Waterfall Adventure

The things I let myself get talked into! For the last year or so our Russian friend Slava (the crazy runner and unicyclist) has been wanted to walk to the Papapapaitai Waterfall. This is an impressive 100m high waterfall that you can see from Cross Island Road, but there is no track to the waterfall.

Anyway, he had managed to find where the river comes out down at the coast and had made one attempt to walk up the river to find the waterfall, but this had been unsuccessful. Apparently some of the group that accompanied him weren’t properly prepared for what they were tackling and they turned back.

This time he wanted to tackle it again, properly. No ‘sissies’ (his term!) and an earlier start, and he wanted to know if I was keen to join him. For some reason I said yes! Angela has already warned me that Slava must be a little bit crazy, but I thought it would be a good little adventure. As it turned out I was the only one foolish enough to join him this time round. So, we made an early start – the breakfast buffet at Aggie Grey’s at 6.30 to get fuelled up for our trek! We also helped ourselves to a few pastries, bananas, and fruit salad to take with us.

Our Goal - Papapapaitai Waterfall

Slava managed to find the way to the river no problem, so it was time to leave the car and start walking. He had warned me that there were no tracks and the only way to go was to follow the river, so I wasn’t surprised when he waded straight into the water. I quickly discovered that the river bed was made up of round, slippery boulders and finding a safe footing in the flowing water could be tricky. We seemed to be making good time – twice as fast as last time according to Slava – but it was hard work. After 2 hours we had a break, and some bananas and pastries! By this stage we had covered about 3.6 km, but figured that the waterfall must be at least 7km from where we started, maybe further, so it w as time to carry on.

The trek was awesome – some parts of the forest were very much like New Zealand with lots of ferns and moss. The temperature was not like NZ though and walking in the water helped to keep us a bit cooler. By this stage we were coming across some deeper pools which we had to swim across, but this was easier than scrambling over slippery rocks.

As we continued we could hear some serious thunder and sure enough it started to rain. We were already wet, so the rain didn’t really worry us. After more than 4 hours we were starting to reach the stage where we would have to turn back to avoid being stranded in the forest in the dark. We both were hoping that we would come around the next corner and see our waterfall, but each time we were disappointed. Eventually we came to a smaller waterfall that we couldn’t climb up. It did have a nice deep pool so we decided to jump in for a swim before heading back.

The trip back down the river was probably harder than heading up, and we were getting pretty tired. About 10 hours after setting out we finally got back to the car. It had been quite an adventure. Although we didn’t manage to get to our waterfall and we were worn out we had had a great day exploring places that very few people have ever been. Slava is keen to come back and try again – with ropes and more equipment next time. I will recover from this effort first before I agree to another of his crazy adventures!