Cwrw and Cyw....
Over the recent Bank holiday, we headed out to Snowdonia National Park in Wales for a little bit of adventure sports. It felt like a bit of a bootcamp when the entire household got up at 3:30AM (?!) to make the 6 hour drive.This was my first visit to Wales, and I was delighted to hear people speak the Welsh language. They've got a different alphabetical system from English, and it's fascinating to know that "cyw" (say "khee-ooo") and "cwrw" (say "khoo-roo") are real words that exist! By the way, they mean "chicken" and "beer" respectively.
And I was thrilled to know that dragons weren't some mystical creature found in books or movies and existed in real world as seen on the Welsh flag.
Here's an image I borrowed from Cardiff University. The red dragon brings me back to the days of knights and wizards.
The fun part of the trip was the adrenalin run - Canyoning, where we hiked through the woods to a natural waterfall and started off our run by leaping into a pool of water. The jump was fun but the moment of contact with ice-cold water was a jolt to the system, and nearly knocked my breathe out. Our instructor (looked like he could fit into California with his blonde dreadlocks) led us sliding over rocks, swimming and jumping into more pools of water before we got to the HIGH point of the day - a 15m drop over the waterfalls!
The idea was to go flying-fox style over the waterfall but since the rope was pretty slack...it really meant a 5m drop before the rope would be taut for a gradual descent into the natural pool below. Scary!
The next day, we headed out to the nearby rapids for some serious white water rafting action. Needless to say, as a first-timer...I was mighty nervous about the whole thing. We weren't quite sure how things worked at the Rafting Center, and had stripped down to our swim wear and waited in line to collect our wet-suits. It was only much later that we realized you were supposed to get your wet-suits first and change in the bathrooms. Now I understand the weird looks we were getting from others in the line.
Our instructor kept saying he enjoyed taking us down the course because our boat was really light! Yay to skinny Asians!
After getting over the initial fear of not knowing what to expect, we quickly got into the groove of things and did a few runs of the rapids. A heart stopping moment occurred when my second sister - Rachel fell into the water (light-weight!) and had to be rescued by the instructor (the lucky girl).
All in all, a fantastic weekend...I can't wait to do this again!
