Abseiling back to the Jurassic Era!

This epic adventure started out feeling a little bit like a Survivor challenge.  The newly appointed yellow bags, carabiners and helmets were placed in a circle and our guide which resembled the “Jeff Probst” of our canyoning adventure called out the numbers to our corresponding wetties.  

We were only moderately let down when we couldn’t find any idols for “immunity” but instantly felt better after signing a few death waivers!  Now we were off and ready.  For about 30 minutes we walked down into the Grand Canyon located in Blackheath – outside of Sydney.

There were Aussie sandstone stairs along the way which made for a pretty easy descent and when we finally reached our abseiling location, we donned our slimming, yet fashionable 5 mm wetties.  Though, I’m gonna say that the yellow bags really made our eyes pop!After a few more instructions about the best way to get to the bottom without dying,  we were ready to abseil into Australia’s Jurassic Park!It was a bit steep… Imagine a massive abyss where you have no idea what’s at the bottom. It’s dark and all you can see is black so, when you reach the edge of the cliff, you gotta  take a leap of *faith and just trust the rope.  *remember you signed a death waiver.  

After a few squeals and heart-pounding moments we then, gradually dropped ourselves into the canyon.When we reached the bottom of the ravine, it was quite dark.  A few of us lost our footing breaking out our best ABBA dance moves saving ourselves from looking like idiots.  We weren’t yet used to the low light and the big rocks on the bottom.   After a few minutes to allow our eyes to adjust and our legs to stop shaking from all the adrenaline, the feeling of being in another world overtook us.  This part of Australia has so much biological diversity, its been listed as a world heritage site. And, it looks like one massive Jurassic Park!  The ferns are apparently some of the oldest in the world!

We continued on our journey though this wild wonderland but unfortunately didn’t see any dinosaurs

But in true badass style, we all made sure to perfect our  canyoning jumping techniques.

And we were having so much fun that that the GoPro needed adjusting a few times!  But that was totally ok.  It took another hour to walk out of the canyon.  I do highly recommend being a bit more fit than the average person –  not for the abseiling or canyoning but for the massive Stairmaster workout you’re about to have on the way out.  You will seriously burn off whatever you do decide to gorge yourself on that day, so make sure to order big and eat whatever you want – because you earned it!

I rate this one heck of a Steven Spielberg adventure five stars.