Indiana Lara Poopy Pants

Status: Weary. I stayed up until 2am editing one of my novels. Smart, I know. But when you've got a bee in your bonnet...

So, one of the days of our trip to Hawaii was taken up by a certain local company (which shall remain nameless) where we had the opportunity to Hike, Bike, Sail and Snorkel.
The "hike" part was to be done in the Manoa Valley Rainforest. The "bike" part was to be a moderate downhill ride from the same place, and the sail and snorkel was to be done at Kane`ohe Bay, where we were promised that we'd see lots of sea turtles.
ANYWAY, our "guide" picked us up from some hotel in Honolulu we had to drive to (they didn't have pickups from the Ihilani) and I won't even start with how we got lost in downtown Honolulu trying to find the hotel. It was Hubby, me, Hubby's brother, and his wife.

We were packed into a smelly van like sardines, and they drove us to this residential neighborhood at the mouth of the Manoa Valley rainforest. There we were outiftted with these long rubber boots, and after I put mine on, I was ready for action. Hubby laughed and commented that I looked like an archaeologist with my gear, ready to find treasure. BIL said I looked right at home in the boots (I had tucked my khaki capris into them) and he said I looked like someone out of an Indiana Jones Movie. Hence the Moniker "Indiana Lara" was born.

We started hiking, and they had warned us that since it was a RAINFOREST, the trail might be "a bit" muddy. Yeah. Slight under-exaggeration there. Remember, it had rained every day we were in Hawaii, and especially the night before. In fact, it started to rain on our hike.
The "moderate three mile hike through lush tropical rainforest" turned out to be a miserable, mucky, mosquito infested DIFFICULT climb in a dense rainforest where tons of trees had fallen across the path, and our lead guide (who was one of those "adrenaline types" and made us all nervous) hacked away at the foliage with a knife the size of my leg. We were getting eaten alive, trudging through mud that was a foot thick, and there didn't seem to be any sort of real trail.

Hubby and BIL complained most of the way. They'd had it after mile one. But not me. I was a trooper. I was having FUN, anyway! I was pretending we were hiking through The Amazon, in search of a lost city. (Hey, whatever works, right?) The trail got a little hairy and steep (and slippery) at times. We crossed raging streams, slipped, sloshed and made our way finally to where we couldn't go any farther, and we found the "scenic waterfall" which really was just a pathetic trickle down the face of a cliff. The complaints really started then.

Then our "adrenaline junkie" guides decided to take us back down through a dense bamboo forest on one side of the mountain, where there was no trail whatsoever. They thought it would be fun, since they apparently knew the mountain like the backs of their own hands, to take all of us (20 total) through, for us to "see the beauty" of the bamboo.

Yeah, it was cool, but the guide went too fast and half of our group got lost because the dumbass in front of me had to take a picture of her parents and take about three minutes to do so. (camera not working, etc.)
People started to panic when we realized there was no one in sight, and no trail, and I reassured everyone and I plowed on ahead, following the footprints in the muck. Eventually we found them again, although the large wild pig hoofprints mixed in with the hiker's footprints made me a tad nervous.

Three hours later, we emerged from the rainforest, muddy to the gills. I looked fine, except for some reason I had reddish brown volcanic mud all over the inner thighs of my pants. Apparently when I had been stepping down the steep mudslides, the mud had crept up.

Everyone was laughing, because frankly, it looked like I'd crapped my pants.

So then, we were to bike downhill for six miles. More like SAIL downhill. I think I pedaled only once, because the incline was SO steep, I rode my brakes hard most of the way. We rode through a lot of water too, which I didn't think much of, until the end, when after we dismounted from our bikes for lunch, Hubby, BIL and SIL doubled over laughing when they saw the back of my pants. The muddy water had sprayed up the butt crack of my light colored khakis, and I looked even MORE like I'd soiled myself.
At this point I told them all I needed was for a big bird to swoop down and poop on my head, and it would have made the day complete. I was a sweaty, muddy, wet mess, and I looked awful. Luckily I had a sense of humor about it. And I told the guide that a "recommendation" I would make would be to tell their "guests" to wear dark colors, and BRING A CHANGE OF CLOTHES. Because guess who got to walk around the remainder of the day in her mud-stained, butt-crack stained LIGHT COLORED pants? Yep. ME.

Thus "Indiana Lara Poopy Pants" was born. Hey, at least I was a source of humor on the trip.

The Snorkeling Debacle will be in tomorrow's post.