In my opinion, today was the best day by far on the entire course! Ione, Iseult, Leena, Gemma, and I met up with the rest of the AIP Students at the Academy at 11am. José took a roll call and we boarded a huge bus, bound for a place near “Cuenca”. After two hours of craic on the bus, we arrive in a town hidden away in a canyon in the Spanish countryside.
We did the activity with instructors and mentors from “Ruting.es”. We used the bathroom in a hostel and then headed up the canyon.
We doned our Neoprene wetsuits and helmets and took a short walk to the starting point. We all jumped into the river one by one, it was cold at the start but we quickly warmed with the wetsuits. We began by getting a demonstration of the correct way to do the “canyoning” and carefully headed down the river. We went through waterfalls, jumped off cliffs into the fresh blue water and slid down naturally-occurring smooth slides on the rapids! Everyone was laughing and smiling but we were also a bit nervous because we never knew what was coming next! One of the instructors had a waterproof camera and he took plenty of photos and said goodbye to this taste of paradise tucked away in the Spanish countryside.
We trekked back to where we came from and got changed back into our dry clothes. We stopped for food in the same hostel as before for some food and a toilet stop before boarding the bus bound for Valencia. Practically everyone on the bus (including me) fell asleep as we were shattered after the activity. I headed to “The Good Burger” with the others and some other students, it was their last day and so we all said our farewells to them! It was sad to leave them but we still had the rest of the week to look forward to. We all exchanged contact details and promised to stay in contact. We then all headed back to our host families for a well-deserved meal and sleep.