Outdoor Adventures

The past four days have been by far the most adventurous of the trip. After our jungle trek, we arrived in Da Lat, a very cool city with weather reminiscent of San Francisco. It was incredible refreshing to have to wear long sleeves and pants.

We were picked up very early in the morning on Friday to go canyoning. Canyoning is another word for rapelling down a river valley, often through waterfalls. During out trip, we descended about a 1000 vertical feet through six different sections. We hiked a lot through the narrow gorge. Our first rappel was probably 40 vertical feet, and we landed on solid ground.

Our second rappel was a bit more hairy in that we landed in waist deep water. It was a drop of approx 50 feet. We then continued our hike down the river valley, at various points hiking in the river and stream while holding on to our dry bags. Our next adventure was when we hit a 20 foot waterfall that flowed at about at 30 degree angle over what looked like jagged rock. We were surprised when our guide then told us that we were going to go down it like a waterslide. We took three different rides down the rock, and it was a blast. A perfect natural waterslide.

After lunch, we hit the biggest waterfall of the day, as you can see in the pic. The volume of water was so huge in this pic, that I couldn't see or hear the guide above me yelling. The best part about this one was that once you got over the edge, you were able to just let go and jump backwards. You landed on your back in a gigantic watering hole. I let go at about 15 feet about the water surface. This was actually easier than what I did next because there wasn't much time to think, and you were being pelted by massive amounts of water.

After travelling a bit more downstream, we got to another large watering hole, where our guides just told us to jump. A solid 20 foot jump! And then we headed to our last abseil of the day, into what was called the dishwasher. We did this one twice, and then hiked out of the valley.