A day for adventures

Yesterday started early and ran late as we crammed several adventures into one day.

First up, we went to Rincon to do the horse trail ride down there. We've done the trail ride down the road from us several times (and Elaine rides some of the same route almost every day) and we wanted to see what the Rincon ride was like. The Rincon ride, Pintos-R-Us, has great well-mannered and well-cared for horses. Julie, the owner/trail guide, was wonderful with our group of eight riders. The ride wound through some beautiful trails through forests and along the beaches around the point of Rincon. The Rincon ride doesn't spend as much time on the beach as the local ride nor does it have as much opportunity for riders to trot or canter if they wish. All in all it was fun, easy ride. It was a different experience from the local ride, which is what we expected and actually what we hoped for.

From Rincon our adventures took us south to Mayaquez and the experience of two hours of pre-holiday shopping and standing in line in Sam's Club, then back north for another hour or so in the Amigo grocery store (which is owned by Walmart). I'll leave that adventure to your imagination.

Then last night Darryl and I did a night dive through "The Caverns" here at Shacks. The reef at Shacks is pretty much like Swiss cheese with holes and tunnels and caves all through the reef. Many of them are "swim-throughs," passages a diver can literally swim through. We use several of these as passages between Blue Hole and the outer reef. "The Caverns" is a tour through the swim-throughs in and around Blue Hole. Darryl has done this tour many many times in the daylight, but this was his first night tour. Darryl was great. I, on the other hand, had a mild-to-medium panic attack. Don't know why. Everything was going swimmingly and suddenly I just kinda freaked, breathing hard, brain spinning ohmygod ohmygod! But between us Darryl and I got me calmed down enough to finish the dive and come out safely.

I think it was a learning adventure for both of us. Darryl has a better idea of how to lead a night tour through The Caverns and I have a better idea of how to deal with my own panic under water.

Our last adventure took us to 110 Thai. We weren't going to go but we remembered we were supposed to meet our nephew Ben there. He'd been waiting since about 8:00 and we remembered about 9:30. So off we went. It was a fun late evening, unexpectedly running into a number of good friends.

So, up this morning about to set off on a whole new set of adventures. It's gonna be a fun holiday weekend at Ola Lola's!