I took a Hike

And what a looooong hike it was! We were gone for over 12 hours and hiked for over half of that (the other half was spent at an absolutely incredible beach)!

I don't actually know what the name of the hike is, I agreed to it like 10 hours before we left. I probably (definitely) should have looked a bit more, but even though I absolutely sucked at hiking, I am crazy glad I did it.

Thw day started early, at 8am, where the group (lead by local student ambassadors) met at a train station to take a series of buses to the start of the trail. It took about an hour or so to reach the start, and then the hike began. It started off easy-luring me into a false sense of security- with paved trails at a slight incline. That abruptly ended and the stairs began. Long stretches of them with short relief between the flights. I thought I was in shape (sort of at least) but this trail proved me completely wrong. The worst part was that there were several mountains to climb before reaching the beach, so you would reach the top of one mountain, expecting to see the beach, only to be met with the crushing disapointment of more mountain, and this happened again and again, like 4 or 5 times! What made it worth it was that as you reached each peak there were incredible views to take in:

Plus, it helped that the day was overcast, so we didn't really get burned or killed by that ball of fire. After about 2 hours of this, and some rock parts where I nearly fell my way down the slopes, we finally reached one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever been to. The water was so clear, that in the crystal blue waters I could see all the way to the bottom (though it was less than 6 feet deep- to compare with other beaches, where I could barely see a foot into the water). The sand was smooth and the beach was nearly empty:

One crazy thing was that as we reached the beach, there were cows just grazing along the edges! They left shorty after we arrived, but it was insane to see them just hanging out by the beach.

We spent several hours at the beach. Me and three friends were the only ones to get in the water (crazy right!) but after that fun, and a picnic lunch, I managed to take a nap, as did several others. When the time came none of us wanted to leave, but we knew we had to because we had hours ( like 5) left ahead of us to hike. 

This time, the beginning started out hard, with nearly 30 minutes of steep uphill climbing. However, after that, it was all down hill, and at a small incline- the terrible part was that we had to walk this for nearly 4 hours to get to the bus terminal!

There were some fun parts, like the cows came back (I even touched a few) and we had some beautiful photo opportunities  with a reservoir as the background (that are of course on someone else's camera) and we had a good laugh as we walked and sang whatever songs came to mind. However, it just took way, way, way too long and by the end of it everything hurt and all I wanted was to shower and sleep. 

Though I hurt a lot the next day, and everything hurt that night, the experience was incredible. The views were breath taking, the beach was the best, and just hanging out with my friends made the whole experience incredibly worth it! Crazy as it sounds,I would absolutely do it again,