Conquering Fearfulness

Today we are travelling up into the mountains to Munduk, a small village quite high up. We are both very much looking forward to this. We hope it will offer beautiful lush green views of the rural Bali we like so much more than its rather more schizophrenic traffic raging counterpart. We hope there will be long, exhausting walks, friendly villagers and great food. We hope there will be no motorbikes. 

We are staying until Thursday and on the way up we have booked ourselves into the Treetop Adventure Bali, in the middle of the Botanical gardens in Bedugul, a village similar to Munduk, and, handily, on the way.

The idea behind the Treetop Adventure trails, other than because it sounds like fun, is for a wee spot of fear battling on my part. I am working up to something not unlike the strong and fearless version of myself I had originally thought I might, rather glibly 'discover' on this journey, only with a few more fears. No one, I tell myself, is absolutely fearless. It would just be good to make sure that the fear wasn't crippling.

The Treetops Adventure set up is rather similar to the Go Ape type assault courses in the trees which abound in National Trust parks in the UK. Only this has several trails, ranging in difficulty from orange (children only) to 'the black run' which requires, according to the brochure, mental courage and physical strength and is not advisable if you are of a weak disposition or build. 

And I of course am strong, like a warrior, in both. It is this black run we intend to work up to. We will skip the children's courses and the easy courses and will begin with blue, apparently 'where the thrills start'. And work up through red 'fairly challenging' and with a maximum height of 8 metres. To the black run, which has a maximum height if 20 metres and is insane.

We are fitted with our harnesses and walked through the initial safety training. Of course we will be harnessed and clipped the entire time so there is no real danger, only that which you perceive with your tiny, treacherous little mind.

"Never unclip both carebenas at once" warns our safety man.

"We won't" we promise.

Not likely. 

I take a sneak peak at the courses. Viewed from below without anyone else on them, they look rather tame. All the usual rope bridges and climbing nets, zip wires and various hanging versions of stepping stones. Though of course, being hung, they don't keep still.

We do the blue run. It's absolutely fine, though I note that this course, contrary to Go Ape, does genuinely require some physical strength and dexterity. My memories of Go Ape, though they may have been edited, don't include much muscle ache or sweat.

We move on to the red run. Just as a note, this prospect is not all terrifying for me. I am not being incredibly brave and strong willed by being here. I do actually quite enjoy these things. It's like a playground that has been scaled up for adults. It's exciting and it's fun. You get beautiful views of the forest below you, and the thrills are mostly the enjoyable with an edge kind, rather than the weeping and clutching and wailing to get down kind. I am expecting to be scared but not to be so scared I have to wimp out. I very rarely actually refuse to go through with something and absolute crippling fear tends to happen rather more if I am asked to jump off or climb down something without a reassuring nappy harness around me. If we go canyoning in New Zealand it will not be the actual abseil down the waterfall that will floor me, it will be the jumps and the mud slides. Even so, doing the black run will be enough to feel proud of, and a little creep nearer to that brave soul I would like to be.

The red run is also fine and I  getting quite cocky. I am less confident on the bridges which consist of various hanging steps,  stirrup's or logs, placed increasingly far apart and swinging, alarmingly with every step. But I am making it, and M and I are having a lot of fun. 

Until we come to the 'Tarzan Swing'. It's towards the end of the red run and is the first one we have come across. You hang onto a rope as though your life depends on it, and then you jump off a platform at the highest point of the trail. Into nothing. You are clipped into your harness, but your harness, this time, is attached not to a frame, or to anything stable, but to the rope itself. Everything depends on that rope. (Just as a note, the trail confirms to European safety standards, something I find reassuring, if only because I am a little more familiar with what those standards actually are.) 

As for the rope, as if jumping off holding onto it wasn't enough, you then swing with it into a vertical net. Think flies and spiders. I stand on my tiny platform, holding my rope and contemplating the drop. The net's not a problem - it's the getting off the platform. 

I stand there. The rope is heavy in my hands, dragging me downwards so that I am worried it will tug me off before I am clipped to it, which in reality would only allow me to fall just below the platform, given that currently I am clipped to that. Even so, the resultant dangling is not especially attractive either. I clip myself to the rope. M has already done this and he seemed to survive.

I jump.

The fall is not too long before the rope tautens and I start to swing, which is much preferable to falling, and which lulls me into a false sense of security. That, I think, was not so bad. As long as I don't have to do another one. When I hit the net I am too busy being smug and so I miss my chance to grab at it by a second.

"Grab the net!" shouts our safety man from below. It's a little late but as the rope swings away I attempt, valiantly, to hook a foot into the net and pull myself in that way. My foot catches. My shoe comes off.

