The most beautiful place on Earth, accessible by overcoming your fears

Me rappelling down the 150 foot descent

I did many different activities while I was in Costa Rica, but the most incredible one was canyoning.  I went with Will, one other tourist, and two guides to the canyon that separates the Cloud Forest from the Arenal rainforest and spent several hours hiking, down-climbing, and rappelling down a river.  To say that it was amazing is a serious understatement.  I have never seen anything as pristine or beautiful as I saw that day.

Here’s the thing about rappelling down 200 foot waterfalls though, I’m afraid of heights.  Not in a shaking/crying kind of way, but in a “I have a healthy fear of plummeting to my death” kind of way.  As far fears go, it’s a pretty reasonable one (much more so than fearing spiders, for instance), but it would get seriously in the way of this adventure had I let it.  But I didn’t.  I made the decision to do the trip, trusted my guides, and went for it.  It was more than worth it.

The first rappel was a small one, only twenty feet or so down a waterfall.  It was there to get our confidence in our gear up.  Then, we saw the first big one.  150 feet straight down and into a small pool.  I can’t think of a moment in my life where I was more aware of being insane than when I stepped to that ledge and sat back in my harness.  It sounded something like this in my head:

“Holy crap, I’m really doing this.  This isn’t that scary.  Wow, I’m still going down.  I wonder how much further to the ground.  Holy crap I’m probably only about a third of the way down.  Look at that gorgeous waterfall!  Oh man, pay attention and don’t let go of the rope!  Okay breathe.  You’re doing fine.  You’re doing fine.  See, here you are doing it.  Doing great.  Just move hand down, let rope move, move hand up.  Over and over.  Hey, look at that!  You’re almost down!  Oh no, the pool, hold your breath!”

When I made it down I was shaking from the adrenaline coursing through my body and had a huge smile on my face.  I got a big high five from the guide and we continued on through three more rappels, including one last 200 foot drop.

I didn’t think much at the time about conquering fear or anything like that, because I was never so afraid that I thought I couldn’t do it.  That’s actually surprising because I used to be so afraid of heights that I refused to go on any kind of roller coaster.  The difference this time was that I was in it from the start.  I knew that it would be amazing and I decided from before we even signed up for trip that it would be fun, and not so scary that I couldn’t do it.

Sometimes that’s all it takes, that initial mindset, to move past a fear.  It’s not that I’m not still afraid of heights, but I can get past it for something good enough.  And standing under the most beautiful waterfall I’ve ever seen, completely secluded in the middle of the Costa Rican jungle was definitely good enough.