In September, a group of ten of us decided to hike up to a waterfall. One of the leaders of the trip actually saw the waterfall while driving on the highway and checked it out by himself a few years ago.
I can speak for all of us that it was harder than we initially anticipated, but the challenge was well worth the reward.
Phase 1: The Blue Diamond
Camel packs in tow, we all set out on our journey around 10:00 am. To get to the “trail,” we had to crawl under the property owner’s fence. “Trespassing!” you say. No, the property owner doesn’t mind, and I don’t think lot of tourists are trying to do this hike.
The trail zigzagged through the mountains. It was a steady climb through deep green foliage, but we all had enough breath to chit chat or give people a heads up on loose rocks.
At this point, the leader of the group also mentioned that there was an easier way to get back to the road. We all knew that going back through our original entrance point would have resulted in butt-sliding and hurt ankles. We had to find another extraction point - queue foreshadowing sound.
The trail opens up to an absolutely gorgeous river.
Phase 2: Bouldering
The murky water danced between massive, gray boulders and lead into large swimming pools.
Fearlessly, a few of the leaders started navigating a route to the waterfall trying to avoid getting our shoes wet. (Since it is rainy season, the water was fairly high. So, it left our options somewhat limited).
We jumped, climbed, scrambled, butt-slid and sometimes fell down these massive rocks. All in the heat of the day in Panama.
I tell you what – It was HARD! I’ve walked up the Grand Canyon, back packed in Alaska and even waded through swamps in the Upper Peninsula.
But, I’ve never had a three/four hour work-out pulling my body weight up and down gigantic boulders.
"Why were you not just jumping across them like everybody else?"
As many of you know, I don’t really know how to jump.
Here is an example of me jumping:
Do you think that is funny? Let's slow it down.
It could be my lack of confidence, the lack of playing sports as a child and also my fear of hurting my ankles. . But taking a leap from one rock to another scared the crap out of me! Instead, I did my butt-slide routine and pulled myself up (sometimes with assistance :)
Phase 3: The Main Attraction
As we get closer to the roaring fall, the rocks get further apart and, it becomes increasingly more difficult.People looked for easy access to the main fall and always seemed to run into dead ends.
How could we get an up-close picture of what brought us on this adventure?
After about an hour, someone found a path! Unfortunately, it required some hard-core upper body strength scaling a rope and, a few of us didn’t make it.
I’m not going to lie; I was a tad disappointed. It is frustrating to want to do something but not have the physical capacity and/or coordination to do so.
After wiping the tears in my eye, I just thought – I will return with guns for arms.
Regardless, four or so people did get to swim in the ice-cold pool from the fall and they took the picture to the right.
Phase 4: Bushwhacking
Alright, let’s take the easy path home and grab some Cervezas to-go! Cheering, we set out on the third phase of the hike. The path increasingly got narrower and narrower until…. Wall of Green.
The foliage ingested the path!
In the words of Robert Frost, we definitely took the path less traveled. Our fearless leaders forged our own path. Not with machetes – with their own bodies! Take that Naked and Afraid.
We all maintained a positive attitude the whole time – holding back thorn plants for the person following you, not mentioning the word snakes/mountain lions and sharing the little droplets of water that we had left for all of us.
After about an hour, our leaders pointed out the road and beers ensued. Wow, what an amazing day!
