If you have been following my blogs, you’ll know my love and obsession with
waterfalls. Anything to do with waterfalls gets me excited. A friend of mine who
works for a travel company in Hawaii told me about waterfall rappelling
adventure that they conduct in the lush green jungles of Kauai and it took me no
time to get excited for it. Couldn’t wait for the weekend now!
For those who don’t know what waterfall rappelling is, it is an adventure activity
where you descend down on a huge rock patch along with gushing waterfall with
the help of a rope and few other technical equipment’s. It is an activity which
would surely give you an adrenaline rush and bring out the action hero hidden
within you. Once you complete this activity, you’ll have a great feeling of
accomplishment and you would want to do more of it
Coming back to my story, it was finally Sunday and I left home at 7am all excited
for the adventure! I drove my car to the road head and met my guide friend.
There were 7 other people who were joining us. We had a small introduction and
briefing round followed by healthy breakfast and in no time we hit the trail that
would take us to the waterfall. Now getting to the waterfall was an adventure on
its own. The trail goes through some seriously dense jungles.
An hour into the
trek, you start descending towards the waterfall. The descent is very steep and
slippery. One slip and you will tumble down hundreds of feet. With one careful
step at a time, we reached the base of the waterfall. It was a tall roaring waterfall
and it was a love at first sight with the fall!
We went up to the starting point of waterfall and our technical team briefed us
about the activity and gave us a few safety instructions. By the time we had
reached, the rappelling lines were set up already. Our instructor gave us a demo
and it gave me butterflies in my stomach with mixed feelings of immense
excitement and fear at the same time. Though I knew it was a completely safe activity but there is always some doubt in the back of your mind; plus we had to
rappel right in the gushing waterfalls. Couldn’t wait to get on the ropes now.
After a few people rappelled down, it was finally my turn. I put on the seat
harness, helmet, and gloves and was all set. I slowly made my way through the
slippery flowing river to where an instructor was standing to fix us to the rope. He
attached me to the rappelling rope and once again explained it to me on how to
descend. I started to move towards the edge of the fall with water gushing on my
feet. I suddenly could see the sheer 120 feet drop to the base of the waterfall and
it sent chills down my spine, but I loved staring into the drop.
I slowly started to
move down with waterfall coming all over me. It was such a surreal feeling.
Because of the flowing water hitting your eyes, I could not see where to put my
foot. I had to just feel the rock and place my feet accordingly.
Suddenly there was
an overhang and my legs did not touch the wall and I had to get down just by
loosening the rope in hand and then I got into the pool at the base of the
waterfall.
Another instructor removed me from the rope and removed my
harness. I went on to chill in the natural pool until other people got down.
Such adventures are so important in everyone life, especially young people. It
adds to your personality in more ways than one. Follow on for more adventure.
Cheers!