What a day, what an adventure!

A rock. A big rock. A mountain. A big mountain. A big rock at the top of a big mountain. A harness, carabiners, helmet, iron rods, iron ropes and a mountaineering guide. This all adds up to a morning of via ferrata. Via ferrata is a protected climbing route along a rock or cliff face with iron cables running along the route and attached to the rock or cliff every few metres to aid the climbing process and to limit but not stop falls.
At 9am, Simone (and as we discovered, was pronounced with an ‘a’ at the end was male not female), picked us up from Lucca and he drove for 45 mins to meet his colleague before we ascended by car up the mountain. Stopping half way up the mountain, he pointed out the rock face that we will be via ferratering on. Really not needing to know how high up it was or how scary it looked, i continued psyching myself up for the adventure ahead. We soon arrived at the parking spot and proceeded to get geared up. The 2 guides, Swee and I made a 15 minute hike down part of the mountain. The path was extremely steep and slippery as well as being sprawled with rocks which patterned and coloured my behind. Fortunately the path was aided by ropes along the way for us to not go rolling down the mountain and into the valley. Reaching the rock that we were to traverse and ascend, the guide said that this climb we were about to do was the hardest via ferrata in all of Tuscany! So we began. Some moves I made whilst traversing that rock was unimaginable. Being safely connected to the iron cable allowed us to safely undertake some dramatic positions and stretch ourselves to the limit in order to cross the rock. There was a shorter ropes carabiner that you could attach to the iron cable rather than the 1/2m ropes carabiner. It was used for resting so that you would not fall 1/2m but rather stay in your position with your arms free for a rest. My guide told me at one point to use that carabiner and have a rest but he actually meant, attach yourself and use it to swing down the steel cable and miss the tricky section of the rock. That was fun and very unexpected.
The track across the rock was challenging, scary and nerve wracking but was an amazing experience and adventure with breathtaking views. I could not imagine anything more difficult than that climb so I am glad that was the hardest. We were so happy and proud of ourselves to have completed that adventure. We were also tired, our muscles were sore and our hearts were beating fast pumped with adrenaline. We still had caving to do. Back up the hill, back to the car, gear off, and we started our journey to the cave.
I never believed that under ground caves have water , that you can wade through and waterfalls inside a cave that you can climb up with gushing water right beside you. After about half an hour trying to get wetsuits on and waterproof boots like we where going to dive the Ningaloo reef, we had an amazing half an hour trek up the mountain and across a stream to enter the opening of the cave.

What an experience, wading knee deep through water and crawling through small crevices. After squeezing, squishing and ambling through the cave, we got to a 2m waterfall inside the cave. Our tour guide said we have to climb the waterfall . It was not a dry waterfall, but a waterfall with gushing water . My legs went jelly. We were connected to a harness and a rope so we used our rock climbing skills and climbed up the waterfall.
We made it to the top with a breathtaking experience of stalactites, many cold wades through the water, many squeezes through small crevices and many, many splashes into the water.
What a day. What an adventure.Read more