Hiking at Tent Rocks

I've been in the U.S. for nearly 2 months and I've hardly written any blog updates but truth is that most days are the same and I think you would get bored very quickly if I blogged about daily life. Most days are filled with breakfast, making lunches, driving to school, helping with homework, picking up from school, driving to sport practices and preparing snacks. Although I do get a lot of freetime which is spent doing groceries, meeting girls for coffee, shopping and laundry. Doesn't sound all that appealing to blog about, right?

The most exciting times are the weekends which is also my time off. You can normally find me hanging out with the 3 other au pairs here in Santa Fe. They are great. We usually meet for dinner and a movie on Friday nights, sometimes again on a Saturday night too. There isn't all that much to do in Santa Fe except dinner and movies but we are slowly finding new things to do. Like this weekend. Altho our Saturday night was a typical weekend ritual of dinner and movie. We had dinner at an all you can eat Chinese resturant which had so much food. It's a wonder the management didn't kick us out for laughing cos I think we laughed throughout the whole meal and if you've heard some of us girls laugh, well let's just say some would run and hide cos we can get loud! After dinner we went and see a movie, 'Julie and Julia'. If your thinking about seeing it, be warned it's slow, it's long and it's rather got no excitement at all. I was really disappointed. It seemed to drag on forever but then again we seen the 10pm session yet still we didn't get out of the cinema until 12.30am however I'd love those 2 and half hours of my life back please!

So today Julia and I decided to go on a Hike. We drove out to Tent Rocks which is about an hour drive from where we live. The drive was nothing exciting, basically just highway and lots of mountains. We finally found the hiking trails and paid our money ($5 gate fee), got a map and set off for the trails. the first trail we took was a 5km hike which took us 2 hours. It was incredible. First it started out a little steep and hot (due to the sun!) but then as the trail started moving along we found ourselves climbing through little rock tunnels, over rock steps and under trees. It was an amazing path. Nothing we'd ever done before. We felt a little like Indiana Jones going through the Temple of Doom! We had to stop a few times along the way cos it was so steep and we had to catch our breath not to mention take lots of photos. We finally made it up the top which had a beautiful view, nothing I could have pictured from the bottom. Yet, you know what I somehow managed to do. Ha Ha. Standing still, I somehow managed to slide straight to my butt and gosh did that hurt. I think I seriously bruised it cos it hurts so much now. Although, I don't think it really helped that later on when we were going back down the trail I slipped again and landed straight back on the same spot. So 2 falls on hard solid rocks is not that great for your butt. Be warned. Ha Ha. Oh, well I've got the little injuries for great memories.

It was quicker to go back down the trail although we agreed it was a horrible hike going back down cos you had to do different footwork and watch more carefully as it was steep and rocks everywhere. Some parts we had to sit down and slide down little embankments. Don't ask me how we all hiked up those but we managed. As they say what goes up, must come down! As we got to the bottom of the Canyon Trail, we took a left and hiked along the Caves Loop which was a small hike but had some really nice views including a few caves and tent rocks (rocks that look like little tents!). There was a nice breeze and the sun was slowly fading so it was a little more enjoyable when going up the steep embankments. We finally made it back to our car and it felt like we had taken half of the hiking trail back with us cos our shoes felt like they were full of sand and dirt, which they were!

Another hours drive back home although it turned into nearly 2 hours because we forgot to take our exit of the major interstate (highway) so we had to keep driving until we found the next exit and somehow get back on the other direction. We finally found it and got back in the right direction but the laughter and few bad words were worth the little trip and memories. It was such a great day, beautiful weather and perfect views.