Canyoning

In the morning, the sun was shining but the air was crisp. I refused a shower with the reasoning that it was too cold for one. The boys were keen on canyoning so we booked in. Our host was surprised by this request, I assume because of the chill factor involved.

I was naive to what canyoning involved, which is a good thing as otherwise I may not have agreed to go!
We were met by Mika, a locally born and bred young twenty something guy in the town of Bovac. We'd had a hasty baguette each and it failed to warm me up. I felt the cold was going to be around for a while.

Mika drove us to the base in a very quaint village just next to the town. He told us they were still doing some rebuilding after the earthquake from four years earlier. There was indeed a lot of construction taking place.

On arrival to the canyon, we donned our very attractive rafting wetsuits, wetsuit jackets and shoes. Then we traipsed about thirty minutes uphill to the start of the canyon. By now we were all puffing and sweating. The thought of plunging into icy cold water was actually starting to sound appealing. We added another wetsuit, a balaclava type wetsuit thing, gloves and a 'diaper' to protect the wetsuits from tearing then finally a helmet. I'd never felt so gorgeous!!! not.
After a few instructions, we began. I should mention that we signed no forms or anything about safety etc. At this point, I was aware that some jumping off rock faces up to twelve metres was involved, so I was feeling a little nervous excitement.

It was so fun! The first few 'slides' were quite small. We went backwards down a couple too. Then things got serious. Seriously scary! Some waterfalls did not lend themselves to sliding, so these ones we jumped! I had not felt so challenged on so many levels in so long. So.
The pools we jumped into were not so deep at times and we had to land properly. Needless to say, the first shallow-ish pool I managed to twist my knee painfully under me. Doh. The cold water probably helped it calm down a bit.

Mika was very confident and a very good guide whom I instantly trusted. Hence, I found myself climbing massive rock faces and throwing myself into the icy water below without stopping to think about it. We scrambled up a ten metre high rock and amazingly, I jumped after Martin with no hesitation. No time for that. Very, very scary. Maybe you heard my screams in Wellington...?

We continued down the canyon, slowly starting to get cold. Mika told us we had two beautiful waterfalls left. The two biggest.
He wasn't wrong.
The first was a massive plunge into a cave covered pool. I hurt my heel on the way down. Not so fun.
Then we clamboured across a very scenic part of the stream and under a crumbling old stone bridge. We arrived at the BIG ONE. What I found especially scary about this twelve metre drop, was that you could peer over the top and the 'slide' was visible for about two metres, then it disappeared. Mika informed us that after that two metres, we'd feel like we were freefalling, but weren't. We had to keep our arms etc tucked in tight and 'strong'.

Mike was first. He disappeared very quickly. My turn. I couldn't think about it, or I'd talk myself out of it like the girl before us. I swung my legs over, swallowed my nausea, tucked all my bits in and let Mika push me down.
Of course I screamed rather loudly. It was not the smoothest ride I'd ever had. In fact, I definitely whacked my head on something before entering the water.
BUT the pure satisfaction and a tiny bit of pride at keeping up with the boys was totally worth the battering. Plus, it was soo exhilarating!

With the canyoning officially over, we stripped off our chilled wetsuits and warmed up in the van as we were driven back to base.

We stockpiled some popcorn and burger ring type junk food--and some crunchy apples, and began our drive to Lake Bled.