enamored with the rains, but that was before it began cutting into my fun time!  Now, im over it!

The forecast still has plenty of rain in store, but as long as its light enough to get out and do stuff, i think we will be ok with it.  The surf today was rough, really rough.  The storm last night not only reddened the color of the water, but kept the ocean extremely irregular and choppy.  Normally we wouldn't surf in those conditions, but since we are only here a limited time, and have already paid for it... we went out anyway.

The highlight of the trip so far was our afternoon adventure.  We went on an ATV tour with one of our surf guides Steven.

After 20 min of these guys watching us drive in a circle until they felt comfortable we wouldn't crash them into a tree, we headed out into the rain forest, and appropriately, it was raining.  I don't think these guys get a lot of rednecks in their tour though, cause Shelli and I were WAY better riders than our little surf guide.  The tour started out overly unexciting as Steven, our inexperienced guide (seriously nice guy, but the way he drove the quad, i think it had to of been his firs tour or something) would stop and say "look at this tree, or that vine, it can be used for bla bla bla".  However, about 15 min in it started to get interesting.  I don't think they take many tours out when there has been this much rain.  Steven got stuck on some ridiculously tiny mud hill.  Shelli and I didn't :)

 I think that event got to Steven cause the next obstacle we came to was a flooded river, and after walking up to his stomach to check it out, he says, "yeah, you can do it".  So, alright, here we go I guess.  Straight away, the water got way deeper than the quad could handle, and I had to jump off and push it while keeping the throttle up enough so water wouldn't flow up the submerged tailpipe.  Im sure you'll all enjoy Shell's narration.

No real worry about hurting them for us though, Steven told us to, and they weren't our quads :)  Anyway, we all get through it (Shelli would like me to add in, that even though Steven and I helped her push her quad through the swollen river, she would have been fine without our help :) and kept on moving.  We crossed more waist deep mud puddles than I can count and another river that we had to cross in pretty swift current.





All this time, Steven has been checking out all of the water spots before we go and this 'tour' has taken way longer than its supposed to.  Its almost getting dark, but we are supposed to be almost home.  Then, we come around a corner and there is a freakin tree in the path.  No way under it, no way to move it, jungle on both sides.

Only one real option, turn around.  So thats what we did.  Back though it all, in the dark, with lots of creepy, crawly, flying animal encounters.  While crossing one of the giant mud puddles I saw a snake and turtle trying to swim away me as fast as possible,,, still, it scared me a bit.  Shelli freaked a bit when i told her what i had just seen.  Anyway, we got back ok.  Safe and sound, just a little wet, muddy and cold.  Steven made us promise not to show any pics or vids to anyone else in our tour company,,, but you guys aren't in our tour company :)  He seemed very relieved that Shell and I weren't upset, but stoked on our added adventure.

So, even though it was a complete stoke of luck that we got Steven, and he let us keep going, we finally got some adventure in!