The Canyon

Today we went canyoning, which is apparently a real word.  And, because I am endeavoring to include information that would actually be useful to someone (or myself) traveling in the future, we used this company, and I would highly recommend it.

The trip started around 9:00 AM, when we were picked up at our hotel.  There were six of us total, with two girls from Spain, and Wade and Katie, who were from Texas.  We drove to Nordeste, which is on the northeastern side of the island.  There, we donned wetsuits, and headed up.

And up.  And up.  Our guide said that this would be an ~5 minute walk.  That was a damned lie.  I'd say that we probably climbed up for close to a half hour, in wetsuits and harnesses.  And this was over some pretty rugged terrain - big slippery rocks, mud, a relatively fast moving bigger-than-a-stream-but-smaller-than-a-river, in wetsuits.  I was thrilled that we had opted to rent the canyoning boots - I think it would have been awfully difficult to manage in just my running shoes, which was the other alternative.

Anyway, once we climbed to what Dionisio described as "the middle of the run," we got a brief overview of how rappelling works.  And then we scrambled over rocks in the river for a while, until we got to the first rappel point.  I wish that I had a photo of this, because my description won't do it justice.  We rappelled over (and somewhat into... for me, more than somewhat) a waterfall.  So, we're getting ready, one by one, and we're reminded what to do, and told that at some point, the water will hit us, and we'll need to try to get behind the cascade, but to try to stay to the right of the big dead tree sticking out of the water.

And now, I'm in the harness, trying to descend.  A few things happened pretty quickly.  I was able to get down about six feet, and I was braced to get hit by the water.  Cool, did that, got behind.  Couldn't see quite where I was supposed to go, came out of the waterfall.  More or less rappelled directly on to the dead tree.  Tried to move away.  Didn't work.  Somehow, I found that tree a solid three times.  While I can't claim that I was graceful in this descent (or had any kind of form to speak of), it was really a pretty cool experience.

Over the next few hours, we rappelled down along another waterfall (much less self-water-interaction on that one) and did several jumps (10-15 feet) and rock slides downward.  Mostly, it was scrambling over rocks in a stream-river-thing, but the jumps and rappelling were pretty neat.  I opted to rappel down the last place in the stream (read: wussed out - just couldn't bring myself to jump 30 feet into a pool), but Jenn was much braver than I was and jumped the last bit.  One final water slide, and we got to remove ourselves from our wetsuits, which, while invaluable in actually progressing through the stream (and providing excellent padding for the less coordinated among us!), was a welcome activity.

There will be pictures of the activities described above - Dionisio had a camera and took several - I'll add them as soon as he emails.  All in all, definitely a cool way to experience nature on the islands, and Dionisio and his partner did an awesome job making sure that we felt comfortable and safe (I was way, way more concerned for my safety when doing reasonable things like walking than I ever was doing the jumps I did or rappelling).

Now we're back at the hotel.  We wandered around town a little, found the place shown below (I'll figure out what it is and add a caption), and we're going to go find dinner in a few hours, but for now, a nap is definitely in order.  Hope everyone is having a great weekend!