Climbing the Sugar Loaf

I'm in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, right now and having a great time. I'm here with Cassie and two of her long-time friends. The other day we saw the Jesus statue. That was pretty cool. But today was awesome. We went to Sugar Loaf mountain and scaled the entire thing. It was crazy, our rock-climbing guide was really cool. We walked like three or four miles from our hostel to the foot of the mountain, and then we turned into the trees and began the long climb. It took most of the afternoon. I was only afraid for my life a couple of times. I had to go in my regular black shoes, because they didn't have any climbing shoes big enough for me. The scariest part for me, was on the side of the mountain, where it was not too steep, but it was a really long fall and it looked rather smooth. The rock was just right for us to climb up in that spot (our guide basically just walked up), but my shoes were not as good as the others. We were not harnessed in either in that spot - eek! But he did go up and put a rope around a rock for us to hold onto so we wouldn't feel scared. I held on to that rope pretty hard and basically just pulled myself up to safety. There were two times when we actually were harnessed - the rest was a cross between a path and a cliff, if you can imagine - and those times were pretty cool. We actually took the easy way, but I found it really challenging, because I've never been real life climbing before. I've only done those climbing wall things, which do not really have the same effect. It was an exhillerating experience.

After a long afternoon of climbing, we reached the top which was kind of touristy. There were a good amount of people there who had taken the cable car up - ha. So we ate up there, enjoyed the nearly setting sun for a while. Cassie and I got to spend some time alone in a secluded spot, and we saw a monkey there. That was really cool.

... oh, and... we got engaged.