Up at the side of the net, waiting for me, M gazes down with a mixture of amusement and sympathy as I dangle in mid air with one shoe off on the end of a rope. Our safety man turns and wades into the undergrowth to retrieve my shoe, probably rolling his eyes as he does so. In fact, the actual falling part being over, I am relaxed and amused at the idiocy of the situation. It is with good humour that I catch the shoe our safety man tosses up to me, and reattach it. It is with slightly less good humour that he, sighing wearily, begins to drag the rope back again, using a handy narrow rope attached to the end of it, so he can swing me into the net.

"On the black run," he says, once I am safely in the net and clambering my way across it to join M, "if you miss the net after the Tarzan jump you have to start again. I cannot swing you."

This information is the opposite of reassuring.

"There's another one" I whisper to M.

"Yes," he replies, "but you are a brave wife. Not one of those wimping out ones."

"Definitely not" I say firmly, with such force that he bursts out laughing, and nearly loses his footing.

"Concentrate" I say sternly.

And so we move on to the black run. It begins, terrifyingly, with a vertical climbing wall. And I have never been any good at doing anything which might require you to think whilst half way up a vertical rock face. 

"Can I go first?" I ask M, so that I won't have to contemplate this climb for too long from the ground.

"Of course" he says, and then, "if you put your right foot in that one and then your left hand into that hole just there..."

And so he continues. He talks me through every single move (it's quite a high wall) and I don't paralyse with fear, I just obey instructions. A little tremblingly I admit, but nevertheless I get there. Did I mention how fantastic my husband is?

I do the same for him from the top. Though he needs it rather less.

We move on. We are much, much higher now. Despite the harness, everything feels more perilous. And I am dreading the Tarzan swing.

It comes quite soon, and it is more terrifying by far than the first one. Because we are higher, the rope is even heavier, gravity acting on it so that I can't hold it and clip myself on at the same time. M, reassuring and, being a little scared himself, empathetic, holds the rope for me. I clip myself on.

"I don't know if I can do this" I say.

"You can do it" says M.

I squat so that a tiny portion of that fall is minimised, grip the rope and basically launch myself off before I can think any more about it.

The fall is greater than I imagined and I am so scared I think that for a moment, right at the bottom, I lose, if not consciousness, at least a bit of control. I let go of the rope in that moment, which of course doesn't matter because I am clipped to it, and I let out some sort of unearthly scream. 

But then, no sooner has that second of the panic passed than the rope has grown taunt, which feels much more safe and begins it's swing back upward. I concentrate all my efforts on grabbing that net.

I hit it. I grip on. Only then do I realise that I am making the unearthly screaming sound and also, that there are six very scared looking American girls looking fearfully up at me a long way below.

"Wooooatgh!" I shout at them, for some reason, "that was terrifying!"

I am half laughing half shaking and the girls, quite reasonably presume it's not safe to engage with this lunatic.

"Shoot" I hear one of them say, "she just JUMPED from there to there!" She says it with fear in her voice. These girls, I suspect, are about to get harnessed and try out some of these runs. I wonder if they will do this one.

I, in the meantime, have other problems. 

"Climb higher" shouts our safety man, "and hook your harness to the loops. I look up and see that at the top of the net there are a series of loops for my harness. Which means that in the meantime I may be holding the net, but if I fall I will be harnessed still to the rope. Which would mean another drop. I grit my teeth and start climbing. 

After I have got to the top and changed my clips (with some difficulty, the rope still being quite heavy), I have to climb across the net for quite a distance, unhooking and rehooking myself onto the loops as I go. It's proper physical work. My muscles are struggling and my knees are still wobbly from the fear of the fall, so that one of them shakes uncontrollably beneath me. This rather increases the pressure on my arms and I puff and wheeze and grunt my way across, the girls at the bottom still watching me worriedly. I doubt I am managing to make it look easy.

Finally I make it to the next, comparatively easy, bridge from the net to the next platform and M has made his way into the net, also screaming, though his scream, I note is rather less extreme.

"I like to think," he confides, "that mine was a manly, Tarzan like whoop. As opposed to a scream."

"Were you scared?" I ask

"Oh yes." he says.

I am elated and a little close to random tears of excitement, which are  rather unnecessary, and my knees are still shaking, but I am hugely pleased with myself. 

If I'm expecting it to be easy from here, I am wrong. 

I balance across what is essentially a tightrope, holding onto a dangling piece of rope, which I am clipped to. I wobble violently, knees still quivering and half way across I wobble so furiously, in a moment of blind panic that I nearly do fall. The logic, that I can't fall because if my harness doesn't register with me. Below, a picnicking Balinese family look up at me in terror. I don't think it registers with them either.

