Climbing in Butterfly Valley

One of our days on Catba Island in Vietnam last week was for climbing. All day! I wasn't sure we would want to climb that long, but some of us did! The setting was a small farm in a valley ringed with cliffs, several of which had been set up as climbing walls. There were five different climbs in all. Just in case you are wondering, Sue and I did complete a climb a piece... but I'm not including those flattering pictures in this post. :-) The kids and the dads all did multiple climbs and loved it.

Here we are at the first climbing site...
Scott and Gwen contemplate the wall. As you can see, Gwen was fitted with a child's 5-point climbing harness and was ready to give it a try.Caleb was the first one up and made it look easy!
Madelyn completed several climbs and really impressed us with her grit and determination.
So it was Gwen's turn to try... but when it came time to pull those five points of her harness together and clip in to the rope, she found it all too confining and just couldn't pull herself together to get past the feel of that harness. I know she would have done well once she was on the wall... but it was a similar saga to the soccer paraphenalia, and this time we let it go. "I'm so sorry, Mommy" are her words in this photo... poor thing, she did such an awesome job keeping up with the big kids on this trip. Since she didn't end up actually on the wall, she contented herself with scrambling around the rocks on the ground and watching the big kids.
Lance was an amazing climber... he practically flew up the walls.
Here Seth and Caleb pose with a couple of our guides for the day.
Whew! It was a hot day for climbing.
Can you pick out the boys in this picture? This wall had two separate climbs on it.A fun part of this day was watching the happenings of the farm. Here one of the cows was being moved to a new grazing location. This particular cow was very pregnant... I actually poked her belly a bit, trying to get the calf inside her to move, and was rewarded with a foot kicking back on one of my attempts!
Mid day we headed back to the farm house for lunch and a rest. The kids all claimed a hammock.
Lunch was delicious, and afterwords the chickens climbed right up on the table and helped themselves to the leftovers. I guess this is what happens when you feed your chickens from the table! It really is pretty funny to see a chicken running around with a spring roll in it's beak!
After lunch was more climbing. Tough girl Stacia did all the climbs the boys did, and she did them well!At the top of a tough one! You have to touch the metal ring at the top where the rope loops through to make your completion official. :-)
Don't know if you can make out Caleb about three quarters of the way up on this wall, but this gives you an idea of the height of the climbs these kids were completing!
While we were climbing, the farmer was plowing a field with his water buffalo. Part way through the afternoon, the water buffalo got a break from his duties to wallow in the pond for a few minutes. He seemed pretty happy to get in that water, and not too happy to be pulled out!

Seth at the top! Getting to lean back and rappel down is a great reward for the hard work of climbing up.

Our climbing crew!
As a final note, Butterfly Valley was aptly named... we saw many beautiful butterflies throughout the day!