Today a few of us woke at around 7:30AM and headed out for the Commando Hike. Dan drove again this morning and it was Dan, myself, Fernando and two other guys...Phylis and Oliver. I think they're from Germany. Either way, we drove halfway out to Hana and parked the car on the side of the road in front of a blocked off gate that read Paaea Road. We hopped over the gate and started our voyage.
At first glance, it's hard to believe what lied ahead of me. While walking you're basically out in an open field- to your left is lots of land and trees, and to your right you're overlooking the ocean. Keep walking ahead and more trees come into view and begin to shade out the sun as you come across a very small body of water (creek/stream) with lots of large stones to walk along. Back home we call this step-n-stones. We "step-n-stoned" for a little while until we came upon a small waterfall. We had to climb up the slippery rocks as water was falling down and, surprisingly, I did pretty well. After achieving that goal, the path ahead seemed a bit tricky because there was no path at all. Nature was testing our physical strength to an intense limit for there were lots of branches and trees hovering over the stones creating something very similar to what you see in the top of this picture I found on google images:
We had to sort of "monkey bar" our way through those types of branches, but keep in mind there was a small stream of water and large stones underneath us. We were swinging branch to branch, climbing under them and over them, it was super awesome. Upon exiting what I refered to as the jungle, we found ourselves standing at the entrance of a cave. We had to dip into the water and swim through different "pools" of water and then climb up more rocks in the pitch black cave. We were in there for the longest time just swimming in the dark and making our way towards the light, which is not something you see for quite some time. The cave was absolutely amazing, but it's definitely not a place you want to be caught in when it starts raining!
Finally, sunlight once again! The sky seemed so much brighter than it was when we first ventured out, but that's only because our eyes had adjusted to the pitch black darkness. We gave ourselves a few moments to look around at our view then continued along the rocky, dirt path surrounded by trees to our next stop- a 10, maybe closer to 15 foot cliff. No big deal, right? Right. We all jumped in and it felt great. We swam to land and made our way to the next cliff. Now, mostly everyone who knows me knows that I'm terrified of heights. So, this next cliff was an extreme challenge for myself. I want to say it was almost 45-50 feet high. Fernando and Phylis jumped first and Oliver and myself were a bit afraid at first so Dan stayed behind to make sure we wouldn't chicken out. It's a good thing he did so, otherwise, I'd still be standing up there right about now. After about 15 minutes of breathing hard and telling myself I won't die, I jumped. Only problem is that I didn't jump properly. Yes, there's a certain way to jump off cliffs when you're that high up and I wasn't really thinking about that. Instead, I was thinking about how outrageously crazy I am to to have let myself get to that point. Needless to say, my body hit the water the wrong way and I had the wind knocked out of me and I messed my back up pretty bad. It still hurts right now. I swam to shore and tried to crack my back and do different things to it. It started to feel better than it did, but it's still sore. Regardless, I had no choice but to continue. There's really no looking back.
We had one more cliff to jump off of before ending our extravaganza. This cliff wasn't as high, maybe 30 feet, but I was more nervous this time because of my back. It took me almost 30 minutes to finally say "screw it" and just jump. I did it the right way this time, too!
We step-n-stoned our way back to the first and original path we were on, and I've got to be honest, as we were making our way out from the trees and out onto the open fields again, this time with cows grazing, and the ocean spread out underneath the sky on our left, I had a feeling of success. I felt like I was lost in the world for years, and I just found my way out. I felt like a survivor.
The whole time I was wishing I could capture each view and moment so that I could share it with everyone. You'll just need to visit so I can take you on the hike.
There really is something sweet about seeing the world.
1 comment:
Damn, each entry makes me want to head out there more and more, even if it's just for a few days.
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