(Yáll will have to forgive me, this computer is not fast enough to upload the mentioned videos here...i´ll get to it soon, but here are some photos to hold you over)
Rogue Cascadas Therapy
Mostly I want to let these videos speak for themselves. But the backstory is that we came upon the waterfalls when a few other sets of folks were already there. These videos were taken in the lower, smaller falls where the forces in the water were still extreme enough to pull you around. And what you can't see is that the riverbed went from golf ball sized stones that supported your weight to a fine sand that your foot would sink to the ankle making movement into the swirl that much harder. [video me] Now what you have just witnessed was more than just the first ever Mindfolding of Mindo's Las Cascadas, but you actually took part in a bit of Rogue Therapy, whether intending to or not, because I was facing a subset of my biggest fear ever: Sharks, and the subset being, things-that-touch-your-feet-when-they-are-underwater-and-i-can't-see-them-anymore. But in its own way, the Mindfold made facing my fear easier, because trying to walk through a whirlpool to touch a waterfall when you can't see anything makes the whole experience enormous and easily fearable so i didn't focus on the minor more irrational fear, I had to wade through the big fear.
El Capitan makes it look easy...[video]
We played in the bottom pool for a bit, waiting for the groups up there to disperse. Then we cimbed this rope up a rock about 20 ft at an enormous incline. I used mostly my arms as I couldn't trust my feet with the slipperiness of the thin layer of moss that grew in the waterfall's spray area. Once we got up to the pool of the major falls, pictures became useless because the falls had actually carved out a chamber over the aeons, and to get to them took two freeswinging cable bridges to get across the whitewater between the two falls. Then we had to strip down to our swimsuits and leave the backpack (and camera) to traverse the narrow channel where the river had let itself out of the enormous cylinder its waterfall is pouring through. The waterlevel went from ankle deep to swimming in moments. We had to work for every stroke forward, and the sound got so that we had to yell next to each other. The air was filled with water, the most pregnant cloud, almost unbreathable as the foam churned feet over the water. We sidestepped the frontal foamage and worked around to a nook that took climbing up slimy rocks, not even thick moss could withstand the constant barrage in here, to sit in the crevice; egg-shaped and 15 feet tall it must have been caused by a waterfall of floodwaters 50 times the fall's current size. It was exactly the type of nook Golum[sp?] would talk to himself in. I tried to swim from the side into the waterfall, but got to shivering uncontrolably from all this time in the cold waters and I didn't trust my strength once I got into the outer waves of foamy waters. But El Capitan went back to my bag with me and took my Mindfold and went until he was swimming and put it on and then swam into the churning of the waterfall. "I imagined myself in a galactic vortex where time was sped up to the point that stars were going thru their life cycles in moments. I was wading thru the fabric of time and space and the closer I got to the central black hole, the more violent the churning of space all around me." Spoken like a true mindfolder.
Las Cascadas were mesmerizing and we wished we didn't have to go, but the last run of the Tarabita was at 4 and we didn't want to miss it and get stranded. We did the hike back up and it started raining. I bundled into my rain jacket which became immeasurably useful going out into the open sky in the middle of the Cloud Forest and speeding thru the open sky at 15 mph and the rain is coming in sheets. A miracle of physics allowed me hunching over in a ball with my back to the direction we were going effectively shielded my legs from any rain at all and me, my backpack and pants stayed 95% dry. This proved more important since we were going to wait with the Tarabita drivers to give us a ride down the mountain. But it ended up that the drivers believed not everyone had come back by 4. We waited for 45 minutes until the drivers gave up on waiting and shut the thing down. We headed down just hoping the fellows had made it back across and the drivers had just not recalled.
Shark Surfing
As we were in the back of the truck, heading down the potholefull road, in the Cloud Forest's not-really-rain it quickly became hard to hold onto the roll bar in the back of the truck; and doubly so when the Mindfold came out. The Seer had to call out branches of overhanging trees to duck from as well as just having to hold on at every bump you can't see to predict. We decided to move past the Mindfold quickly and into a branch of Shark Riding that we came to call Surfing the Shark. In a full standing position we let our hands hover an inch from the roll bar so that we could grab it at any moment but other than our feet, didn't touch the truck. Rolling at about 15 mph we could do this for a good thirty seconds at a time until we hit a turn that was too tight, or a hole too big, so that we would grab the roll bar and steady. After a bit of this we started working with our central Chi energy in ball form spinning it like a gyroscope to keep in constant, flux of balance with the rolling truck. Speed, rain, washed clean in a waterfall and Minfoldsplorations of the day got us in the high-sped giddiness where we were yelling about the spinning ball of Chi invisible but tangible in our hands and hollering like on a rollercoaster, until we heard laughing behind us and we turned to see another truck full of folks watching our antics of balancing and losing it and laughing uncontrolably. The Cloud Forest had descended upon us all.
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