More Falls!

We hiked out of Mindo and down a dirt road. Everything is massive and verdant and beautiful and there were many places to take a photo like this one.















We followed banners across the dirt road into a banana plantation and up the hills. We passed a great deal of swingable vines. El Capitan became Indiana for a swing. We reached the first falls and I was lagging and when I came around the corner off the bridge of two bamboo poles strapped together, he had already scrambled to the top of the falls.





Having taken my time and the trail I had a less accomplished pose.










Even though these were the only falls pictured on the banner, we pushed on. Higher and higher up the mountain. We crossed the stream many times and I had to have a go with getting lost in the Mindfold as I tried to climb to a boulder for a pose. Getting back proved to be something of a trial. [video]

Up the mountain and up even more. El Capitan reached windedness and I scouted ahead. I saw what I needed to and returned with a peeled and unpeeled orange off the trees over the bend. I handed the unpeeled one to El Capitan and said "here's for a spot of energy until we get to what appears marvelous. Let's go."

"Have you tasted these oranges already?" El Capitan asks as he sucks on that beautiful orange orange. "Nope, I wanted you to have the first one."
He spits it out. My mind races, is there some poisonous orange disease in the Andes I don't know about? Have I just killed El Capitan? I better hurry up and taste mine.
I tear a hole in the peel, at least we'll die together. I suck the horribly sour juices out of the unripe orange. "Sorry, man. That's horrible." And we toss the oranges aside. Then this picture takes us.










As soon as you crest that last hill, you can see it. Its the biggest waterfall i've ever experienced alone (Niagara is huge but so are the crowds). Must've been 120 feet. But no more than a stream you could step across at the top. The pictures are laughably weak in the face of this fall's majesty.




















So I convince El Capitan (believe me, his antics are over-represented because I am more often carrying the camera, not because he is gullible or easily convinced of the potential hilarty that could arise from whatever we are doing) to go tag the waterfall. I am skipping the first set of photos, because when he touched the falls, he was blocking his own arm from the camera so it wasn't official. The second round he went in with Gusto, he was going to add this Cascadas to his repotoire of tagged falls and I was cheering him on...until he slipped and then I started laughing. He was right in the falls again.
















The face of a true Waterfall tagger.