It was a very short flight, and it seemed like it was only 10 minutes until we landed in Da Lat. When we did, I was blown away. The temperature was just like a warm NZ afternoon, and when we drove out of the airport, this is the view that greeted us:
It could have been home.
On the way to our hotel, driving along a road that wound through the hills, the bus we were in broke down! Brent Tarr, the youth leader from our church, had a look at it, but in the end we had to call a second bus, which arrived 10 minutes later.
The hotel wan't bad, it had the basic necessities: toilet, shower, double beds and a tv with all the good channels, but when my room-mate tried to use the shower he found out that rather than emitting a more or less focused stream of water, it blasted the stuff everywhere in the hope of hitting whoever had turned it on.
Once we had settled in, everyone went downstairs and we headed off to our first activity: the Alpine Coaster. After a short bus ride, we arrived at the park where it was and headed to the restaurant for lunch before starting.
Unlike the luge in Auckland or Rotorua, passing is impossible, so if someone decides they want to stop and take a photo (as in fact they did) you have to wait for them to finish before starting again, resulting in pileups like this one:
Eventually though, we did reach the bottom. It was here I made a mistake. The leaders hadn't reached the bottom yet, so those of us who had decided to go back up using our second ticket (unlike the luge, riding back up cost the same as going down). When we reached the top, we waited for the leaders to catch up. And waited.
And waited.
We soon realised we had jumped the gun, so half walked, half ran the kilometre or so back down the hill. At the bottom, we caught up again, but now we had no ticket to get back up. Oops. We stayed down there for a while, admiring the scenery.
Once we were done, those of us who still had tickets left rode back up, while myself and the others started the long, tiring hike back up. When we came back to the start, a couple of the guys decided to buy another ticket and ride again. Finally, everyone had had enough, so we headed to a nearby grassy area for some team competeitions. We were divided into three teams - red, green and blue - and pitted against each other in games. An example is the tarp folding game: each team is told to stand on a tiny tarpaulin, then flip it over without stepping off. It took us a few tries, but we got it in the end.
Our next activity was paddleboating; we headed down to a nearby lake, split into two people per boat and headed out onto the water. A splash war began, which soon escalated until no-one was left dry. We had the boats for an hour, but because we were racing around trying to splash each other we barely made it past the half hour mark before heading in to shore.
After two leg-straining activities, we were ready to go back to the hotel. After drying off and changing, we went to dinner at another restaurant then to a coffee house for evening devotions led by a guy who had travelled from Thailand for the camp, Zac Moebius, who everyone started to call "Shaggy" because he sounded just like the cartoon character. Exhausted after a busy day, we all collapsed into bed and tried to get to sleep (though not everyone succeeded).
The next day, we had to get up early to go to our next and biggest activity: canyoning. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of this because A) I couldn't bring the phone due to the fact that we would be getting very wet and B) The two cameras the leaders had brought got flooded when the dry-bags they carried failed. However, the website http://www.phattireventures.com/canyon.php has some details of the route we took plus a couple of videos.
We met the people who ran the tour on the side of a road, geared up and headed down to the first climb, little more than a steep slope for practise, then the real stuff began. The second climb was about 20 metres, very straightforward. It ended in a river, so everyone had wet pants for the second one. This was the hard one: a 35 metre waterfall. The first part of it was a very slippery, bumpy slope, which would have been hard enough without the water going down it. This was no light spray; the water hit with pounding force and nearly everyone fell over at least once. The second part was a lot steeper, and the water was hitting a lot harder; it was incredibly difficult to keep my footing. About 4 metres above the lake that the waterfall went into, we had to jump and let go to fall into the water. A couple of the kids were in tears at the bottom; one had twisted her ankle. Once we were all down we had a picnic lunch provided by the company.
The next obstacle was the most fun: a 7 metre jump into a lake. There was a 10 metre option as well, but the leaders wouldn't let us do that one, they thought it was too dangerous (Although people from a second group were doing so and escaping unharmed). We also weren't allowed to jump a second time, this time vetoed by the guides. Still, it was fun.
The second climb had been the hardest, but it was the last one that got people scared. This was only a 20 metre descent, but only 4 of them were against the cliff; once we got past that part we had to lower ourselves into a waterfall which would carry us through a narrow channel into a lake. This was the only time I got slightly nervous; when I touched the waterfall my first though was "crikey, this is a lot stronger than it looks!" The hammering only got stronger as I went lower, then the rope ran out! The guide had neglected to mention that this would happen, so I was a bit freaked out as I fell a metre into the rushing water. I quickly recovered though, and was smiling as I emerged.
The last league was a long hike up a steep hill to the pick-up point. After the previous day's leg-pounding, we only just made it, staggering the last few steps. Soaking wet and smelly, we piled onto the bus and headed back to a pizza dinner before another devotion and bedtime.
The next morning, the leaders took pity on us and let us sleep in until 9:00. Once we were all up we headed out to do some more team challenges. It was that day that we had the most fun one: a bungee cord with a harness at each end. Bring on the tug-of-war! My first battle was against one of the leaders. It was extremely hard, but crawling and clawing the dirt, I won. My second battle was against Zach, the guy doing the devotions. He won. I reckon it was because he wasn't wearing shoes, plus I was pulling slightly uphill. It was close though, I didn't make it easy for him.
From there we went to a restaurant by the paddleboating lake for lunch. Once we'd all eaten, we had our last activity for the weekend: a tandem bike around the lake. I was steering one, with Zach as a passenger, and we went through Vietnamese-style traffic to reach the end. Considering that not only was this the second time I'd ridden a bike in three or more years but the first time I'd driven through normal traffic, I'm amazed we survived! The thought occurred to me at this point that every single large activity we'd done had pushed our legs to their limits: hiking up the hill at the luge, paddleboating, canyoning and tandem biking. What a workout! Once we got back to the hotel, after one last devotion Brent handed out dinner (chicken rolls) and we headed to the airport.
We arrived an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave at 7:00, only to be told that it had been delayed and was now leaving at 8:00 instead. We had an hour and a half to fill. At last, the plane was ready, we settled into our seats and headed home.
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