Greetings from the pre-Alps! Update: Nick is currently in the process of climbing up that mountain. I owe him dinner if he makes it back by 9. Last night we went out for real Swiss fondue and it was fabulous. Then we hung around the bars at the hostel and did laundry... finally. This morning we had to be ready to go canyoning at 9am. It took a half hour or so to get our equiptment and another 45 minutes to an hour to get up the mountain. We had a crazy amount of equiptment on including a wet suit, a helmet, and a harnass. The first thing we did was rappel down the side of a cliff and from there, we followed the river down. It was a river in the sense of water runnign between two cliffs with huge rocks and jumps in between. We spent two hours doing a series of zip lines, jumping off of the cliffs, and riding down natural waterslides. It was completely amazing and such a rush. The only thing that really scared me was jumping off of this high cliff. When I looked down, I wasnt sure I could jump out enough to avoid the rocks below. But I trusted our guides and everything was fine. The water was completely freezing, so the wet suits were helpful. It didnt stun me at all, but apparantly I scared the crap out of everyone else when my foot slipped at the top of the waterfall and I was only being heled by our guide Clayton who was grasping my vest as I dangled... good thing I didnt look down. The hardest thing about the entire thing was maneuvering our bodies to lift our legs up onto steps in the wet suits... a little snug to say the least. Right after we got done canyoning, Rach and I had to leave for her to go skydiving! I took the helicopter ride up (which turned out to be 20 minutes). I was more scared for her than she was, but she is safely on the ground. Things are so different here- the only instruction they (rach and this other guy from our hostel) got was about 5 minutes in the back of the building. After they jumped out, the pilot wanted to take the helicopter to a different base, so I got an amazing tour of the area. Here is a clip of Rach skydiving (thats me in the front seat!) http://www.realxstream.com?XStreamID=86002&Vid=1 Happy 4th everyone! We are off to Hooters for the celebration. Tomorrow we leave for Pamplona with a night stay in Barcelona.