November 13th, 2023
I met my
guide Ivan at 9 am after having breakfast.
The plan was to go on a four hour hike to four different water falls and
then finish off by abseiling (or rappelling) down the 100-meter Sipi
Falls. Ivan gave me a long, thin walking
stick with a couple of pointy ends on the top, I guess to ward off
something…but I wasn’t sure what. He
asked if I was interested in descending to see Sipi Falls and then hiking up
from the valley to check out the other three falls. Sure, we might as well do it all as I doubt
I’ll be back here again.
We passed
another group of slow-moving tourists with their guides and probably made it to
the falls in under half an hour. It was
probably about 150 meters of vertical that we descended to get to the base of
the falls. After a few pics, we took a
trail up the other side of the wide canyon.
Ivan told
me that a circumcision ritual (ya didn’t see this coming did ya?!?) is often
performed at the base of the falls. Boys
between 15-18 years old (yikes!) are circumcised during a 3-day event. They dance from morning to night the first
day, are then cut without any anesthetic (ouch!) and are not allowed to bandage
up or cover the result. Immediately I
thought about infection problems and Ivan mentioned that he went to the
hospital for his procedure for those very reasons. C’mon people, this is the 21st century!
About three
quarters of the way up, there was a natural cave. The opening was about four feet high and I
initially just peered in. It wasn’t
terribly inviting as it smelled a bit like piss, which I later clued in that it
was actually from bat guano. Ivan was
sitting down on a bench talking with a local guy and I asked him how far it
went. He claimed over 60
kilometers! His grandparents told him
that it came out in Kenya and it used to be used to smuggle goods. I had to go back and take another look. I ventured in a few hundred feet and it
seemed like it kept going. The ceiling
got higher and I could walk upright as I disturbed the odd sleeping bat. I wish I had brought my proper headlight and
wasn’t relying on my phone’s light…but I still wasn’t going to try and walk to
Kenya!
We ascended
to the plateau, where the continuation of the paved road that I arrived on to
get to my guesthouse. We crossed the
road and entered Sipi River Lodge, a fancy place that was our access point to
the second waterfall, known as Sipi II. The
ascent from the lodge was about 50 meters through some lush forest. This waterfall was about 60-70 meters tall
and a nice thing about it was that you could walk behind it. It wasn’t like the crazily powerful Pailon del Diablo waterfalls that I visited in
Ecuador two years ago, but still pretty cool.
There was a bit of a man-made cave at the back of the falls too. Farmers had brought their cows to the area to
let them drink and noticed that the cattle loved licking the rock walls. The farmers clued in that there were salt
deposits in the rock, so they began blasting out a hole to let the cows access
more salt over time. Eventually the
government had to step in and stop the blasting before the ceiling of the cave
would prove to be too unstable and collapse.
The final
two waterfalls were even higher up but to reach them we passed through some
local farms. Crops included cabbage,
Irish potatoes (regular potatoes to Westerners…potatoes here are actually sweet
potatoes), climbing beans, passion fruit and even barley for beer. It was a lovely walk.
We didn’t
get too close to the final waterfall as the spray was greater than normal
according to Ivan. As we were leaving, a
farmer offered us to try one of his passion fruits. I haven’t eaten passion fruit very often, but
this was the best one I’ve ever had, so I bought another one to take with me.
It was a
slightly different route back to the top of the very first waterfall, the 100
meter one. Ivan had coordinated with one
of the local companies that run the abseiling.
At the road we were met by a man in his 30s named Masai. Ivan grabbed a boda boda back to the resort while
I followed Masai to the top of the waterfalls where we were met by two other
guys, who I thought were in their 20s but one of them, Ronald, was mid-30s.
I put on a
harness, which looked almost brand new, in fact, most of their gear was very
new looking. I was given a short
briefing and then watched Ronald disappear over the edge. He took my water bottle and hiking stick with
him and was going to help me at the bottom and escort me back up the valley to
the resort.
Now it was
my turn. I walked to the edge and
started to work my way past a couple of steel bars while Masai belayed me and
the other guy took photos and videos with my phone. As I leaned back, I somehow lost my footing
and turned sideways and hit the wall a bit with my shoulder. Whoops.
I regained my stance and kept my legs straight as instructed. Slowly Masai lowered me down. For the first 20 meters I would be
essentially walking down the wall but after that I would just be hanging.
Since I’m a
paragliding pilot, heights are not an issue for me, but this was something a
bit different than I’m used to. The
waterfall looked amazing and as I got lower, I could almost see a full 360
degree rainbow!
I could see
Ronald at the bottom, about 30 meters away from the waterfall hiding behind a
rock. When I was close enough, he ran
over and held out my walking stick for me to grab so he could pull me over…and
then we just got drenched. Standing up
on the ground, I tried to take off the harness and helmet as quickly as
possible so that Ronald could attach them to the rope and the guys above could
haul them back up. By the time we got
away from the base of the waterfall, we were drenched.
Arriving
back at the Crows Nest Resort, I was tired.
I had probably hiked about 9-10 kilometers with at least 450 meters of
altitude gain and loss. I took a
well-deserved nap.
For some
reason, the resort didn’t have power during the day until about 5 o’clock. I think it was a cost saving measure. I decided to walk down the road to another
resort whose sign claimed it had a bar/restaurant to see if I could get a
relatively cold beer and work on my blog.
I was greeted by a young man named Brendan, although he went by Patrick
for tourists as he claimed that Brendan was a difficult name for many
visitors. Perhaps European ones, but
Brendan is a known name in Canada. He served
me a beer in a small rectangular room with a bar at one end and a few tables
along the side. I started to work on my
laptop when he grabbed a beer and sat down with me. We chatted for a bit, and he seemed like a
nice guy.
Another guy
with a tooth missing joined us and ordered a Miranda grape soda pop. I can’t recall his name but somewhere in the
conversation he pulled out a $100 USD bill.
He asked me whether he thought it was real or not. I had my suspicions. I didn’t catch the whole story but supposedly
he had a box full of these notes that his dad was bringing out of the
Democratic Republic of Congo four years earlier, and he was shot and killed. I didn’t really want to ask questions, but
this guy was hoping that I would take it to a bank and get it checked because
the bank tellers wouldn’t question a white Westerner with a $100 note, but they
would if it was a local. I explained
that I was leaving the next day, so I couldn’t help him out. I suggested that he should go to the bank,
claim that a tourist had paid him with that bill and that he questioned whether
it was real or not, and to not mention that he had a box full of them!
The stories you hear when you are travelling!
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