Day 30: The final day but a perfect way to end it

I hear my phone buzzing it’s a call from Sarah. Where are you? I look at the time it’s 7:22 my alarm never went off. I rush to put on clothes and run down stairs. Have to make it have to make it. I’ve been amping my self up for what is about to happen.

I run down stairs grab some breakfast and then we are out the door ubering to our activtiy for the morning.

Hang gliding.

The tension was building as we drove over we were all excited but nervous. We get there and start checking in. Everything is going fine had to fill out a little paper work but then we are good to go. We meet our instructors and the people we will be flying with and then were in a car driving to the peak we are going to walk off of.

As we go over were given the advice don’t be nervous you’ll mess up everything we teach you which in retrospect is horrible advice but I think we all took it to heart. We got to the top and started getting geared up. They put on our harnesses and then we had to practice take off and landing. Take off is not exactly what you’d expect there is no jumping involved. You just run off. Which is I think what everything and everyone had told me not to do in my life but this time we have a giant sail that were attached to.

We do some final checks and then people start to go one by one. My guy harnesses me in and then shows me the position that we will fly in. Right hand through the loop and left lightly on my left shoulder. Then he stood up said are you ready I said yes and then we got on the platform. It was a dock to nothing but surprisingly I wasn’t feeling that nervous it felt weird that I was going to run off of a mountain but I was ok with it. He then asked me one last time if I was ready and sure I wanted to do it. I said yes and then we were off.

It is one of the most incredible experiences of my life. The exhilaration of running off and then just gliding through the air over this beautiful city. It’s hard to put into words but is just incredible. Hopefully the video can show what I can’t really say.

In most of the pictures I look pretty silly staring off into space and theres one time in the video where he tells me to wave at the camera and I had no idea what he was talking about since I was so lost in everything around us. There is one that I really like though.

After we all had landed we basked in the experience we just had watching each others footage and talking about how great it was. We then got some açaí to celebrate.

We relaxed by the beach for a while. Talking and just reflecting. I came to the realization after doing it of how burnt out I was feeling before going but now I felt like I could do another week in Brazil. It made me appreciate even more the beauty around us. I had only in a month come to take for granted the beauty of Brazil. So I’m happy that in that moment and through that experience my eyes were re opened to the beauty of where we were and I could sit for a little and really appreciate it.

After we finished our açaí we called another uber to meet up with other people at a market that was happening.

It was a pretty nice place I didn’t get anything but I wandered around the middle area and looked at art for a while.

This one was one of my favorite pieces.

We then went to a Amazonian restaurant on the corner to grab lunch before heading over to the Botanical gardens. It was fairly slow service but the food was pretty good they had great hot sauce.

We then got in to head to our lsat stop on the trip.

We went in two ubers and it ended up being a mess to find each other but we did and we toured two areas. The cactus garden and the orchid building.

I then took a picture of every orchid they had in the building here are a few of my favorites.

They were both fairly beautiful spaces unfortunately we didn’t get to spend much time there. I did hear an interesting story about Orchids from Jen though. She new someone who lived in a tropical climate I‘m not sure where and she kept orchids in her shower. So every morning she could shower with orchids. Since they absorb water from the air it worked pretty perfectly. I thought that was a really cool idea. Generally the idea of having plants in your shower sounds really cool.

I wish we could have explored more of the area but it was 3:30 and we were planning to leave for the airport at 5:30 so we left the botanical gardens early to make sure we had enough time to do everything we wanted to at the hostel before leaving.

We ended up talking and reminiscing some more while we waited for everyone to get ready as well as finished up gifts for everyone who made the trip so good.

As we were getting ready to leave Courtney came out with some gifts for Jen as well as the gift we have been putting together for Renato for a little bit of time now. Jen got her gifts first and they were cool memorable things that Courtney and us had found throughout the trip. The students contribution was a set of The Little Prince magnets/coasters. She was happy and started to tear up a little. Next was the unveiling of Rentao’s gift and when Courtney explained what it was he started to cry a little and was at a loss for words. We had all pitched in money to buy him a flight to Boston so it wasn’t a goodbye it was until next time.

I think we all started to tear up a little bit. It wasn’t as dramatic as I imagined it would be. However, I think the reaction everyone had was perfect for everything we had been through together. Bittersweet, happy that we got to experience this all together but sad that it was ending and may never be the same.

Once we had all collected ourselves we said goodbye to the people staying behind Phil, Katelyn, and Jen and then hopped on the bus to catch our flight back to the U.S. .

We said our final goodbyes / see you soon to Renato in the airport before going to the international terminal. We continued to message back and forth while we waited to board.

Thank you for an amazing trip everyone on it. You all brought some great joy into my life and I look forward to experiencing more with you guys going forward. Love you guys, Brazil too ❤

Thanks for reading too!