Obviously we made it. Patti drove slowly but purposefully while I stuck my head out and made sure we didn't get too close to the right side of the bridge. We made it across with no problem... until we tried to take the hill on the other side, which was pretty steep. Patti had to quickly downshift into 1st to gain proper traction, and at the top of the hill we sat, panting with adrenaline and laughing.

After we got going again Patti told me about this video she'd watched about an investment theory called the "sunk cost fallacy", where people continue behaviors that are detrimental to their own well being, because they don't want to admit they were wrong and they don't want to lose the time, money, love, they've already invested. That definitely applied to us! My advice for the future - cut your losses, people!

It took another 30 minutes of gravel road bumping before we reached pavement. And we continued to Rio Celeste.

Nearing the park it started raining, but having sunk so much into this trip, nothing was going to stop us from seeing the freakin blue river. And thankfully, we got there before the tour buses arrived.

At the park we walked first to the waterfall, and then to two lagoons. Between the two we stopped to rest, speaking in my very poor Italian to an old gentleman from Rome.

And as luck would have it we started chatting with two Polish scientists, US citizens, who live in Louisville, KY. They educated us on the Moscow Mitch controversy (there’s even a song!!), and we had a really pleasant 20 minute government bashing session.

We overheard so many languages at the park. There was a bus full of Germans, a bus of French, a bus of Italians. There were European Spanish people comparing word usage with South American Spanish people. There were Northern European languages that we couldn’t quite identify. And we heard some English, but not overwhelmingly.

I saw a 12-year-old kid wearing this Trump riding a dinosaur t-shirt, and I still don’t know if the wearer is a Trump fan or just trying (but not succeeding) to be ironic.

We finished our walk in the park, had a fabulous lunch at a soda, and decided to take a different route back which was 1) totally paved the entire freakin way; 2) took only 2 hours back, compared to three in the morning.

When I yelled at Gerhart later he just smiled and said his way was more exciting.

(This post has videos, which can only be enjoyed on the website.)