Cave - what?

Parque Torotoro is south of the city of Cochabamba in Bolivia.

I live in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, which isn't that far if there were decent roads to drive on and I had a car, so my roommates and I decided to fly to Cochabamba and then head south to the very small town of Torotoro (population 200). For some reason the government decided that it would be too expensive to actually pave the 110 km road from Cochabamba to Torotoro, so instead they had people place cobble stones - one by one - to build a "road". Needless to say the 110 km trip took 5 hours.

We knew the plan was to see dino tracks, waterfalls and caves. Living and traveling in 3rd world countries, one thing you learn really quickly is to lower your expectations for pretty much everything, so when we heard "cave" we thought, ooookaaaayyy...

Well, on rare occasions we are pleasantly surprised and this just so happened to be one of those occasions.

The cave... was... awesome...

We geared up...

and headed to the cave...

of course along the way, of course we saw some dino tracks...

as we got closer to the cave I started thinking... huh, this may not be so bad after all!

We go deeper and deeper, flick on the headlights and bam, we're in a cave.

We are in a large room and it feels cool and comfortable. We keep walking and all of a sudden the room gets smaller and smaller until I realize that I'm going to have to crab walk to fit...

I'm starting to panic a little bit. I have issues with tight spaces and this is certainly getting tighter. My heart is racing and I'm leading the way to get this part over with as quickly as possible. I haven't crab walked since elementary school...

Made it! Well, for a while anyway...

Wait, what, you want me to go where? No, I can't do it... ::heart racing:: I'll just stay here and hang out in the dark cave for the rest of my life... I wonder how long it would take before I go crazy? No, I can't, seriously, ok, I'll try, really, do I have to? 

squeeze

drag

crawl

I DID IT! Whew! What a feeling! You know when you push yourself to the limit and force yourself to do something that you don't think you can do? Well, here I am at the end of that push and man does it feel good! This is the point that I decide - you know what, I'm not going to stress about getting older anymore! That's IT, I'm changing my brain thoughts and every time I start to complain about getting close to 40, or a wrinkle, or my sagging skin, I'm going to STOP myself and remember the feeling of pushing myself and succeeding. Corny, cheesy, I know, but what a relief! I don't have to worry about getting older. I can just enjoy the fact that here I am at 38 - living a fantastic life - a life I've dreamed of - exploring the world.