Hello there once again! Here i am to show you guys about one of my trips, i made this one a few years back but it was so beautiful and fun that i record it in my memory for ever. This was an tour organized by a simple group of mountain climbers in the city i was living back then, a city in the middle of Brazil, in the beautiful state of Minas Gerais. The city is called "Araxa" The name is an indigenous name that means "the place from where the sun is seen first", it's a small and simple city surrounded by huge and beautiful mountains and has a lot of fountains and waterfalls barely explored, only known by the local people.
So back to the trip, really early in the morning we got into a van and went to this place away from the city, a farm used as a base camp. We got breakfast there and as soon as all the vehicles arrived we started the trekking, it would be a 12 km run in the hills, it was not a really hard trail, just a long one, and i wanted to go fast to test my limits, so i started running uphill folowing the marked trail, it was really fun and refreshing to get in the top of the hill, the view was amazing, you could see so far on the horizon, of this beautiful vegetation called "cerrado".
Everywhere i looked i could see so much, the sky was so clear and the hills were so green, it was really amazing to run in a trail with all that beauty everywhere.
I wasn't on the first group at the start, but i started to outrun a lot of them and soon got in the first "Position" it was not a race but i wanted to go fast because some people were a little bit slow and i had to wait in line to climb some parts, and i hate waiting in lines even worse on a exciting trail!
The soil of the trail was kinda sketchy, a lot of loose rocks, dirt, you could easily twist an ankle or fall in a cliff, so i had to be fast but a lot careful.
(here's my view leaving everybody behind. Ha, Suckers!
In the middle of the trail i spotted a river source, and started seeing a lot of waterfalls, the trail was following the river,and at some point you I even had to cross it, it was a magical moment. Then i started to see more and more waterfalls, and some of them were so strong, exuberant and noisy, like an angry god (and really dangerous, since it was a not commercialy explored site, there wasn't any barriers or protection).
Check out the sound of this beast!
I remember climbing even more on the trail, and could see that waterfall from a higher spot some time later. The view from that spot was incredible, i spent a lot of time there just admiring the view and thinking about how small we are in this planet, i was so thrilled that i forgot about my inner "race" haha, and any pain or tiredness i could be feeling vanished in that place.
Here's me up there taking a selfie xD
Continuing the trail, after a crazy steep downhill ahead, full of loosen rocks and almost suffering my first slide (saved by hugging a tree in the last second), and after helping a lot of less prepared people down that hill, i faced the real reward on that trail, the Argenita Waterfall.
I was stoked seeing that huge nature monolith, it was so loud and strong, and full of places to explore, it had a olt of pools on each of it's levels, pools filled with crazy cristalin (and cold) water, i spent a lot of time exploring thw pools that i could safely reach, because the current was a little bit strong.
This is me in one of the pools, listen to the strenght of the water!
The group spent hours in that waterfall, taking long and cold baths and refreshing the soul. Then it was time to go back to the vans, they had a little drop point close to the waterfall going downhill, but to get there we had to trek a little bit more and there was a sketchy place where you had to jump from a rock in a deep part of the river and swim to the shore, i tought that was really fun, jumped in that water(got all my bag wet, but they warned it before, and my phone was waterproof so nothing was damaged) then i reached the shore, it was about 20 meters far from the jump place. Then i returned there to help the other peope from the group who didn't know how to swim or where really scared, so we got some ropes and started helping everybody out. Then we got into the vans and headed back home, with a great memory stamped in our minds.
Since my camera phone wasn't great, here's a picture of the waterfall taken by a real photographer with a real camera haha, enjoy it!
