The 7 Watefalls

Whilst pissed the night before me and Jo had managed to gather a good group of us to visit a series of 7 waterfalls in the country side surrounding Sucre. One of the recruits Ben, had been before so had promised to show us the way and guide us all safely to the top of the falls. We had heard from other travelers that we were mad to go to  the falls as rumour had it that the area had been taken over by gangs wielding Ak47s and machetes, and anyone that had gone to the falls had come back limbless.

As agreed, the gang (the gringo gang, no AK47 to hand, only Swiss army knives) meet at 9.30am to head to the falls, all suffering slightly from the boozing the night before! Had we taken an official tour with an agency it would have cost us around 18 quid, with our free guide Ben it would cost us only 30p for a return bus ticket.

We catch one of the local buses and head out of busy Sucre and begin to climb the surrounding hills, last stop is ours so there is no missing it. 

Slightly apprehensive with the upcoming lynch mob, we get off to see only farmers, a few chickens, dogs and kids selling bread. Ben tells us all it´s about an hours walk to the first waterfall, so we get cracking. We walk through farmers fields and after a while we reach the first fall.

Waterfall number 1 wasn’t too spectacular, although it did involve an intermediate climb to get passed it. Each fall in fact entailed some form of climb, each getting more difficult as they come by. Fall number three saw the first set of casualties, all girls of course, the climb too difficult and dangerous to risk life. One girl, in attempting to climb up fall 3, in sheer panic, looking for something to hold onto wrapped her palm around a cactus resulting in a high pitched shriek, similar to a Bolivian woman’s singing  voice (if you have ever heard a Bolivian woman singing you know exactly what I am talking about).

The third fall was pretty cool as you could jump off it, about 6-8m high, lads being lads the extremities had to be pushed and the jumps kept getting higher and more dangerous. All here to still tell the story. Of course our  nutritious drink of the day was beer.

The lads, plus one brave girl, made it to the last and seventh fall. We head back to fall 3 to tell the girls of our great adventure avoiding near death climbing the impossible 4 remaining falls. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story!! After a great day climbing, jumping, drinking it was time to head back to catch the bus.

The walk back, all uphill nearly killed us all, so much so that a local chap, maybe 60 years old, laughed as we all walked by sweating and panting! We get back on the bus and head back home.

We head back to the hostel Wasi Masi with all the gang, arms, legs, fingers, cameras and money present. Not a machete or AK47 in sight.