I finally made it out on a campout with the local Boy Scout troop in Montevideo. The troop made up of a bunch of boys from the embassy, some foreign embassies and one scottish lad whose dad is a Botanist working in Uruguay. The troop asked me to teach the Wilderness Survival merit badge (my personal favorite). Part of the badge requires that the boys build a shelter and sleep in it for one night. So, trying to take care of the early fall weather we set out at about 4:30 on Friday to camp at Cerro Arequita, which if you can't tell from the microscopic picture in the upper left is a huge rock outcropping in the Cuchilla mountains which run through Uruguay. We were supposed to be just the Scout troop going to do Wilderness Survival, but by Friday others in the embassy had heard we were going camping and decided to bring their families and come along. So we ended up with a bunch of families from the embassy which camped next to the river, and the Scouts hiked up to the ridgeline and worked on the merit badge. The sun set before we got to the campsite so we had to do everything in the dark, but it added to the fun for the boys who had to build shelters in the dark. The most interesting thing to me was having the Uruguay West Mission President along doing wilderness survival. On my mission it always seemed like the mission president was this special class of person, which they are, but it was always hard to imagine them doing anything but coming to Zone conference, interviewing the missionaries, and doing other missionary work. It was a lot of fun, we plan on taking the twids camping next to the river by the Cerro in the next couple of weeks.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Cerro Arequita
I finally made it out on a campout with the local Boy Scout troop in Montevideo. The troop made up of a bunch of boys from the embassy, some foreign embassies and one scottish lad whose dad is a Botanist working in Uruguay. The troop asked me to teach the Wilderness Survival merit badge (my personal favorite). Part of the badge requires that the boys build a shelter and sleep in it for one night. So, trying to take care of the early fall weather we set out at about 4:30 on Friday to camp at Cerro Arequita, which if you can't tell from the microscopic picture in the upper left is a huge rock outcropping in the Cuchilla mountains which run through Uruguay. We were supposed to be just the Scout troop going to do Wilderness Survival, but by Friday others in the embassy had heard we were going camping and decided to bring their families and come along. So we ended up with a bunch of families from the embassy which camped next to the river, and the Scouts hiked up to the ridgeline and worked on the merit badge. The sun set before we got to the campsite so we had to do everything in the dark, but it added to the fun for the boys who had to build shelters in the dark. The most interesting thing to me was having the Uruguay West Mission President along doing wilderness survival. On my mission it always seemed like the mission president was this special class of person, which they are, but it was always hard to imagine them doing anything but coming to Zone conference, interviewing the missionaries, and doing other missionary work. It was a lot of fun, we plan on taking the twids camping next to the river by the Cerro in the next couple of weeks.
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5 comments:
Hey Zac, it sounds like you had a blast on the camping trip. Did you let the scouts build your shelter? If so, you are a brave man. Perhaps next time, you can have a ward activity. By the way, who are the "twids" you are taking next time? Love you guys, Dad and Mom Ricker
haha! "Twids" = twins+kids. Z's special word for the tykes. Thankfully, he doesn't call them that all the time, only for special occasions, like camping.
Well Zac is the coolest man on the planet...Daniel and I want to be scouts if he could be our leader...and I love TWIDS...I love out of the ordinary and word invention! Coolness! I have my own gran-twids coming next month...even though from different mothers I still call them twins (now twids) ahhhh...I have great plans of fun for their future! Happy Camping!
LOL. Sounds like a great trip! It's cool to hear you're still doing survival stuff.
Brings back memories of camping at the Upqua when you used to spend countless hours making us kids homemade fishing poles because there weren't enough real ones to go around. We actually caught fish with those things!
...and of course, love the "twids" usage too! haha!
and there I was thinking "twids" was a typo and feeling sorry for poor Zac not checking his spelling before posting, nice. Way to go camping! Sounds like a lot of fun :0)
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