I think I may have had a few near death experiences on September 9, 2012. Just a few. The boys wanted to take the squad to a spot on the river where they supposedly cliff jump. So all of us with the exception of five got ready to go on a Sunday afternoon adventure. We were informed that this was about a thirty minute walk. I put my chacos on, thank goodness, instead of my flip flops but there were definitely some flip flop wearing members in our group. Which was extremely unfortunate because this thirty minute jaunt turned into a two hour cliff scaling, rock jumping, river wading obstacle course.
I am going to do my very best to explain this to you, but it really isn't possible for me to express the insane intensity of this situation. I hope you can get the gist from my writing and the video I posted at the end of this.
We start out. We're excited. A lot of us have bags and backpacks and almost all of us have cameras. We are so ready to go. The boys led us down the highway for a few minutes and then we turned onto a dirt road. We walked down that road for awhile and then turned into a field and headed toward the tree line. It was incredibly beautiful. Then we hit jungle and started making our way through it on a tiny dirt single-person trail. We were sometimes crawling sometimes walking and then one time running like mad to try and make it through an ant infested part of the path. Which just resulted in almost all of us having our feet bit. If you have never been bit by an ant you have no idea how much it hurts. Those little things have a super hard bite.
After about an hour we made it to the river, but once we got there we were told we needed to walk down river another twenty minutes to make it to "the good spot." It probably took us forty minutes to make it to said spot, which included walking in water that we could not see through at all while the bottom was either slippery rocks or sand that would sink and give out spontaneously and, at one point, jumping blind into the river from a large rock and praying while we were in the air that there was no type of dangerous creature lurking in the water and that the river was actually deep enough in this spot that we were not going to break anything when we landed.
Now, let's remember that nobody had any idea of the intensity of this hike. So we had backpacks, flip flops, cameras, phones… you name it. The boys were extremely helpful and carried multiple backpacks and bags over their heads while were traveling there and back to prevent electronics and equipment from getting wet. They also kindly escorted us when we were jumping from one slippery rock to another with a drop to the river on one side and a rock wall on the other. And killed the gigantic spiders, but I'll get there in a minute.
So we make it to the cliff jumping spot, except we didn't really feel comfortable with jumping off the cliff because twelve and thirteen year old boys were standing with the water only hitting their waist. We just watched them jump and played around in the water for a few minutes. But it started raining and we soon realized that it took us two hours to climb down this mountain and we better start heading back before it gets dark.
This is where the story turns into Survivor.
Our squad starts hiking back. We cross the river and climb back up the giant rock that we had to jump off of. We walk up water until we reach the trail that we came down. At this point the boys say, "No no no. We cannot go back the way we came. We have to swim up the river."
Um. What?
We headed up river as these guys are definitely experts on this terrain and we knew if we didn't follow them we'd be stuck there. We tried to walk on the rocks along the river for as long as possible but the rain had made even the rocks on dry land super slick and it was steep. By now Henry has my back pack and is carrying it over his head because several of my squad members have anything valuable that cannot get wet in my backpack and that was way too much responsibility for me to think about while I was trying to focus on not falling off the cliff.
Eventually we have to start walking in the river. The current was not very strong but the water is muddy and you cannot see anything. Nothing. Nada. As we're walking the river is getting pretty narrow, and pretty deep.
That's when we hit the canal of death.*
Ok, I am not being overdramatic here. I promise you that nothing in this blog post is an exaggeration. We start making our way through this narrow canal with rock walls on both sides of us that we couldn't climb if we wanted to. We were sometimes walking and a lot of the time swimming. The boys still had the backpacks over their heads.
All of a sudden one of the guys says, "Do not touch the rocks." Curious as to why we cannot lean on the walls we ask why. He hits the wall and two spiders the size of my hand…
The size of my hand.
Look at your hand right now. Yeah. That big.
Two spiders the size of my hand run up the wall. We learn shortly after that, these poisonous spiders also walk on water.
Let's recap here. It is about to get dark. The majority of my squad is trapped in a canal in a muddy river with poisonous I-can-walk-on-water-and-am-the-size-of-your-hand spiders. We have no option but to keep going forward and pray that no one drowns, rolls an ankle, or gets eaten by a large crawling creature.
Also, I was in the front of the group but came to find out later that the only thing the people in the back heard was, "Do not touch the wall." That had no idea why they shouldn't touch the wall. Did I mention these spiders were camouflaged into the rocks? There were people who didn't know about them until afterwards and that's scary because I counted eight of these things before I stopped counting. So, they were back there thinking there were snakes or man eating fungus or razor sharp edges… imagination is a cruel thing sometimes. Especially when you can't touch the bottom of the river.
We made it out. All of us. In hindsight, I thought it was kinda fun. I might go again next Sunday. Might.
I have a video made, but the wifi here is painfully slow. So as soon as I can get decent internet connection you will see it.
Yeah, this is real life. And it is incredible. Love you guys!
*all credit for this title goes to Elliot
That’s when you ‘just keep swimming’, ‘just keep swimming’…
Have to say, I loved hearing about the story second hand, not by experience. Glad you are safe and that you will have many more adventures and stories to tell.
Love you!
Nikki, I’m with your mother on this. But at least there were no snakes (that were seen)!
Great video and pictures, keep them coming.
I love you,
Dad
Nikki, I’m with your mother on this. But at least there were no snakes (that were seen)!
Great video and pictures, keep them coming.
I love you,
Dad
I’m probably one of the only insane people that would say this but I wish I were there!
Minus the spiders, I think I would have had a heart attack…
But it just sounds incredible. I’m so proud of you. I love you so much and I miss you!! I’m keeping Colorado safe until you get here:)
Love you,
Reni