Alpaca My Bags! : Day Three - Church and (Chase)ing Waterfalls

Day three was the best day yet. We started out early this Sunday morning by eating our usual breakfast at 7, followed by church at 8. Church was really cool because the sermon was really special. The lessons spoken about involved using our gifts to help and benefit other people. It was beyond cool to feel so welcomed into a church with strangers that felt like family at the end of the service. Singing with the friendly Fijians was just another way that showed their love and strong sense of community. Post church we were given about 20 minutes to change and get ready for the days adventures. Thank god I packed a rain jacket because it was my life-saver today. Our first adventure to the first waterfall was sweet. We hiked up a friendly trail and all of a sudden it started torrential down pouring. Everybody quickly stuffed their cameras into backpacks, but the go pros were still out. Elizabeth was filming herself saying, “here we are, roughing it in Fiji!” and she completely ate it. Butt in the mud. On camera. Chase and I couldn’t help her up we were laughing so hard. The day was full of people falling and slipping, but I managed to keep my balance all day. This was very surprising because I’m definitely the first person to fall down. the swam in the waterfall and Lisa and Brett took pictures of us holding the Nat Geo Flag which was pretty cool. We hiked back and hopped in the van to go to another waterfall. As soon as we got out of the van, it started pouring AGAIN. The only thing I disliked about the rain was the constant sense of worry I had about protecting my camera from damage. We hid out under a roof for a while and ate lunch. Elizabeth ate it again. We decided to still go on the hike. Luckily, we all put our camera bags and phones in the van. The hike to the waterfall and back was a 3 hour round-trip hike. This sounded terrible, but I’ve never been so glad I did something in my life. It was the best and most rewarding hike I’ve ever been on because of the people by my side and the waterfall at the end of the trip. On the way there, Chase and I talked about absolutely anything and everything and recounted all the stories of people falling that day. We laughed the entire way there, and it felt so good to just laugh. We laughed so hard that Chase actually had to stop to pee because he was about to pee himself. No lie. Hahahahha. We crossed a really epic bridge and finally made it to the waterfalls. Expecting any old waterfall, I had no idea what I was in for. When we finally got there, I was slightly tired and had finally “dried off” well enough to not want to fully submerge in the water. As soon as lisa whipped out her Nat Geo Flag I was all in. everybody got in the water and swam against the current toward the waterfall. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Angie, one of the women of the village was there and she would climb up on the rocks and dive into the water like a dolphin. She’s like a ball of joy and she just straight up rocks. On the hike back, everyone fell down at least once but I never did. For dinner we had some more fish and chicken. Mrs. Simon and I fought over a wishbone and I won. Lucy had a rough day because she fell four times and had a rash from wearing wet clothes. The rain didn’t stop us. My high that day was the hike with Chase to the waterfall and I didn’t have a low.