Original article on www.vagabondjourney.com
Leaving my hostel under sunny lunchtime skies, and the approval of the receptionist abated my fears that it was getting a little late for a full days’ value, I set off for Sucre’s Sietes Cascadas. I compiled the necessities for a killer picnic and met with my friend in the main Plaza 25 de Mayo as arranged. We even completed the one chore we had in quick time: buy bus tickets to La Paz for the following evening. However, with grey skies, the sound of thunder rolling in and the time pushing into mid-afternoon, my fears returned that we had left our day trip too late, yet I was to be proved completely wrong in spectacular circumstances.
By the time my friend and I arrived at Sietes Cascadas, I had given up on the idea of swimming. With a cold shower already under my belt that morning I couldn’t be bothered creating unnecessary problems for myself as the heat had peaked and the day just got colder. By now it was around 3pm and we started to pick at our picnic as we walked from Alegria, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Sucre, into the hilly maze in which the Sietes Cascadas lies.
More reaffirmations of our tardiness presented themselves as we descended down a sandy green ridge into the dry riverbed gorge below which we would follow to the first of the cascades. Yet, the closer we got to the Sietes Cascadas, the more people who greeted us as they filed out under darkening skies and the heavier rumblings of thunder. Neither my friend or I were deterred in the slightest however, and we happily continued our journey to find the ideal picnic spot near one of the cleaner and more beautiful cascades.
I had visited Sietes Cascadas about two months previous so was more or less familiar with my surroundings. However, it was around the first cascade I also realised that while my memories of our surroundings were more or less the same, there were also slight differences. For example, the slightly alternative route we took to the first cascade, the slightly more dangerous scaling of the ledge that separates the first set of cascades from the second and likewise a slightly different descent down the opposing hillside. A new bush had sprung up here or the light shone in different ways on different places, obscuring the route and the memory I had of it my mind. Just as I would soon be proved wrong to worry about getting a full days’ value at Sietes Cascadas, likewise, I would pay for my heightened sense of familiarity and security.
After a slow descent down the opposing hillside, using the roots of shrubs to protect against sliding down the sandy surface of loose rocks, we arrived at one of the nicer lagoons that we had set out for, showing that my mental compass was only half a degree off. Just in time too, as we were afforded protection by a shallow cave as small pellets of rain started to drop from the sky. My friend, not deterred, took a swim in one of the cascade’s pools, although as lighting flashed over the next rise I gently tried to convince her to get out as I prepared some DIY guacamole in avocado skin shells.
So it wasn’t to be the glorious return I had envisaged, I thought as I squeezed lemon into a smashed-up avacado. I would not be able to throw my head back laughing into the sun as I did dive bomb after dive bomb into the shimmering aquamarine lagoons of the Sietes Cascadas on this grey day. Yet we had arrived before the bad weather could chastise us for our hardheaded persistence, with a good picnic and in a nice spot. We could eat and return to Sucre in time for dinner.
Yet, as we were making to leave with bellies full, I asked my friend if she wanted to explore a little further along the cascadas. I knew from my first time that the landscape only got more beautiful as the last cascade opened up into a gorge hugged by auburn green hills. There was more climbing and clambering over rocks involved and it was a fun journey. She asked me if I had a flashlight as it was getting a little late. Surprisingly, the flashlight I had bought in Melbourne, under the impression I would never use it, was in my bag. I said yes, she said yes, so we started to clamber over the now wet rocks, further into what would become our very own personal labyrinth.
Getting to the next cascade I realised the lagoon below had dried up somewhat since my last visit, another small reminder that things were the same but slightly different. Instead of directly scaling the rock face of this cascade, which I done previously with the aid of water below and a sunny day in which to enjoy the plunge should I fall, we moved to the next cascade via an overland path in the hills to our right.
The next cascade was even drier! Where I had once been able to gleefully jump from the cascade’s rock face into the water below and debate “how high is too high?” I was now faced with a dried-out sandpit, poetically completed by an errant bicycle tyre. The only presence of water was the slow trickle coming down the cascade’s face from the stream that moved through the gorge above and the earlier rain which had made the rocky landscape slippery and slightly perilous.
With this in mind, in true amiably boyish fashion, I quickly found myself stuck halfway up the final cascade’s rock face and had to crab across, going slowly because of the lack of grip the rocks provided. My friend also found herself stuck a little lower but managed to extricate herself back to the sandy basin. I climbed up to the top in the best way I remembered to look for the safest and most manageable ascent with the aid of a bird’s eye view, trying to figure out whether continuing this adventure was a calculated risk or just sheer foolishness.
Moving across the top of the weakly flowing cascade with the gorge ahead and my friend and the other sorry cascades behind I tested out the descent on the other side, as I remembered it was safer. However, in running shoes in the wet, I wasn’t afforded the same safety a dry surface in bare feet had provided the previous time around. Returning somewhat nervously to the bottom I asked my friend whether she wanted to try the ascent, mentioning it was a little more difficult. We debated looking for a path over the straddling hills, but in the end just decided to climb up the little cascade’s front.
