I couldn’t really have told you what “canyoneering” was before actually taking part, but it’s rappelling. Through waterfalls. Badass.
We signed up with PureTrek, and our method was pure science. We ignored all of the dudes trying to sell us tours, and walked right into the place that had no one outside, had quiet and busy people sitting at clean desks and signed up through them.
PureTrek came and picked us up, which was nice since we’ve been driving every day since we got here!
We’re sitting in the back of a truck, sideways with 4 guides and 2 other tourists. Nice ratio.
Before we go anywhere, we get on gear. Harnesses, jackets (…windbreakers…), helmets, etc.
The first wild sloth we’ve seen! One of our guides spotted him in a tree while we were hiking to our first rappel. Dude was totally chilling.
Miranda volunteered to go first. This was good because then she couldn’t get nervous while waiting, and the rest of us could see how it went. Miranda is a brave guinea pig for the rest of us cowards. 🙂
The first rappel was 195 feet down, super cool!
I took a few photos while I was going down. Note the badass waterfall to my right (photo left).
A photo looking up!
Miranda and I standing at the bottom of the first rappel. During the rappel each person got dragged into the waterfall about 3/4s of the way down. I’m pretty sure it was that belayers favourite part of his job, dragging tourists into the waterfall. 🙂 We would’ve been mostly dry otherwise! It was incredibly windy at the bottom, so the water was flying off of nearby rocks sideways!
This one was slightly funny. We watched them get set up, not really understanding what was going on. It was explained to us that the guy at the bottom would control everything. Miranda asked for “despacio”, which is Spanish for “slow”, and it was repeated many times, but the guy at the bottom wasn’t that interested in despacio.
You can see the blue blur of Miranda through the trees. 🙂 It was a drop, but wasn’t a freefall thankfully, the guy still had control of the lines. When my turn came I was prepped for a freefall, and was glad not to get it.
Stupidly, we didn’t change/charge the battery on the waterproof camera before we left so we started rationing our photos when it started blinking red. We have 2 videos that I’ll try to post (meaning, I might get to them when we get back…I hate videos…), but this last photo is of our third rappel. The water is running under the bridge we’re standing on, which was super cool to watch. You just dropped down between the rocks and started jumping once you got to them.
The fourth rappel was really quick, only 45 feet. And the fifth one was super cool, it was about 100 feet and you tried to do it in one big jump because it was a really wide and spread out waterfall we were dropping through.
Would go again, this was a great activity!
