Tree house”, here I wake up, on my first tree house, Katia has already left her sleeping bed and mosquito net and takes photos leaning out on the parapet. Under her 20 meters of trunk rounded by lianas and climbing plants. All around other most high trees, some cleared, some with other little houses as ours.
The “tree house” complex is something wonderful, a tiny village self sufficient for water and electricity. An array of pipes hidden amongst the trees channel water from the waterfall upstream and thanks to gravity water climbs until the bathroom tap built on the tree. A little table on the corner makes a living room and the wish to stay huddled over there is really strong.
The restaurant area is built under a wooden shed attached to a little house to be used as a kitchen. It is a magical place, right under the last of seven cascades of the Tiger waterfall, among water whirlpools, sparkles and mist spread among a thousand rainbows. Its twin waterfall, the Monkey one, that we still have to explore, it s the day target. But only after breakfast around the bonfire.
Home and Ham are already devouring their glutinous rice and smile to us behind their coffee cup. Breakfast has not been the first daily gesture, the first has been the zip-line, sure it is, no stairs for getting out the tree house but only another cable that, opposite to the one we used the night before, brings us down, towards Mother Earth.
We are used to choose a t-shirt or a pair of trousers to be worn in the morning; here instead you choose the most suitable climbing gear, brilliant!
The daily trekking will take us downstream, we will go down along the river springing from the Tiger waterfall and we will head towards the Monkey waterfall that at first will stream over our heads, then under, then sidewise, in a never-ending repeated series of four zip-lines that hold the core of the day.
It is true we are used to the feeling from yesterday but today’s zip-lines are definitely astonishing, 300 meters of throw and then 400 to finish. An entire flying minute in progressive acceleration, now I understand the purpose of those curved wooden sticks that Home called brake, they are the only way to slow down and not to be taken by the wish of taking off.
Lunch is by the river, on a rock welcoming our banana’s leaves’ towel and the thousand fish rolls, sauces and Kwa Niawo. Feet enter chill water, the feeling of diving and bathing is strong but the presence of rapids few meters ahead discourages us. Home and Ham advise not to panic because we will bathe on the way back in a fabulous place. It is really as he promises, because the ascent is hard, an hour climbing in a half vertical path, the fabulous descent through zip-line is only a memory. Yet, going back to the lodge under the waterfall and diving into the natural swimming pools under it, hearing the roar on the ears, wetting one’s face with the vaporized water and walking through a rainbow are worth all climbing paths of the world.
Bathing under the Tiger waterfall makes me remember the same feelings of Amazonia, 5 years ago, deeply rooted in my heart. The actual jungle and the Amazonian forest in the memory are merged in an unexplainable whole, a mix of surprise and psychedelic high without using drugs, even because I did not get to find opium and even so Home and Ham would not ever allow me to use it.
Luckily drugs and alcohol are absolutely forbidden in this place, not only for a security issue, but also because the vision of such deep and perfect landscape would be altered.
Colors do not need Photoshop, music of nature is not filtered by an equalizer and even faces, mine and Katia’s, look more beautiful than mother nature made us, because here we are, in her womb, mother nature is holding us, kissing, stroking and protecting us as children. And as everyone knows, in the eyes of a mother, her children are the most beautiful.
Kindly Traslated by “Alessandra Angius”
Day 1 – Day 2 – Day 3 – Day 4 – Day 5 – Day 6 – Day 7
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