Climbing Moon Hill

When the girls woke up from their nap in the afternoon, it was close to 4pm.  Sidenote, people ask me how I feel about naps while on vacation- wouldn't I rather be exploring rather than giving my children a nap.  Well, why that might sound like more fun- my girls operate better when they have naps (there are less fights, less mood swings and overall, a happier momma and children).  We aren't always able to give them naps, but we at least try to give them the opportunity to nap either in the stroller or in the baby carrier.  Because of the nature of this vacation, we actually managed to give them naps all three days.  Anyways back to this post, we were delighted to find that the blue skies had returned and the rain was very temporary.

After quickly consulting with Lily again, we decided to head to Moon Hill.

It was walking distance from where we stayed :).

We are always happy to see signs like this while we are traveling because then we know that we are heading in the right direction ;).

We paid our entrance fee and took in the views from the bottom!

We stopped to read the sign and saw that there were about 800 steps (really, it felt like way more!).  We debated for a few minutes whether we thought we should go up to the top or not, but we decided we would go ahead and head up and see how far the girls made it.  We would push them to climb a little bit further than they thought they could, but we would also recognize that they are 2 and 4 years old and might not be able to climb all the way to the top.  Oh and did I mention how H.O.T. it was there yet- it was in the mid 90's with what felt like 150% humidity.

After we promised a lady that we would be back for Piju (beer) when we finished - we headed up!

And while the girls were joyful at first, Emma quickly (maybe 50 steps up) turned into 'I am so tired, I don't want to walk anymore type of attitude'.

I honestly don't have many more pictures of our climb, there were steps and then a path and then steps, more steps and a path and this continued on for quite awhile.  We took several breaks.  Drank lots of water.  Consumed lots of Oreo's. And from time to time we even carried the girls for a bit.  We got to the steepest part of the climb (we didn't know how far we were up at this point, but I am going to guesstimate 75%) when we could tell that Emma wasn't going to make it much further.  She had been asking to turn around from time to time and so we finally told her yes.  We also gave Everly the same choice- she could turn around and go down or she could continue and make it to the top.  She kept saying, 'me ready to climb to the top' and so we decided that I would go to the top with Ev's and Wes would turn around with Emma.

After a steep and steady climb, Ev's and I made it to the top!! The views were stunning and I wish that my camera had not been so foggy or that I would have realized it and cleaned it up a bit!

We were staying in one of those villages down there :).

I even caught Ev's twirling under the big moon shape!

I was a hot sweaty mess, but so dang proud of my girl and me! I was even able to capture us both in this picture.

And I was wishing that I could have shared these views with Wes and Emma too :).

We headed under the moon shaped rock and up more stairs to take in the view from the other side :).

My girl was just so pleased with herself, she kept exclaiming that 'we made it to the top!' and I couldn't believe that she still had energy to explore.

She is the cutest!!

Eeeekkk- look at all of those warning signs behind her! I wasn't terrified of her falling off while we were there, but when I was looking through these pictures I was acutely aware of how close we really were to the side of a mountain!

I told her that we needed to raise our arms up in the air so that we could show Daddy and Emma that we made it to the top- we were both pretty thrilled with ourselves.

We stayed at the top for probably just 10 minutes and we headed back down to find our other half! Just to note, I did carry her most of the way down, it was getting much darker, she was talking about 'bad animals' and she maintains a pretty slow pace in general.  Emma was there waiting for us with her camera in hand and a cold bottle of water for Ev's and a cold beer for me on the table!  We were happy to see them!

This is a terrible picture of me, Emma and Everly, but I just wanted to show you in scale how far we climbed! That is no small feat for a two year old!

Our new friend (i.e. she wanted to sell us all of her things!) took a family picture before we headed out :).

We took the relatively short walk back to our hotel and timed it just right.  When we got back we took in the most gorgeous sunset (pictures to come tomorrow).

When we got back, I unpacked my backpack and realized that I had just toted a picture of Nonni and Papa George and two books in my backpack.  Totally unnecessary, but brought a smile to my face.

Next up, our sunset views.