Yesterday, I went hiking with my friends Katie, Amanda, and Sam. We caught the bus to the Cairns Botanical Gardens and started walking up the Blue Arrow trail that starts behind the gardens. I don't know how hot it actually was, but I started sweating almost immediately, despite the tree cover over most of the trail. The Blue Arrow trail is about 8km round trip (which is a little under 5 miles) and it was very steep and switchback-y in parts. I am not in the best of shape, and this hike was hard.
I felt like two different Lord of the Rings characters at various points on the hike: Samwise Gamgee when he loses sight of Frodo around the bend when they're just starting their journey, about to leave The Shire, and almost has an epic freakout; and Gimli the dwarf when he, Aragorn, and Legolas are running across Middle Earth to rescue Merry and Pippin from the Uruk-hai, and he is panting and falling over and getting left behind his fitter counterparts. But I didn't get lost or left behind, and the four of us survived the hike with little more than a few bug bites and mud streaked legs and feet.
And my legs were complaining like Pippin when he realized that Aragorn didn't know about second breakfast, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, or supper. My right knee (that I kinda messed up pushing our stuck van off a beach in Mexico, and again climbing into a volcano in Lee Vining, CA) was bugging me, as it tends to do when I overexert it. I'm glad I brought me knee brace thing with me here. Also, I felt super healthy after completing my hike, and somehow I always forget that I love hiking, even when it is a hard trail. Oh, and I also felt like I was on LOST because we were right across the street from the airport and could hear planes loudly taking off quite frequently. Hearing loud jets while hiking through a tropical rainforest just made me feel like I was following Jack as he led the group on a hike to the radio tower to use the satellite phone to call the freighter to be rescued (except the freighter wasn't there to rescue the Losties. Anyway.....)
Today, Katie told me about Zumba in the park, which happens outside at (you guessed it) a park in downtown Cairns every Tuesday and Friday evening. And it is FREE (classes normally cost about $15 per class), so we headed into Cairns on the bus.
Called "exercise in disguise," Zumba is a crazy, latin-inspired, high-energy dance workout to super upbeat music, most of it designed or adapted specifically for Zumba. If you've never tried it, I strongly encourage you to. I was skeptical at first, because I don't really enjoy dancing in public and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I decided to just go for it, and I'm SO glad I did!
Before the class started, I warned my friends that I was about to make a huge fool of myself. I needn't have worried: over half the people there looked more ridiculous than I did (hopefully) and most people didn't know what they were doing, but they were doing it anyway. No one just stands around and makes fun of people; the instructors tell everyone who walks by/lurks around watching to just join in, because anyone can do Zumba. I saw a 3 year old girl there with her mom and a 65+ year old man, and everyone else in between. And let me tell you, you haven't really lived until you've seen a 65 year old man in a singlet and short shorts shimmying to a Shakira song.
When I woke up this morning, I didn't think that I'd be doing a sweaty dance workout in a park in Cairns with 200 other people, but that's just what happened.
I can't wait until next Tuesday :)
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Song of the day: Waka Waka (This Time For Africa) by Shakira
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