Free Rock Climbing & Cliff Jumping

14 May 2010

Bloody Awesome. With the American’s we’d met a couple of nights before we paid a local long boat driver to take us out for half a day to some of the popular cliff jumping areas. Cliff jumping is great, it is rock climbing but without the need for equipment plus the added thrill of jumping off high things. What more could five guys and a boat wish for?

Gus actually had proper rock climbing shoes with him so after he’d had a climb I borrowed his and took to it. There were two sections of the climb which were pretty difficult; the first was traversing a rock face and crossing a gap to another rock section, and the second was the last stage up to the platform. This last difficult section involved climbing behind the large stalactite like structure where it was cramped, less exposed to sunlight and hence slippery with moss. I considered this part the most dangerous as there were rocks below, not the nice soft cuddly kind either.

I surprised myself by making it to the platform, and to James’ annoyance by the time we got back to this rock section so he could have a second attempt the easier starting point was too high as the tide had gone out. Once I managed it up the only problem is getting down; naturally you have to jump otherwise you risk losing respect, but it’s a hell of a way up! Through a yelled conversation with Gus I managed to determine that ‘yes’ it was higher than anyone else had jumped from in our group, but ‘no’ I probably would not kill myself in the process. “You’ll be fine.” And I was, I just took care to keep my hands by my sides so they didn’t slap the water too hard.

In New Zealand ‘safety’ is over done, but in Thailand I would have to say it can be lacking – it’s hard to find a balance. On this occasion the boat driver kept letting the boat drift underneath where people were climbing and we would have to repeatedly ask our driver to move the boat before someone had an unplanned fall.

Later that day I went out and splurged $400 THB on two computer games, what a geek!