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Published: August 23rd 2007
river crossing
me doing my best not to fall over on the slippery rocksWe woke up today at 630 to jump into the boat in the dark and head up the river to the second camp....sitting in the freezing morning in a cramped boat and getting wet is really not fun...
once we reached the camp we had a quick breakfast, played some football and then started the 1.5 hour walk to see the angel falls
It began with wading across a little river, with the slippery red rocks that seem to be everywhere..i almost slipped and dropped my camera more times than i can remember, and it was only my stick which saved me...apparently i look like an old man with it, but hey it works!
the walk through the jungle was quite intense, especially when it started rising and rising...because of how thick the jungle was you could only hear the falls getting closer and closer until it suddenly emerges in front of you magnificent and massive..
i dropped back behind most of the group due to taking pictures and being lazy and when i got to the first viewing point it was brilliant being alone with this huge huge huge waterfall in front of you....the spray was
so strong that it was like rain, even though the falls were over a kilometre away from me..the wind created was extremely strong as well
and as i watched this entire scene, suddenly i saw this big blue parachute...evidently this guy was trying some silly stunt by jumping from the top of the falls, but the wind was so strong he got blown into the side of the mountains and got stuck in the trees....it all happened so quickly that i couldnt take any pictures, but it seemed ridiculously dumb to try that, since even if he hadnt gotten blown away there was no place to land, since the river was full of rapids and the banks were thick jungle...
i ran up the rest of the path to the final viewing point, and all of us tried to spot whether we could see if the guy was alive or dead...we finally saw a little helmet moving around and figured he was ok..and then this helicopter turned up attempting a proper hollywood style rescue..
unfortunately for the guy, the wind was so strong the chopper couldnt hold steady, and since there was only the pilot in it,
the gang
Back row: Graeme, Attila, Sebastian, Kilian
Second row: Me, Julie, Paul, Ale, Vale
Front: Alain and the two boys, who´s names i never knew but they were very cute! no one could drag him in...also the strength of the wind and the choppers slipstream was so powerful that the guy seemed to find it hard to get close...
we sat for about 2 hours watching the chopper make attempts to rescue the guy but it didnt happen...by the time we had to leave to go back for lunch, the guy was still stuck in the jungle and the chopper had gone off for refueling or reinforcements...
once back at the camp, we lazed around in hammocks, before one of the italian girls who had become good buddies with the boatmen told us that he was willing to take some of us down the river to a little pool where we could swim..
7 of us headed off in the boat, and once we got to the pool dived in...it was perfectly placed, between two sets of rapids, so that dangerous river predators couldnt get to it, and the water was freezing...the boatmen also did some impressive jumps off a rock, and then convinced ale to do it...she suceeded after sitting on the rock for about 30 mins building up her nerve...swimming in the pool was fun
but i almost drifted off in the current onto the rapids a couple of times....
the evening involved a massive dominos tournament, where all of us, the groups, the boatment and the guides played in teams of two....graeme and me did pretty well getting to the finals but then lost..damn
bedtime was early since we had a five o clock wake up time the next day
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anonymous
non-member comment
brilliant!