Waterfall Scramble and full-on 4x4ing

Somehow these 2 adventures were left out of other posts.

I went back to the wettest spot on earth and scrambled up the waterfall. This spot was where Krista, Melody and I ran into the German family. I went back to get to the top of the mountain.

I had bought these wicked spy sungalsses and was video taping the whole deal. They say this is a trail, but it's not really. There is some evidence of an old trail sometimes, but I basically had to weave in and out of the waterfall and climb the boulders. This is the wettest spot on earth, so the boulders are very slippery. I had to calculate each step. Our landlord told us it was a 2-3 hour hike, so that's what I budgeted. Unfortunately, 2-3 hours was barely to the top. I hate getting into an adventure and having a deadline. I have this award on my wall back home from when I was seven at a YMCA camp and it is the Never Gives Up award. SO I have this problem getting half way and not being able to turn around until the mission is finished. This can lead to problems because I'm worrying about timelines and not about each and every step through wet boulders and full-on jungle.

So, my cool shades were destroyed when I went down into the waterfall. Luckily, I landed on my fat left cheek, but the video of the wipeout was wrecked. I don't expect anyone to watch all these videos, but 20 years from now I may want to remember.

So I climbed and climbed and ended up in this massive bowl. There were 5 waterfalls in different directions. I didn't know which one to choose. So I just let the terrain choose for me. At this point, the climb got steeper and I began to wonder how I was getting down, but I went on. I didn't get to a point where I was afraid, but to a point where I knew I would have to be slow and methodical. I ended up at this spot where fruit was overflowing the trees and these flowers had fallen off the tree and lined the riverbank. It was beautiful, but kind of looked like a burial site. I climbed on. Eventually I ended up at a 50 foot waterfall and had shower in it and woohooed. The walls in this cavern were smooth and there was no way up. I had wanted to end up at the top of the mountain, with one foot on each side, straddling the peak, but this would do for today.

I stumbled down the mountain, scraping my belly and shins. There were a few spots where I had to solve the way down like a jigsaw puzzle, but that's really fun when you have a mental and physical challenge in front of you. I made it down and was only about an hour late. I had rode my bicycle to the base of the mountain and had stashed in the woods. It was still there and my walmart special coasted me home. Actually, there was no coasting it was an uhill struggle.

Today, I was going back to this spot, but I had another deadline to meet and didn't want to deal with the stress of that. We're going to meet Craig and Parv from Krista's hometown and that should be fun, not stressful. So, I'm living my waterfall scramble adventure vicariously through writing.

The second adventure we forgot to write about was the 4x4 trail after Krista's SUP lesson. When we rented the jeep, the clerk told us about a road that goes up a mountain and with 4x4 you could go past where everyone else parks. Since then a couple other people told us about the road as well.

So we had some time, the baby was crashed out in the car seat, so we gave it a shot.

We drove up the mountain and there are many sites along this particular route, but we said we'd check them out later. We drove to the top of the road, saw everyone picnicing and kept driving by them. We drove through two rivers and kept going.

Basically, we were on the other side of the mountain that I scrambled up earlier. Again, this mountain is the wettest spot on earth, so the trail is basically alive and changes by the moment.

We chucked the jeep into 4x4 and crept along. It wasn't too bad in the beginning. We got to a fork and chose right, which was actually wrong. I don't have any 4x4 experience and we got to some big puddles. The kind from movies where you'd see the guy walk in slowly and then he'd fall in over his head. We crossed one and then got to a bigger one. We were both nervous and I got out to check it out. It tried to calculate a path, checked the tires, and decided, it wasn't going to happen. It took me about 97 points to turn around, but we did it.

We drove back and instead of heading home, we took the left, which was right. This road was less wet, but really rocky. The jeep was contorted up the trail like some Yogi master, but it was awesome. We past a few parked vehicles, but made it to the top of the road. There were a few spots, that I didn't think the vehicle could tackle, but it moved like a bulldozer. We've sinced looked at Jeep prices on-line, maybe when the truck goes down.

We made it to the top of the road and of course there was a trail heading up the rest of the way. At this point we were higher up than the helicopters doing their tours. I told Krista I would run up the trail for 90 seconds. It ended up being about 5 miuntes, well maybe 7 or 10, but I ended up straddling a peak. It wasn't the top peak, but it was a peak. I had rattled my two girls pretty good up the mountain, so I climbed down as quickly as I could.

It was getting late, we were hungry, but that was a crazy adventure. When you use vehicles or technology, they simply get you deeper and it gets much harder to get yourself out if you need to.

We've been listening to Jawaiian music the whole time here. So we cruised back down the bumpy road listening to the Hawaiian Reggae tunes this little island has to offer. We were both relieved to find ourselves at the grocery store picking up tasty biddles after another wild day.