Wow! I had so much fun today!!! The van picked us (Me & Stephanie) up at 10:30 and it was only like a 20 minute drive to Atlantis where we sandboarded. So, Atlantis used to be totally underwater, the water receded, and the sand dunes were left. No picture I took can really express how cool this place looked. Just rolling hills of sand--super steep and just beautiful. So we go out there, get our boots on, get a board, and tromp across the sand. We start on an "easy" hill...this is not like ski/sandboard places at home where the bunny slopes barely have an decline in them, it's a drop off! We waxed our boards, strapped in, and away I went (although first I was scared, wacthing everyone else, and very hesitant). Quisto (our guide/instructor) said, "Just do it, get the fear out your head, look where you want to go and that's where you'll go, and keep your weight on your front foot." Okay...so I headed down. I "fell" a couple times...I put fell in quotes because it wasn't really falling. I just got scared and sat down! Then, I'd get back up and finish the hill. I'm a wuss...but it was awesome! So, we'd move onto bigger hills and carry on. Walking back up killed though! We'd be taking like 10 minutes between each trip down just taking pictures and catching our breath. Towards the end Quisto told Stephanie and I that we definitely needed to sled down on the board at least once before we left. We'd been waiting to hear that all day! haha So we did, and it was like amazing!! We went so much faster and just rolled off the boards at the bottom. One time I think I was flying through the air off the board and twisting in the air, my shirt was up and I landed hard! My ribs and shoulders were killing. But it was so fun. So then we had lunch just sitting at the top of the dunes. Shortly after, 4 quads (4 wheelers for those of you who call them that, like me) pull up on the dunes. We grabbed our boards, each hopped on one with the guys driving and headed to drop off the boards.
We drop off the boards, and the guys, get helmets and head out. There's one guy in the front leading us and we are to just stay in a single file line while we ride for safety reasons. I'm guessing there's some places where sand could collapse in and there's tons of steep hills and drop offs so they don't want people just shooting off those! Basically, I thought I was gonna cry and/or die several times!! These things were so freakin' steep. One that we came up on he got off his quad walked back to each of us to tell us how to go down them, "just pump your brake, if you don't do it right you'll flip." Thanks... So scary!!!!!!! And he took us on ones like this several times. However, it was so much fun. And reminded me how much I love 4-wheeling, and made me think that Ivan & I need to get some and quad in Arizona, which is a great place to quad too.
It was amazing. I put up a couple pics, but they just don't do it justice. They might have more pics on the website of the company we went with that you can look at, but if you weren't there, it's hard to understand what the dunes look like & how steep the hills are. (http://www.downhilladventures.com/ )
Sidenote: Quisto was super cool, and it wasn't until I was looking through the pics when I got home that I realized he's got a resemblance to Heath Ledger...do you see it??! Although he was being a bit goofy in our pic (making fun of me with my hand on my hip) in Stephanie's pic you can really see it... anyway, it was an incredible day!