I make it.

Behind me M skips across like a little mountain goat come monkey, with only one wobble in the middle which is easily controlled.

I stand on a platform, unnecessarily hugging the tree around which it is built, for support, and stating in incomprehension at the next part of the course. It appears, unless my eyes deceive me, that it requires me to hop onto a series of thick vertical hanging wooden poles, each with a small horizontal foot rest at the bottom. They are, of course, some distance apart. We are 20 metres from ground level. 

"I can't do it. Nobody can do this." I say to M, "it's impossible".

"Yeah" he says thoughtfully, "it does seem to be a bit impossible."

We look around for our safety man, who is supposed to follow us around telling us how to do things when it isn't obvious. It seems he has lost interest. He's somewhere in the distance, nattering away to his mates. I consider losing my shoe again. In his direction. 

"I think you have to sort of stand and hold onto each pole" says M.

"I'm sorry." I say, "maybe it's time for this wife to get down now..."

I peer over the side of the platform, then think better of it.  There isn't really a way down. Unless I intend to do the Tarzan swing. Backwards.

"Come on wife" says M, "you're nearly there. And after this there is a nice zip line."

That is true. I like the zip lines. You get on, you lean back, you're in a harness, possibly you might get slammed into a tree but it seems unlikely that they've managed to get their calculations that wrong, and it probably signifies the end of the black run. Which I have enjoyed. But which will be even more enjoyable once it's over.

"Will you go first?" I ask.

M gingerly puts his feet on the first hanging log, wraps his arms round it, and steps off the platform.

"Oh" he says in surprise, "it's actually alright once you're on it."

And he's right. The challenge in this part is all in the mind. It's actually fine once you are there. Holding onto your first log. It's the first time, in fact, that you have quite been permitted to cling onto something with both arms. 

We make it across. And, despite a chilling moment when I glance across at a nearby tree and notice a long rope ladder which appears to reach up, higher than anything else, straight up onto a platform unconnected to anything ("what do you do? Just jump??!!"), it soon becomes clear that the zip line really does signify the end of the black run. In fact it is one with have done before at the end of the red run. You take the zip line forward into a net which you grab onto, and climb down to that lovely, sturdy, trustworthy thing called ground. Last time I hit the net quite fast from the zip line, so that the net knocked the breath out of me with an involuntary "ooof". Contrary to the way it sounds my masochistic little mind rather liked it. Certainly there was no chance of not grabbing the net! This time was no disappointment. I slam my chest into the net, making a 'whomp' sound as the net connects with my shoulder bone (we both have a rather beautiful array of bumps and bruises to show off by the end of the day, though admittedly lots of mine are from accidentally standing on my own feet during balancing acts). This time perhaps my 'oof' is rather exaggerated, because our safety man (who has rediscovered us now) goes back to give the all clear to M, and tells him that he 'should maybe use one of his carebenas directly on the wire as it might be too fast'

The result of this is that M sails with immense pomp and dignity into the net. But has much less fun in the process.

"Wooo hoo!" I say, "I did it! I did the black run! Now I need a stiff drink."

As it happens I have not really been drinking since Langkawi, not, you understand because of the mammoth hangover I encountered last time, but because this was always the plan. I did intend not to drink in countries where drinking was not part of the culture. Bali is not Muslim, like the remainder of Indonesia, but by the time I for here I was already finding that, in the heat, alcohol is just not all that tempting. Plus it's expensive. And it makes me bloated. Drinking having become rather an 'every night' occurrence before we left (and at certain points since we left) I had been aiming to shift this into a "special occasions" pattern. Special occasions being rather loosely defined as being any time when it feels right and the alcohol in question is worth it.

And today, still wobbly kneed and dangerously 'cryey', is a special occasion.

I don't get my stiff drink. There isn't a venue for it in the gardens, so we walk around for a while, get drenched in monsoon rains, shelve plans to visit a water temple nearby because, well, it's all become a little bit over watery, call a taxi to Munduk, can't get one, get more drenched, walk into the next village, get offered transport but the usual passing entrepreneur, set a price, take it, discover he's also a dab hand at eco tourism, get shown some cloves and spice trees and some Hortensia and coffee plants along the way, book him to take us back to Denpaser via some temples and rice fields on Thursday, arrive at our homestay, shower, take a walk down the road, get put off by there being motorbikes (Still! Everywhere!), go to the Warung (restaurant) at our home stay for dinner and then - only then - do I finally get my stiff drink.

It's a Balinese rice wine named Brem. It's fantastic. We have a small glass each looking over the clear air and mountain view. And it's perfect.