nothing like nature to bring you back to reality

so this past weekend (my last full weekend in brazil, eek!), i decided to go out with a bang, so to speak. david (the canadian trainee) and i ventured out to chapada diamantina, a huuuuuge national park situated west of salvador about 7 hrs by bus but still in bahia (bahia´s a big state, ha ha). it´d be waaay too hard to describe to you the natural beauty that i saw/challenged/discovered this weekend, but i wanted to share some stuff that i thought about this morning during an invigorating, challenging, and amazingly beautiful 14 km hike :)

so this hike, i knew, would be challenging. i also knew that it should take about 2.5 hrs to go 7 km, but since we had to catch a 1 pm bus back to salvador, i expected that we´d be booking it too...this was all correct. what i didn´t expect was 1. the extent of the beauty and grandeur of the waterfall that awaited us at the end and 2. the fact that half of this 7 km (1 way) hike would consist entirely of rock-hopping. now, i love rock hopping, though it does scare the hell out of me. but after going halfway and then seeing this, there was no way i could turn back...plus, i wanted to see the waterfall, ha ha :) the guide and david, who are both over 6 ft tall, took on the challenge as if it was nothing, leaping over large openings, stretching between long distances, and climbing up steep, tall rocks. me? well, i did what i could with some help :) i actually didn´t do too bad, and as i got the hang of hopping from rock to rock, each time depending a little less on my hands to steady myself, i began to think about why i´m so scared of rock-hopping in the first place yet love it so much.

and i think it comes down to this...i don´t trust myself.

i´ve never had the best balance in the world, as evidenced by my numerous scars with causes ranging from rollerblading accidents to tripping over my own feet...ah, what can you do? maybe these falls have made me more cautious? maybe my fear of getting hurt with the memory of how it feels have made me shy away from activities that could possibly bring me to it again? i don´t know. whatever the reason, though, it´s there, and had i let it get the best of me, i could´ve missed one of the most amazing waterfalls i´ve ever seen in my life...and really, rock-hopping is a bit like life then, isn´t it?

once i got momentum going, everything was easier. i gained confidence, and with my speed felt more agile and was able to use my movement in my favor when it came to scaling up some steeper rocks or balancing in precarious places. i had to see the rocks as merely a part of something bigger, just a piece on my journey to the waterfall, and then i could leap (almost, ha ha) efforlessly between rocks, my feet seeming to find where they belonged and my hands only helping when necessary. here´s the thing though, one slip and my mind reverted back to seeing only each rock as itself and analyzing the best way to get to this one rock, to balance on this rock, and to find the best way to attack the next. and then you know what? i´d start slipping even more, out of fear i think more than anything else.

so basically, you have to see the big picture...getting caught up in the little things makes you worry too much about things that in the long run, might not matter at all, or that might have only mattered for a second. don´t be afraid to trust yourself and your instincts, you do have them for a reason, and no matter how much you study or put your faith in what you read, sometimes you can only really know something from not knowing it...just feeling it :)

and let me tell you, by the time we reached that waterfall, all i could feel was pride, awe, fatigue, accomplishment, elation, and eventually, the icy refreshment of the red-tinged water beneath the falls as i jumped in, completely ready to take on that waterfall firsthand :D

here are some pictures from the weekend...more will be posted on facebook soon. enjoy!

p.s. - these pictures don´t do this place justice...