Tubing

One of the girls in my program has a birthday coming up, so she decided to celebrate it yesterday. Twelve of us decided to go tubing down a river north from where I live. So we loaded up one of the reggae buses and headed to St. George. First off, a reggae bus is what the students call the taxis around here. They are actually more the size of a Volkswagon bus, although they probably aren't as reliable. They're reggae buses because they are driven by locals and typically drive by with loud reggae music playing trying to get you to let them give you a ride. The upside to them is they are a really cheap form of transportation. The drive between where I live and downtown St. George is between 15 and 20 minutes. The fare is $2.50. That's a dollar US. Not too bad. So we went downtown, which is where the port is for the cruise ships. It looked very much like a tropical version of Ensanada. It was very dirty and crowded and all the little huts sold the same thing and promised to give you the best deal. From there we caught another reggae bus that took us 45 minutes north. That ride cost us $6. The worst part about the buses is that the drivers drive like maniacs. At home, these buses might safely hold 9 or 10 people. But in Grenada they hold 5 rows of people and as many as they can shove across. So now we're crammed into a bus that was way too small for how many people we had and there's no air conditioning! The windows were open, but it was still miserably hot. The people on the sides tried to stick their arms out the windows to make more room for everyone's shoulders, but the driver told us we weren't allowed to do that because he might pass too close to another car and our arms would get ripped off! The road to the river was very narrow and very twisty. There are no guard rails, so if the van goes off the side, all the passengers die. And this guy was flying around the corners!

We finally got to the tubing place and they gave us all life jackets. We got into our tubes and started on. It was so much fun! The river had rocks in it that created rapids so there was alternating smooth parts and rough parts. We had a blast. The water felt good and it felt great to do something that wasn't school-related. 

When we were finally done, we hiked up a little embankment and there was a bus waiting for us to take us back to the top of the river. THIS bus made the reggae buses look like high class sports cars. It had a wooden bottom with no seats. They put a couple tubes on the floor and we sat on those and they took off. Unbelievable.

We got back and called for a taxi. They came and picked us up, but the bus already had a few people in it. Remember how I said at home this bus might hold 10 people max? We had 18. We were jammed! So we started hauling around corners back to St. George. There was a woman on the side of the road looking for a taxi, so the driver pulled over and said, "Plenty of room!" and made one of our guys scoot over. This woman had to half-sit on his lap. So the bus chugged along with 19 people and as we went, the transmission smelled worse and worse. Every time we slowed I thought for sure we wouldn't get power again. But we made it to St. George. We got on another bus and came back to Grand Anse, which is where I live.

We went to dinner at a place called Dodgy Docks. It is at a resort in the True Blue Bay and they had the best food I've had since I got here. I had grilled fish with some rice pilaf and grilled veggies and a salad. It was delicious. There was a live band to entertain us and people danced. It was such a nice evening.

Today I studied all day and the next couple weekends I will do the same because midterms are coming in a couple weeks. I have never been to school with terms this long. At Cal Poly we had 10 week long quarters. Here we have 17 week long terms and they are so long! I can't wait to be done and get home. I miss everyone and I miss good food and convenient lodging. But overall I am having fun and getting good experiences.

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