There was a thunderstorm during the night and we were woken up by several loud crashes of thunder. It rained all night and was still raining in the morning. I sat in the restaurant for about four hours this morning, waiting for the rain to stop and the skies to clear and typed blog stuff (even though I can't upload it) and a bunch of e-mails to people. I Skyped Peter and found out to my dismay that Toni had passed away on Friday. Great lady who died too soon and Peter and Jess are going to miss her tremendously.
When the weather cleared Patricia and James decided they were going to go tubing and asked me if I wanted to go too. I had planned to do other things and tubing didn't really interest me but since the rain had made all biking and hiking trails extremely muddy, I decided to go tubing. We found Sinead and Victoria and headed off to the rental spot. We paid the rental fee for the tube and the deposit for returning it, and loaded up on a tuk tuk for the twenty minute ride to the start. The first part of the route is lined with bars and all the young people were there imbibing. We took a small boat to the far side and then we launched our tubes. I had to push James off the dock so that he could get started, Patricia got herself going and I also tipped over trying to get on my tube. I took my dry bag so that I could take my camera and wallet as well. The two girls stayed at the first bar. Immediately the three of us got separated and we were on our own. The first part of the ride was past all the bars, and they all pumped out loud music. The river current is very strong and we were moving along quite quickly. The scenery was very beautiful. The current seemed to keep me on the far side of the river along the bank. A couple of times I brushed against trees and once I had a rock from below bump me. Once we got past the bars the float was very quiet, peaceful and relaxing. The whole ride was probably about five or six kilometres and took an hour. The end wasn't clearly marked and when I saw the end sign I was on the opposite side of the river and couldn't get across. By the time I did get across I was about a half kilometre further downstream closer to my guesthouse. A man on the shore helped me stop at his dock. From there I walked back to the rental shop with my tube. I got my deposit back and complained about the shabby ending and said surely I wasn't the only one who missed the end. I walked back to the guesthouse and found James and Patricia who were just walking their tubes back to the rental shop. So clearly I wasn't the only one who missed the end stop! Turns out they said together most of the time, they both fell out of their tubes and lost their flip flops. Luckily they had each other to save their tubes!
After that I spent some time walking around town. I met a couple of other people in the Irish bar from yesterday and played some pool with them, boy am I rusty. Had a couple of beers. Then I walked around and found the rest of my group in the restaurant from last night and had dinner with them. Then back to the hotel for the usual evening activities.
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